‘Who are we?’ Joe Biden seizes the moment as
nation's attitude shifts on race
US
elections 2020
Democratic candidate appears emboldened by the changed
political landscape, embracing a far more ambitious reform agenda than he did
when entered the race for president
Lauren
Gambino
@laurenegambino
Mon 15 Jun
2020 15.19 BSTLast modified on Mon 15 Jun 2020 17.00 BST
Democratic
presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks during campaign event in Philadelphia:
‘What do we want to be? How do we see ourselves? What do we think we should be?
Character is on the ballot here.’
In the
weeks since George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer
America’s institutions – from boardrooms and newsrooms to locker rooms and
classrooms – are publicly addressing systematic discrimination and demanding
reforms.
With a
reckoning over race compounded by a pandemic and an economic collapse, Donald Trump
and his would-be Democratic opponent Joe Biden are charting starkly different
courses for the nation that could determine which one of them wins the White
House in November.
But in
tone, tenor and leadership style, it is Biden who currently appears well
positioned to harness this political moment.
Biden has
sought to cast himself as a champion of racial equality, encouraging peaceful
protest and vowing to “heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our
country”.
“This is a
battle for the soul of America,” he said at an economic roundtable in
Philadelphia last week. “Who are we? What do we want to be? How do we see
ourselves? What do we think we should be? Character is on the ballot here.”
As public
attitudes shift quickly on race, Biden appears emboldened by the changed
political landscape, embracing a far more ambitious reform agenda than he
entered the race for president. By contrast, Trump, with his hostility to the
protesters and resistance to their demands for reform, has found himself on the
wrong side of the American public at a particularly perilous moment for his
presidency and his re-election prospects.
A
Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 61% of Americans disapprove of the
way Trump handled the protests while just 35% approve. When asked what type of
president they preferred at this moment of racial strife, half said they would
prefer a leader who can “address the nation’s racial divisions”, compared with
37% who said they would prefer a leader who can “restore security by enforcing
the law”.
“People are
finally seeing through the fog that has blinded them for too long,” said
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina. “They are
realizing that the system is broken and Donald Trump is not going to fix it.”
Public
opinion on race has been moving leftward since the Black Lives Matter movement
emerged in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012. White Democrats in
particular have become increasingly more concerned about issues of racial
inequality, even registering to the left of African Americans voters.
But the
recent shifts represent a sea change so sudden and deep that pollsters were
left grasping for parallels.
A Monmouth
poll conducted after Floyd’s killing found that for the first time a majority
of Americans – 57% – and 49% of white Americans believe police are more likely
to use excessive force against African Americans.
When Eric
Garner was killed by a police officer in New York City in 2014, just 33% of
Americans and 26% of white Americans say African Americans were more likely to
be subject to excessive use of force by the police. The same poll found that 3
in 4 Americans consider racism and discrimination a “big problem”.
Support for
Black Lives Matter has also jumped, according to Civiqs Polling, that found
voters from across the ideological and demographic spectrum embrace the
movement.
“This is
big,” tweeted Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who said he hadn’t seen
anything like it in more than three decades of polling. “This is ‘Beatles on Ed
Sullivan’ big.”
Ample
research has found race and identity were critical to Trump’s victory in 2016.
During the
campaign, he brazenly stoked white racial grievance that had been building
since the election of the nation’s first black president, promising to restore
America’s past glory and “Make America Great Again”.
As
president, Trump said there were “good people on both sides” of a deadly white
supremacist rally. He disparaged four congresswomen of color with a racist
taunt. And recently, he has responded to the most significant racial upheaval
in a generation by describing protesters as “thugs” and “terrorists”, threatening
to unleash the army to quell demonstrations and defending military bases named
after Confederate leaders.
In response
to the protests, Trump has declared himself the “president of law and order”,
appealing to a base that is predominantly white and conservative. This week he
held a roundtable with law enforcement officials in Dallas, where he dismissed
police brutality as the misconduct of a few “bad apples” and warned that
“falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots”
would not improve race relations.
