One of the most painfully obvious things about Joe Biden, aside from his advanced age and cognitive decline, is his shameless pandering to minorities. Ever so desperate to compensate for being an old white guy, he never misses an opportunity to pat himself on the back for picking a minority for one position or another. Yet, all that pandering hasn’t translated into goodwill from minority groups.
Last year, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that the GOP was closing the gap on the Democrats’ advantage amongst black voters, with Republicans earning 21% of black voters and 39% of the vote from other minorities. One minority group in particular Biden’s continued to lose support from is Latino voters — and that poses a significant problem for him as he seeks reelection next year.
Democrats have operated under the assumption that minority groups would always be a unified and steadfast Democratic voting bloc. However, it seems that Latinos and even black voters are increasingly turning to the GOP. In 2020, Trump gained even more support from black and Latino voters than he did in 2016, despite Biden sharing the ticket with a minority running mate.
That’s not to say Biden isn’t trying hard to reach out to those voters. His new campaign website has a Spanish-language version, though it had some issues with translation mistakes. But that’s the least of Biden’s problems.
“I have firsthand knowledge of not only how much it resonates with the community, but also how much work it takes,” Jess Morales Rocketto, chief of Moonshot Strategies at Equis Research, explained to Politico. “It’s good that there are two years here where they can really work out the kinks … I don’t think the problem is making mistakes. The problem is when you don’t have a strategy. The problem is when you don’t respect us in your policy positions, in your personnel positions.”
Related: What’s Driving Latinos to the GOP?
Naturally, those are issues that Republicans hope to exploit — and have seen success at. Despite the fact the mainstream media and the Democrats constantly pushed the narrative that Trump’s immigration policies were racist, Trump saw his support from Latino voters go up from 2016 to 2020 — a trend not limited to his own campaign. It’s easy to understand why; these voters are seeing the Republican Party fight for their values, while the Democratic Party’s biggest contribution is calling them Latinx, which is more about pandering to the LGBT community than it is about Latino voters.
“The stakes for Biden are high,” notes Politico. “As he launches his reelection, there are doubts about whether he’ll be able to replicate that multiracial excitement, even if he might face off against Trump again. His favorability has dropped across the board since last year, falling nearly 30 points among Latinos in some polling.”
Why is this happening? Part of the Democrats’ problem is that they’ve been taking minority votes for granted for too long, and their failure to deliver tangible results is prompting this shift.