WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — Former Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestion that African Americans who support President Donald Trump “ain’t black” might not cause lasting harm to his White House run, but experts say the swift blowback he faced underscores the importance of improving his outreach to the black community, especially as Trump’s campaign steps up its effort to win over a constituency that mostly rejected him in 2016.
“[Biden] was going to have to do that anyway,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University and author of “The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America.” “He just made his job a little bit harder.”
A powerful white man positioning himself as the arbiter of who is and is not truly black, even if it was intended in jest, struck a nerve with many listeners, including some prominent black Biden supporters, and threatened to deepen a rift with progressives. It also infuriated black Republicans, including Michigan Senate candidate John James, who called the comment “seriously condescending, out-of-touch bullc***.”
“I tell you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Biden said in an interview with Charlamagne tha God on “The Breakfast Club” Friday morning.
Hours later, on a conference call with black business leaders, Biden backtracked and acknowledged the comment was too “cavalier.”
“I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy…,” he said. “No one should have to vote for any party, based on their race or religion or background.”
Although many Democrats welcomed the quick cleanup and hoped to move past the controversy, some critics on the left were not satisfied, looking for a more tangible demonstration of Biden’s commitment to the black community.
“I don’t even care about the words and the lip service,” Charlamagne said in an interview with MSNBC Sunday. “The apology is cool, but the best apology is actually a black agenda. You know, they got to make some real policy commitments to black people.”
The Trump campaign immediately saw an opportunity in Biden’s comments, blasting out statements calling him racist, hastily arranging a media conference call with Sen. Tim Scott, pushing “#YouAintBlack” t-shirts, launching a new website, and zeroing in on the outrage in its “Black Voices for Trump Real Talk” online broadcast. Paris Dennard, a Black Voices for Trump Advisory Board member and RNC senior communications adviser for black media affairs, said the campaign is fighting hard to counter “the disingenuous Democrat machine and the mainstream media.”
“The Democrats and Team Biden are running scared of the effective engagement efforts of President Trump, the RNC and Black Voices for Trump,” Dennard said. “That is why you see Joe Biden try to suppress the black vote by intimidating those young black Americans that are open to supporting and listening to President Trump and the Republican Party.”
In addition to amplifying the remarks, Trump supporters have sought to call attention to Biden’s rocky history on racial issues, particularly his involvement in the 1994 crime bill widely blamed for the unjust mass incarceration of black men.
“It’s time to look in the mirror and have a real soul check to see the man that has really mass incarcerated black men over the last two-and-a-half-plus decades,” former NFL player Jack Brewer said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” Sunday.
According to CNN, the Trump campaign is planning a $1 million digital ad campaign highlighting Biden’s words and attacking his record on criminal justice issues. Republicans have likened Biden’s sentiment to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s fateful dismissal of half of Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables,” although the attack might not resonate as strongly.
Black voters were the core of the coalition that won Biden the Democratic nomination, handing him a commanding victory in the South Carolina primary that scared the remaining moderate contenders out of the race. His appeal to the African American community is deeply rooted, born partly from his eight years advising the first black president and from the belief he is the Democrat best suited to defeat President Trump, and Democrats doubt this mistake will shake that.
“My mom always used to say, ‘Consider the source,’” said Moe Vela, a former senior adviser in Biden’s office at the White House and chief transparency officer for TransparentBusiness. “If you consider the vice president as the source of that comment, the reality is you would be hard-pressed to find a public servant in this nation with a more inclusive, equality-oriented heart and soul than Joe Biden.”
According to Brandy Faulkner, a professor of black studies and political science at Virginia Tech, most black voters are likely eager to accept Biden’s apology, not because they are unconcerned by what he said but because he is still more palatable to them than Trump. However, she stressed Biden has much work to do to convince African Americans he does not take them for granted, and he might now need to make that a higher priority than he has so far.
“Biden entered the campaign later than many of the other candidates. Yet, it was clear from the time he announced his intent, that many in the black community had been waiting for someone like him to enter the race—someone from the old guard with name recognition and deep political ties,” Faulkner said. “Someone relatively low-risk. He has done very little since then to reach out to black voters. He assumes he doesn’t have to do that.”
Republicans maintain Trump’s track record over the last three-and-a-half years should help him secure a larger share of the black vote this time around. They point to a historic drop in black unemployment before the coronavirus pandemic, increased funding for historically black colleges and universities, landmark criminal justice reform, and other gains black Americans have made since 2016.
