The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

“OH my God!” a veteran pundit exclaimed. “Look at this!” She pointed to a recent copy of the New York Times with the following headline: “Why Biden’s weakness among young voters should be taken seriously.”

In this and other recent media articles, journalists and commentators have often returned to the theme that while young voters are very often liberal and support Democrats, there is apprehension in party ranks that in 2024 these recently enfranchised voters will abandon Biden and stay away from the polls.

It’s just one of many trends that should concern Biden.  

Recent public opinion polling does show that there are several reasons for the president’s falling status with young voters. Among them are his advanced age; his hardline stance on the Hamas-Israeli War; higher consumer prices, and his really, really long tenure as an elected official in the federal government.

Maybe the polls aren’t asking questions in a way that makes starkly clear the alternative to voting for Biden. Maybe opinion samplers don’t inquire if young voters have been listening to Donald Trump’s plans for a second presidential administration. Or maybe the risk is real. Perhaps many voters feel that both candidates are flawed, and that exercising their right to vote is too much trouble, not worth their time.

And it isn’t just young people among traditional Democratic constituency groups who are showing signs of indifference. Consider another recent headline, this time from the Washington Post: “Trump needs just one thing from black voters next year.” That thing would be for them to not vote at all.

The author of that commentary postulates that one of the most traditionally loyal blue voting blocs in the country may also be considering simply staying home next November. African-Americans arguably gave a much-needed, even essential, boost to then-candidate Joe Biden’s flagging campaign in the South Carolina presidential primary in 2020; now, recent surveys suggest they may be less enthused this time around.

In support of this thesis, the columnist cites the following data: “In 2016, black voter turnout in a presidential election declined for the first time in 20 years. At 59.6 percent, it was seven percentage points below the 2012 level, the highest decline ever recorded for black voter participation in a presidential election.”

It is true that in 2012, voters returned Barack Obama to office for a second term. His ethnicity certainly drove the black vote in America.

But four years later, the Democratic candidate was Hillary Clinton. She was regarded as a friend of African-Americans and their interests. She was also the wife of Bill Clinton, often dubbed “the first black president” because of his strong, consistent cultural and political affiliation with African-Americans and support of issues that were important to them.

Still, it can be argued that Hillary Clinton would have won election in 2016 if black Americans had turned out as they had four years earlier, especially in battleground states that swung the election for Trump.

Here are the numbers. Trump carried Michigan by 11,000 votes in 2016. 277,000 black voters did not cast their ballot. Trump won in Wisconsin by a margin of 27,000 votes. 93,000 black voters stayed home. Trump won by 200,000 votes in Georgia, but over 530,000 African-American registered voters didn’t participate in the election. And in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the number of absentee black voters easily surpassed the margin by which Trump prevailed.

It’s early in this election cycle. Things can, and always do, change before Election Day. But the potential disinterest in and/or defection from Biden’s re-election bid by black Americans and young voters is a big, worrisome sign for America’s incumbent chief executive. Inflation and discouraging job prospects are almost certainly among the major factors in disengagement by these two vital Democratic constituencies.

These two critical groups likely won’t vote for Trump in any significant numbers. That’s not so much the problem. The problem is that they may stay home and not vote at all, as evidently happened seven years ago.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was criticized for what appeared to be her election-eve complacency. Despite warning signs, she didn’t rush to states like Wisconsin in an effort to rally loyal supporters.

To his credit, Biden seems well aware of the threat to his re-election posed by the potential failure of young people and African-Americans to go to the polls and vote. For example, the current administration’s dogged efforts to institute broader student loan forgiveness are obviously popular among recent graduates. And despite Biden’s failure to gain the authority to more broadly apply this policy, thousands of younger voters have nonetheless benefited from the president’s determination.

That’s a pocketbook issue for newer voters, and it should encourage them to vote in November. But at the same time, while Biden has made many gestures to the black community such as moving up the South Carolina primary in the Democratic calendar for next year and successfully nominating black female candidates for vice-president and Supreme Court justice, stubbornly high prices for consumer goods seem to have blunted African-American enthusiasm for this administration.

Disaffection among key Democratic constituencies as a key factor in GOP electoral prospects for next year is not lost on Republican strategists and operatives. Efforts by Republican-dominated state legislatures to restrict and suppress voting among minorities and younger voters were headline material all over the country in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Those efforts haven’t ceased. And political mischief will now intensify as the election draws closer. It’s long been an article of faith among American political commentators that if high numbers of voters across the political spectrum turn out to vote, Democratic candidates are most likely to benefit. Ensuring that happens might just be Biden’s biggest challenge in the next 12 months.

Political trends favour right wing leaders - a worry for Biden

Meantime, there’s yet another worry for the beleaguered American president.

This concerns the possibility that political trends in Europe today are an indicator of what’s to come in the future for the United States. As Trump correctly boasted in 2016, Britain’s exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) did indeed foreshadow Trump’s own electoral triumph that year.

Recent election results in Europe suggest another shift to the right may be underway, and this also does not bode well for Biden and his Democratic allies.

The most recent example of Europe’s rightward drift came in the Netherlands, where an ultraconservative movement led by Geert Wilders finished first in recent parliamentary elections. Since the Dutch, like many sensible European nations, benefit from a sometimes fractious but ultimately representative parliamentary system of government, Wilders will need to seek governing coalition partners, and that will dilute his overall influence.

But Wilders and his allies ran successfully on a stridently anti-European Union, anti-Muslim and broadly anti-immigration platform. And they are not the only recently successful political group to do so. The Dems in Washington worry that this trend will serve as prologue for Trump’s success, just as it did in 2016.

According to published analysis quoted by the mainstream press, such right-wing groups as Wilders’ have become significant political factors in most European Union nations, even when they are not in a position to lead a governing coalition.

Helping to drive this political success are factors such as high inflation, surging migration from the Middle East and Africa, the ongoing ominous war in Ukraine and the sense that the traditional political ruling class has failed.

If you substitute Central America for the Middle East and Africa, it’s easy to see why Democratic strategists are concerned. These are also among the most important causes for voter discontent in the US.

Many readers will recognise the name of French National Party Marine Le Pen, who has already run for president of France three times and may well do so again in a couple of years. Her right-wing views on immigration have long garnered headlines, and there is some evidence that such views are becoming more “mainstream.”

Similarly, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni espouses many of the same policies that have proven popular in Holland and France – and she has been welcomed by Biden at the White House. Viktor Orban in Hungary represents a rougher version of similar policies. There have been reports that Swedish right-wingers are gaining traction in national politics there.

Biden would do well to pay close attention.