Biden risks alienating young Black voters after remarks

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s controversial remarks about race this week risk alienating young Black voters who despise President Donald Trump but are not inspired by his Democratic rival.

When pressed by Errol Barnett of CBS News on whether he’d taken a cognitive test, Biden responded that the question was akin to asking the Black reporter if he would take a drug test to see if “you’re taking cocaine or not? … Are you a junkie?”

In a later interview with National Public Radio’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Biden seemed to draw distinctions between Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S. “Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” he told the Latina reporter.

He later walked back the comment.

Black voters as a whole delivered the Democratic nomination to Biden, powering his commanding win in the South Carolina primary, which rescued his floundering campaign. But that success was heavily dependent on older Black voters. In a general election where Democrats say no vote can be taken for granted, young Black activists and elected officials say this week’s missteps could make it harder to get their vote.

“Trump is terrible, and he’s a racist, and we have to get racists out of the White House. But then Biden keeps saying racist things,” said Mariah Parker, a 28-year-old county commissioner in Athens, Georgia. “It doesn’t make me feel much better that we actually will have an improvement for the Black community with one president over the other.”

Most Black voters view Trump as someone who exacerbates racial tensions and are unlikely to support his campaign in large numbers. But those who sit out the presidential election could sway the outcome in closely contested states.

AP VoteCast data illustrates the generational divide Biden is confronting.

Across 17 states where AP VoteCast surveyed Democratic voters during the primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won 60% of voters under 30 overall, to Biden’s 19%. And while Biden was strongly supported by African American voters overall, Black voters under age 30 were slightly more likely to support Sanders than Biden, 44% to 38%.