WHY THESE VOTERS WHO REJECTED HILLARY ARE NOW BACKING BID EN
Samantha Kacmarik, a Latina college student in Las Vegas, said that four years ago, she had viewed Hillary Clinton as part of a corrupt political establishment.
Flowers Forever, a Black transgender music producer in Milwaukee, said she had thought Clinton wouldn’t change anything for the better. And Thomas Moline, a white retired garbageman in Minneapolis, said he simply hadn’t trusted her. None of them voted for Clinton. All of them plan to vote for Joe Biden.
“I knew early that Trump definitely wasn’t the guy for me,” recalled Moline, an independent. Butwhen it came to Clinton, “I guess I had a bad taste in my mouth from her husband’s eight years in office.”
He voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, a decision he regrets, and he feels at ease backing Biden.
“I identify more with Biden — whether that’s being a male chauvinist or whatever youwant to callme,” he said.
Biden is not Clinton
The point seems almost too obvious to note: Bidenisnot Clinton. Yet for many Democrats and independents who sat out 2016, voted for third- party candidates or backed Donald Trump, it is a rationale for their vote that comes up repeatedly: Biden is more acceptable to them than Clinton was, in ways large and small, personal and political, sexist and not — and those differences help them feel more comfortable voting for the Democratic nominee this time around.
Biden also benefits, of course, from the intense desire among Democrats to get Trump out of office. And a majority of voters give the president low marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the dominant issue of the race. But a key distinction between 2020 and 2016 is that, four years ago, the race came down to two of the most disliked and polarising candidates in American history, and one of them also faced obstacles that came with being a barrier breaking woman.
Biden now leads Trump in many public polls by biggermargins than Clinton had in 2016. Interviews reveal a party embracing Biden — a 77- year- old whiteman— as a familiar political pitch, though somebristled at what they sawas the gender bias in that assessment.
“The Republicans did a fantastic
job of making Hillary Clinton seem like the devil for the last 20- plus years, so she was a hard sell,” said Aaron Stearns, the Democratic chair in Warren County in northwestern Pennsylvania. “It’s just a lot easier with Joe Biden because he’s a guy and he’s an old white guy. ”
Liberal Democrats, too, are showing more willingness to set aside their ideological differences, following the lead of Bernie Sanders, who quickly backed Biden after ending his primary bid. Bidenleads Trump, 49 per cent to 19 per cent, among likely voters who backed thirdparty candidates in 2016, according to recent polling of battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College.
“In the last election, I didn’t see things as being as dire as I do in this election, and I didn’t think that Donald Trump could win,” said Nikki Baker, 66, a Minneapolis waitress who voted for Stein in 2016.