“The black community will look at President Trump’s record and actions in four years versus Joe Biden’s lackluster and non-existent 44-year record of support for our community and we will see President Trump realistically getting more Black votes,” Dennard said.
Exit polls indicated Trump won 13% of the black male vote in 2016 and 4% of the black female vote. Some recent surveys have indicated black men are now even more open to considering support for Trump, though he has largely failed to make inroads with black women.
According to Gillespie, the First Step Act and the record low black unemployment are signs of progress, but for most black voters, they do not outweigh decades of conventional wisdom that Democrats are the stronger party on civil rights issues.
“I think on the Republican side, the rallying cry around the comment isn’t going to have the effect on black voters maybe some of them would hope,” she said. “I think black voters who are going to vote for Donald Trump are already there.”
Democrats remain skeptical of Trump’s appeal to African Americans. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in January found more than 80% of black Americans consider the president a racist and two-thirds believe it is a “bad time” to be black in America. They also gave Trump relatively little credit for the drop in black unemployment or any improvement in their own financial situations, and it is doubtful their perspective on the president has improved since then.
“As an empirical matter, across almost every public policy area Donald Trump and his administration — and the Republican Party as a whole — have consistently advocated and enacted policies that hurt black (and brown) people’s health, safety, incomes, opportunity, civil rights, and freedoms, and diminish their life chances more generally,” wrote Chauncey DeVega in a Salon column dismissing criticism of Biden’s comments from the left and right.
Any genuine anger over Biden’s words is also likely to be tempered by President Trump’s long history of comments and actions that have offended black voters, going back to his embrace of the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
“Republicans will have an extremely difficult time convincing the Black community that they should support the man who attacked LeBron James, called Maxine Waters very low IQ, referred to Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players protesting racism as ‘sons of b****es,’ refused to condemn white supremacists marching with guns in Charlottesville, referred to African countries as s***holes, and questioned Obama’s American citizenship,” Faulkner said.
Democrats also question the sincerity of the Trump campaign’s outrage over Biden’s dismissal of members of a minority group who do not support him, noting that the president repeatedly accused Jewish voters who support Democrats of being disloyal to their faith. Unlike Trump, Biden promptly admitted his mistake and acknowledged his comments offended a key voting bloc.
“I think his apology was something we have sorely missed in this nation for three-and-a-half years… It takes a man with integrity to say sorry and let’s move on,” Vela said.
However, the risk for Biden is not only that more black voters might support Trump but also that they could sit out the election entirely. Hillary Clinton lost by very narrow margins in several states in 2016, in part because she failed to mobilize African Americans on nearly the same scale that Obama did, so alienating even a small share of the black population carries enormous consequences.
“For African Americans on the left who are Democratically-inclined who take issue with Joe Biden’s comments, I don’t think their option is to give Donald Trump a second look,” Gillespie said.
The controversy could raise the already-high stakes of Biden’s search for a vice presidential nominee. He has committed to selecting a woman, but he could come under increased pressure to select one of the black women on his shortlist like Sen. Kamala Harris, Rep. Val Demings, or former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
“I do hear a lot of people say, you know, we also want him to have a black woman running mate, you know, but not just any black woman running mate, one that’s going to actually get in office and care that black people benefit from our presence there,” Charlamagne tha God told MSNBC Sunday, specifically stating it would be a mistake to choose Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who struggled to appeal to black voters throughout the primaries.
Even before Biden’s latest comments, a poll of black voters in battleground states by BlackPAC found more than half would be more excited to support Biden if he selected a black woman as his running mate. Only 7% of respondents said they would vote for Trump, and the survey found widespread disapproval of the president’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has disproportionately impacted African Americans.
“If he does not choose an African American woman, he’s going to have to explain the choice more,” Gillespie said.
Faulkner sees the prospect of Biden picking a black woman as a symbolic act of good faith to the black community, given the circumstances, but she doubts it would matter much one way or the other. It would not change the substantive direction of a potential Biden administration, which they might still find disappointing, and it appears they have already made their peace with that.
“Black voters indicated during the primaries that the context for this election outweighs the potential for substantive policy change,” she said. “The message is clear: getting Trump out of office is the top priority for the community.”
