What is Biden’s Michigan goal? Here’s what he told me
stayed red. So to secure a win in Michigan come November, he’ll need to take Clinton’s advice and make “a few more trips to Saginaw.”
His first stop was at the home of Saginaw school board member Kevin Rooker and Bill Ostash, who in 2018 became the city’s first out gay councilman. U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee was also among the estimated group of 50 supporters, volunteers and community leaders in attendance.
The second was at Pleasant View Golf Course. I was the only journalist allowed to be there for a conversation Biden had with Hurley Coleman III and his 13year-old son, Hurley Coleman IV. The family comes from a long line of preachers. A politician rolling through a Black church come campaign season is a familiar scene. However, Biden and the Colemans sitting in the clubhouse family, Biden mentioned his long history of fighting racial injustice. Afterward I asked the president what was it like hearing media reports regarding the idea of fading Black support. He said it was “kind of fascinating” given his record, adding that the Black community, he said, “is the reason I got elected the first time in 1972 as a senator — I got over 85% of the African American vote.”
“As that old expression goes,” the president continued, “the Black community brought me to the dance … and so it’s always been where my interest, my heart has been. And if you notice, I have more African Americans in my Cabinet than anybody ever has. I’ve appointed more [Black] circuit court judges than every other president in American history. I appointed the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, the first Black woman as vice president.”
There are some Black voters who are disappointed with Congress not passing comprehensive criminal justice reform or voting rights protections, or who don’t feel like they’re sharing in the gains of the soaring stock market under this administration. Biden’s hope is that intimate conversations will help him make his case to disaffected voters — a strong enough case to inspire turnout.
“As a young, African American male who’s working-class, faith from my life has been a major component,” the elder Coleman told me after his talk with Biden. “I’ve seen it operate in my grandparents’ life, in my father’s life, and now we’re putting it in my son’s life. So to know that our leader of the free world, our president, believes in faith and his core belief is embedded with faith, the decisions that he makes, the responsibility of delegating and leading this entire country, he’s leaning and depending on God and his faith to make the decisions that’s needed — and I think that if our president has a core belief in faith, then that faith is going to take this country where it needs to go.”