Black voters want Biden to deliver as president
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. » Joe Biden went to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina in late February, before the state’s presidential primary, and listened as the Rev. Isaac J. Holt Jr. delivered a message of encouragement.
“You’re going to win,” Holt said he told Biden privately, a political prophecy that was fulfilled in the coming days.
Now Holt, the pastor of one of Charleston’s largest Black congregations, has another message for Biden as he plans for his incoming administration: “Biden owes us. And we have not forgotten.”
Black voters have a political marriage of convenience with the Democratic Party. They are at once the party’s most solid voting demographic and deeply frustrated by the lack of systemic change its politicians have delivered for them.
In South Carolina, the state that helped propel Biden to the Democratic nomination and where about half the Democratic electorate is Black, voters complain of receiving campaign promises from politicians while they are running but not being prioritized once they are elected.
There are similar grievances among voters in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — hubs of generalelection campaigning in key swing states — who have grown used to the silence that follows presidential election years.
In their telling, attention quickly shifts to midterm races in gerrymandered, Republican-leaning congressional districts, and the Black voters who helped Democrats ascend to the White House are sometimes discarded. Their issues are too divisive. Their needs are too great.
Biden has insisted that this time will be different, and people like Holt are taking him at his word. Last month, in his victory speech after becoming presidentelect, Biden cited Black voters specifically, alluding to those who rallied around him in South Carolina after his primary campaign flopped in other early-voting states.
“Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me,” Biden said. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”
Defining priorities
But who defines political priorities for Black voters, and what does it mean to have their back?
Leading Black politicians, civil rights leaders, activists and many of the same South Carolina church leaders Biden leaned on to turn his campaign around all said in interviews that it was important to address the coronavirus pandemic. But they also raised issues that ran the gamut of liberal policy initiatives, from investing in small businesses and historically Black colleges and universities to tackling student debt and climate change.
Many also pushed back against the singular focus on racial representation that has dominated debates over Biden’s transition team and Cabinet picks. Having a Cabinet that reflects the racial diversity of America is good, they said. But they added that Biden’s legacy on race would be judged on his willingness to pursue policy changes that address systemic racism — a standard he has set for himself.
“What he’s got to do, in my opinion, is to depart from the tradition,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, a powerful South Carolina Democrat who is the highest-ranking Black member of the House. “What is getting us in trouble in the past is when people get into office, they abandon the platform they ran on” in favor of appeasing Republicans, he said.
Poverty
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co- chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, cited a commitment Biden had made during a public forum to prioritize eliminating poverty and addressing the concerns of poor people.
Live up to that, he said, and a cross-racial section of marginalized Americans, including Black people, will have their lives transformed.
“We certainly want to see a Cabinet that looks like America. But more important, we want to see a Cabinet that works for America,” Barber said. “And not just the middle class. And not just the so-called working class. But from the bottom up.”
In effect, they are asking President Biden to take a cue from candidate Biden. During the primary and general election, and under pressure from activists who cast Biden as an artifact of the political past, his team embraced a plan for Black Americans called “Lift Every Voice,” which would seek to close the Black-white income gap, expand educational opportunities, invest $70 billion in historically black colleges and universities, and reimagine the criminal justice system and policing.
Biden’s selection of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, was — with the campaign’s encouragement — taken as a symbolic affirmation of these commitments. Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, had to assure white America he would be a president for all races. But Biden repeatedly asserted that Black communities would get special attention in his administration.
Black political leaders believe that the biggest barrier to Biden’s commitment to address systemic racism is his own instinct for compromise, bipartisanship and deference to the idea of Washington civility. Biden has consistently restated his belief that congressional Republicans will work with his administration in due time, though some of them continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory, and President Donald Trump shows no signs of loosening his grip on the party’s base.
Executive orders
Leaders are asking him to consider unilateral action like executive orders to enact his agenda, claiming that Washington horse-trading has rarely prioritized the needs of Black communities. Biden has been steadfast: Republicans will come around.
“We will see if he’s right, and we’ll see very shortly,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who has met with the Biden transition team. “If he’s not, we’ll also see it very shortly. It’s perfectly fine to be hopeful. But certainly you should be fully prepared to pivot and to be effective.”
Even vocal allies of Biden say his ability to rise to the standards he set for himself, particularly when it comes to racial equity and a Black agenda, may rely on his willingness to see Republicans as obstructionists to be overcome, not negotiators to be met at a midpoint.