A growing number of Democrats are concerned that the party is “failing” to reach out adequately to a constituency — black male voters — that has been a reliable demographic for them in the past heading into 2024.
According to internal party analysis, black male turnout and younger black voter turnout were notably lower in specific states during the 2022 midterms, Fox News is reporting.
“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of Black men — and that’s sad to say,” W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told the Washington Post. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”
He went on to tell the Post that black men are “sporadic or non-voters” in several battleground states. He went on to claim that Democratic leaders were too focused on “conservative-leaning white women.”
“We have to meet them where they are and we have to show them why the political process matters and what we have accomplished that benefits them,” Cedric L. Richmond, a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee, told the Post.
He added that the Biden administration should focus more on “making black voters aware of how they have benefited from Biden administration policies.”
In a poll conducted in May, it was evident that Biden was experiencing a decline in black voter support. Only 41 percent of black adults expressed a desire for Biden to run for a second term, and just 55 percent indicated they were likely to support him in the general election.
These numbers stand in stark contrast to his initial months in office, during which 9 out of 10 black voters approved of the job he was doing, Fox News reported.
“There is a slow leaking of black men from the base because the issues that they care about aren’t being addressed,” said Branden Snyder, executive director of Detroit Action, according to the Post. “We have politics that were created by both Democrats and Republicans that don’t get to the heart of what our community cares about.”
“Black voters are whipped into a frenzy around election time, and Republicans are made into boogeymen who, as Biden himself said back in 2012, want to ‘put y’all back in chains.’ It’s fear-mongering rather than offering a reparations framework or a transformative black agenda that we can actually get excited about,” said Yvette Carnell, president of the ADOS Advocacy Foundation.
ADOS stands for “American descendants of slavery.”
