CBS News reports that in 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump among black voters 90% to 9%, and this year polls have Ms. Harris at a 78% to 15% advantage. In the seven most competitive states about 1 in 4 black men say they “definitely” or “probably” will vote for Mr. Trump, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Woodson mused that the track record of Democrats might finally be catching up with them. “Democrats have been running these big cities for 60 years, and black people see the results,” he said. Nor does he believe the problem is unique to Ms. Harris. If Mr. Biden hadn’t dropped out of the race, “he’d be having similar problems with black voters, because they remember the unemployment and low inflation” under Mr. Trump.
Before the global pandemic shut down the economy in 2020, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings under Mr. Trump grew 12.5% for all black workers and 12.7% for black men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The corresponding figures for white workers—7.9% and 8.2%—demonstrate that, before Covid, black workers were making absolute gains and gaining on their white counterparts. Under the Biden-Harris administration, inflation-adjusted earnings to date are up less than 1% among blacks and down 1.5% among whites.
Ms. Harris’s problem with black voters, Mr. Woodson explained, is part of a broader problem the Democratic Party faces with working-class voters generally. “The black men I talk to are upset at the migrants in places like Chicago and Boston and California getting free cellphones and housing,” he said. Yet Ms. Harris has been banging away at Mr. Trump’s comportment, his criminal convictions and Jan. 6. Even her focus on abortion rights plays better with college-educated women than with their blue-collar counterparts, who are more concerned about inflation, illegal immigration and crime.
Democrats are panicking because they know that even a small dip in black support could cost them heavily in consequential states such as Georgia, where blacks are more than 30% of the population, and North Carolina, where they are around 20%. Even in swing states with smaller black populations—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin—Democrats still need big margins and turnout in urban areas to prevail next month. Hillary Clinton didn’t get them in 2016, which is one reason she lost.
Obey
Article URL : https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-are-democrats-losing-black-voters-party-kamala-harris-senate-working-class-b4e9156e?st=U1cng8