Much of the Democratic Party has been in a full-fledged panic since President Joe Biden’s struggles in Thursday’s CNN debate against Donald Trump. The editorial boards of The New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution channeled some of the most desperate members of that party by arguing that Biden should abandon the race. One vital Democratic voting bloc appears to be somewhat more resistant to this anti-Biden panic, however. Black voters, Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc, are aware of the president’s problems and are divided on whether he should keep fighting or step aside. Yet there appears to be a consensus that Trump's really got no business running. Importantly, this dispels a narrative Trump’s been sharing, that his being booked for crimes a handful of times gave him street cred with Black voters.
Black voters are aware of the president’s problems. Yet they appear to be of the consensus that it’s Trump who’s really got no business running.
According to a CBS poll, 74% of Black registered voters say Trump shouldn’t be running for president, and 92% of them cite “decisions he might make in office” as a reason he shouldn’t be running. That same poll found 45% of Black voters think Biden should bow out; and there’s no way to dismiss that as insignificant. That figure must be factoring into the Biden camp’s calculations right now. But it would be punditry malpractice to focus on that number, as high as it is, and not the much higher number who say Trump shouldn’t be in the race.
The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday — that is, on the two days after the debate. But something far more consequential than the debate happened Monday: The Supreme Court made it all but impossible to prosecute a president. That ruling will embolden a future President Trump like the matador’s cape emboldens the bull. It seems likely, then, that there would be even more voters — Black, white or otherwise — worried about potential Trump decisions than there were last week, before the rule of law expired.”
Departing from the pundits who focused more on how the candidates looked and sounded than on what they said, a plurality of Black registered voters, 39%, said Biden won Thursday’s debate. The next largest, and perhaps the most honest group, was the 35% of respondents who said neither candidate won. Then there was the 25% who said Trump did.
As much as reports on the debate have focused on Biden’s difficulty countering Trump’s incessant lying — and cited that difficulty as disqualifying — the Black voters who say Biden won appear to have focused more on those lies. The CBS poll reported that only 10% of the Black registered voters who watched that debate found Trump to be telling the truth.
That’s because he didn’t tell the truth. As Paul Waldman wrote for MSNBC Sunday, “[T]here was not a single answer Trump gave that did not include some awful prejudice, a preposterously misleading statement or an outright lie, often more than one.”
Registered voters surveyed in the CBS poll weren’t given the option to cite Trump’s lying ways as a reason he shouldn’t be a presidential candidate, but of the 74% of Black respondents who said he shouldn’t be a candidate, 98% cited his felony conviction, a consequence of his lying ways, as a reason.
Wait, wasn’t his criminal trouble supposed to make him Soul Brother 45?
Trump’s response to being convicted in Manhattan — and, before then, having his mug shot snapped in Atlanta — sounded a lot like the nonsense spouted by a clueless white person who bakes on a beach and then finds a Black person and says, “Now I’m just like you!”
For example, when speaking to Black conservatives in South Carolina in February about having been indicted multiple times, Trump said, “And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.”
Of the 74% of Black respondents who say he shouldn’t be a candidate, 98% cited his felony conviction as a reason.
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, a Black Republican, quickly co-signed that foolishness on NBC’s Meet the Press when he told host Kristen Welker that Trump getting indicted “is something similar that Black people have to deal with, with the justice system themselves.”
But the finding that three-quarters of Black voters polled think Trump shouldn’t be running and almost every one of them cites his Manhattan convictions as a reason, ought to come as a bracing slap of reality to everybody who has talked about Black voters as simpletons who can’t distinguish between justice and oppression.
In advance of Thursday’s debate, Rocky Jones, a Black Atlanta barber, hosted a gathering of Black Republicans that included Donalds, Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas and former HUD Secretary Ben Carson for a discussion on small businesses. Images from the event showed signs on the wall like “Black Americans for Trump” and one with Trump’s mug shot with the words “Never Surrender.”
If Black people were really moving into Trump’s column, the way Donalds and other Black Republicans have claimed, then Jones should be feeling pretty good with the attention he got from hosting the event. Instead, he’s been claiming he didn’t know he was hosting a political event. “I feel like I’ve been betrayed,” he told an Atlanta television station. In a social media post, the Trump campaign said, “The business owner signed an agreement with the Trump campaign and received payment for the time spent in his location for this event.”
As hard as it is to accept that the Trump campaign is telling the truth about something, it seems likely that Jones is now realizing there aren’t enough “Black Americans for Trump” who want the services a Black barber provides. “We definitely got some calls, some backlash, some angry people…” he told the television station, “and I have to deal with that.”
It’s still impossible to know what’s going to happen in this presidential election, or if the two presumed nominees will be the two candidates on the ballot. But it does appear Vote for me because I’ve been arrested just like you people isn’t a winning pitch.
As anybody with any respect for Black people should have already known.