Some
observers have compared Trumps approach to Richard Nixon’s 1968 election
strategy, when he ran as the law-and-order candidate after a summer of riots –
and won.
But there
is reason to believe 2020 may be different from 2016 and 1968, said Michael Tesler,
a political scientist at the University of California at Irvine and author of
Post-Racial or Most Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era.
While “law
and order” can be a powerful message in the midst of national upheaval, Tesler
said, it’s a much harder case to make as an incumbent whose governing style
over the last three and a half years has contributed to that chaos.
“The
country views Trump as a racial arsonist at a time when racial reconciliation
is needed,” he wrote in an email.
And far from
boosting Trump in November, the protests are likely to mobilize and energize
Democrats, says Daniel Gillion, a political science professor at the University
of Pennsylvania and author of The Loud Minority: Why Protests Matter in
American Democracy.
Throughout
modern American history, protests have not only succeeded in influencing public
policy but impacted electoral outcomes for the party ideologically aligned with
their cause, according to Gillion.
His
research found African American turnout in 2016 was higher in cities that saw
Black Lives Matter protests, even as it declined elsewhere. But the effect is
geographically concentrated and the protests were limited.
“Now that
protests are happening in everyone’s backyard it’s likely there will be a snowballing
effect,” he said. “And based on what I’ve found, one can only expect that
Democrats are going to be more mobilized to vote in November because of what’s
taking place.”
Heather
McGhee, co-chair of the political advocacy group color of change, said the
coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis caused by efforts to control it,
which have disproportionately impacted African American communities, “primed”
the nation for this tectonic shift in attitudes on racism in America.
“It became
very clear once the pandemic is that we were all suffering from the same storm,
but we weren’t all in the same boat,” said McGhee.
McGhee
described Biden as a “weather vane” for the Democratic party.
During the
primary, he offered himself as a pragmatist who once assured donors that under
his administration “nothing would fundamentally change”. But that was when
Democrats’ top concern was ousting Trump. Now, as inequalities in public
health, the economy and race are laid bare, Biden’s sudden desire for systemic
change is telling.
“The
band-aid has been ripped off,” Biden said recently during a virtual appearance,
explaining that more Americans are connecting the dots and exposed deep-rooted
social ills. “The scar is apparent and I think they’re ready to do something
about it. I think they’re ready to see some real institutional change.”
A majority
of Americans, including among Republicans, agree some changes to policing are
needed. But growing calls from activists to “defund the police” has little
support.
“There is a
danger that lurks there for Biden and the Democrats,” warned Ruy Teixeira, a
political demographer at the Center for American Progress, a liberal thinktank
in Washington. “There are scenarios in which you could see Trump making a
successful law and order appeal, particularly to these white non-college
[educated] voters who are sensitive to the issue.”
Biden, who
faced criticism during the primary over his legislative record on criminal
justice and race, has embraced an overhaul of policing.
Though he
and Democratic leaders in Congress have flatly rejected growing calls to
“defund the police” it has not stopped Trump and his Republican allies from
seizing on the issue in an effort to drive a wedge between activists and
moderate Democrats.
Trump’s
electoral strategy hinges on his ability to drive up turnout among his base of
support, which is predominantly white, older, less educated and conservative.
While their share of the electorate is shrinking, this cohort holds outsized
influence in the handful of states that will likely determine the election.
Biden’s
task is to stitch together a coalition that is increasingly multicultural,
young, educated and liberal. Diverse battleground states like Arizona, Georgia
and Texas, once bastions of conservatism, are now competitive.
Biden won
the primary on the strength of his support among African Americans, but he
struggled to appeal to the young voters now leading the protests, said Steve
Phillips, host of Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips and the author of the
book Brown Is the New White.
“There’s a
bigger risk of failing to inspire and galvanize younger voters and people of
color than there is alienating moderate voters,” he said.
Karen
Finney, a Democratic strategist who advised Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016,
said Biden must “treat black voters like swing voters”.
Choosing a
black woman as his running mate would be one way of emphasizing black voters
importance to the Democratic party.
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