Biden eyes Latino trump card in election
Immigration issues could hold key to success in November election
JOE BIDEN, the likely Democratic candidate in this year’s race for the White House, has identified his unique selling point: “I’m not Trump.”
To prove the point, he has told a popular Spanish-language radio broadcaster that he would introduce a comprehensive immigration proposal on his first day as president.
He also spoke alongside Latino civil rights activists about the spread of the coronavirus in meatpacking plants staffed primarily by immigrants.
His wife Jill, who is learning Spanish while stuck at home, has begun meeting weekly with small groups of Latino members of Congress, taking notes on a range of issues to share with her husband.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been taking steps to address the view among some immigration rights activists that he has been dismissive of their concerns.
It is a critical weakness – Mr Biden lost Latinos in several high-profile primaries to Senator Bernie Sanders well after he began to reposition himself – and one that could be pivotal to his fate in election states like Florida and Arizona.
These activists are desperate to see President Donald Trump defeated, and they fear Mr Biden has yet to deliver a compelling and effective counter-argument on immigration – or even talk about the issue as much as Mr Trump does.
They worry that if the former vice-president is too focused on winning the support of white voters in swing states, who like some of Mr Trump’s hard-line immigration stances, Mr Biden could alienate some Latino voters, who are expected to become the country’s largest non-white voting bloc this November.
And there is lingering resentment for how the Obama administration promised to make immigration restructuring a top priority, and then deported more than three million people.
Mr Biden said in a February interview that those deportations were “a big mistake”.
Some were disappointed that Mr Biden didn’t publicly condemn Mr Trump’s decision last month to temporarily halt immigration because of the high unemployment rate, an action that a majority of Americans agree with.
While Mr Biden has broadly promised to undo Mr Trump’s immigration actions, he has long been cautious in talking about his own proposals, a reflection of the complicated politics he faces as he looks to November.
As Mr Biden prepared to run for president last year, he was briefed by Senator Robert P Casey Jr, who months earlier had defeated Republican Lou Barletta, a former congressman and Trump supporter who made fighting illegal immigration the focus of his campaign.
Democratic studies of the 2016 election results have highlighted the success Mr Trump saw in promising to shut foreigners out of the country and put Americans first, particularly among white blue-collar voters.
The Biden campaign points to the 2018 midterm elections as evidence that while Trump’s rhetoric on immigration might have won him votes in 2016, that power did not carry to 2018. Biden campaign officials have promised to increase outreach to Latinos and further diversify the staff now that they have raised more money, although they declined to provide target numbers.
They note that Mr Biden won a plurality of Latino votes in the Florida primary, and exit polls show he also led in the Virginia and North Carolina primaries.
Mr Biden’s November strategy is squarely focused on winning three Rust Belt states that were key to Trump’s 2016 victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – along with Florida and Arizona, which have large Latino populations.
Although the Latino population in the Rust Belt states is small, mobilising those voters could give Mr Biden the small margin he needs to beat Mr Trump. The president’s campaign has been targeting those same voters in recent months. (© Washington Post)
Mr Biden said in February that those deportations were ‘a big mistake’