Report: Biden Campaign Failing to ‘Recruit Enough’ Black Surrogates

Voters stand in line at an early voting site in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.
AP Photo/Chuck Burton
Wendell Husebø

The Biden campaign is reportedly not reaching its black surrogate recruitment numbers, highlighting President Joe Biden’s sinking popularity among the historically important demographic for Democrats.

Biden’s previous statements and policies offended many black voters:

  • “They are beyond the pale many of those people,” Biden said. “We have no choice but to take them out of society.”

  • “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he said.

  • “I think the two-party system is good for the South and good for the Negro, good for the Black. Other than the fact that they still call me boy, I don’t think they’ve I think they’ve changed their mind a little bit,” he said.

Biden’s complicated history with black voters might not help his surrogate recruitment. According to Semafor’s Kadia Goba, Biden’s support among black voters is worrisome.

“Amid concerns that Biden’s message isn’t breaking through with the party’s bedrock base of Black voters, Democrats told Semafor that there were still too few effective messengers working to sell his record to skeptical voters,” he wrote Monday:

The party has struggled to replicate Obama-era turnout and margins with Black voters since 2016, and there are some signs in recent surveys that Biden risks a further erosion in support.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a Biden ally who greatly aided Biden’s 2020 campaign with an endorsement, said many black voters are interested in America First policies, an issue he is “very concerned” about.

“My problem is, we have not been able to break through that MAGA wall in order to get to people exactly what this president has done,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

The Biden campaign claims it treats the black community well and does not parachute into their lives when they need votes.

“Instead of parachuting into communities of color a few weeks before the election, our campaign is investing earlier and more aggressively than ever before, including with the largest and earliest investment in Black media by a re-election campaign beginning in August 2023,” Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks told Semafor.

“We are meeting voters in every community where they are and putting in the work to earn every vote and let voters know how President Biden and Vice President Harris have delivered for them in an unprecedented way. The stakes are high for Black America, and we aren’t taking anything for granted,” he said.

Polling shows Biden’s support among black voters is down, recent New York Times polling shows:

  • Only 72 percent of black voters support Biden
  • Democrats lost ground among black voters in nearly every election in the last ten years.
  • Biden is in a worse position among nonwhite voters since Walter Mondale in 1984.

RELATED: CNN’s Enten: Polling Showing Significant Drop for Democrats Among Black Voters

Follow Wendell Husebø on “X” @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.

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