President Biden’s approval ratings continue to fall, including among a key constituency—black voters—which could spell trouble for Democrats ahead of the midterms.
The founder of the Atlanta-based Black Male Voter Project explained what’s behind the immense frustration with the commander in chief.
In an interview with The Washington Post, W. Mondale Robinson said it’d be difficult to convince black voters at this point in Biden’s presidency that casting a ballot could bring change to their lives.
He remembers the exact moment his optimism that President Biden would be different began to fade: when Democrats in May said they were willing to significantly weaken a policing-reform bill to get Republican support.
More disappointments followed. Robinson was dismayed that Biden did not push for changes to the filibuster to enact a $15 minimum wage. He was upset that the president did not try to halt a raft of voting restrictions passed by Georgia’s GOP-led legislature.
“I think the frustration is at an all-time high, and Biden can’t go to Georgia or any other Black state in the South and say, ‘This is what we delivered in 2021,’?” said Robinson, whose group believes it reached 1.2 million Black men in Georgia. “Black men are pissed off about the nothingness that has happened.?.?.?. Does it make the work harder? It makes the work damn near impossible.” (WaPo)
According to WaPo, other minority groups who helped Biden secure a win are also disenchanted after “unfulfilled promises and dwindling hope for meaningful change.”
“If midterms are about enthusiasm and turnout, who do you think is excited to vote on November 2 at this moment?” said Nsé Ufot, chief executive of the New Georgia Project, which has registered more than a half-million voters. “Because it ain’t Democrats. It ain’t Black folks. It ain’t young people.”
After Congress’s failure to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and a voting rights law, minorities have been discouraged, according to the Post. The White House insists, however, that “the Black agenda is bigger” than these two issues, though Biden is still committed to working on them.
Mondale said any outreach needs to happen sooner rather than later.
“They can’t call me and ask me to serve my brothers up on a platter for their benefit,” he told the Post. “They can’t have my data, they can’t have access to what I know about Black men from the work that we do, unless I see something serious for Black men. And that requires a conversation with [Black men] long before Labor Day on an election year.”
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