The NPR Politics Podcast - Here's How The Candidates Are Making Their Case To Black Voters

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Joe Biden's campaign is hoping local validators can make his candidacy persuasive in Black communities. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has employed demotivational messages, asserting that Joe Biden has a poor track-record on the issues that matter to black voters.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Juana Summers, and White House reporter Asma Khalid.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Kim Driscoll, the 50th mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, and the first woman to ever hold the office. All of us here in the Witch City hope you'll have a safe and spooky Halloween. This podcast was recorded at 1125 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, October 29th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. I feel like that timestamp, guys, was made for me because in an other universe, I could have sworn I've actually interviewed Mayor Kim Driscoll when I was a reporter in Boston. And Salem is like the go-to place at Halloween. If you guys have never been there, it's actually an amazing place to go to for Halloween. Yes. She said, I haven't been there, but which city? I think it's now. And it's amazing that she's the first woman to be mayor, which but makes sense because they were getting rid of all those women back in the day,

but it took a long time to recover. Getting rid of all those. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. So today, as the campaign winds down, I wanted us to take a deep dive into how both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are trying to reach Black voters. You know, I'd make the case that perhaps the best explanation for why Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee today is because he had the overwhelming support of Black voters during the Democratic primary. On the other side, President Trump, despite the fact that he has this habit of insulting and

attacking Black women, he boasts that he has done more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln. And to be clear, you know, nobody thinks President Trump is going to win the black vote. Not even Trump supporters would say that. But there are a couple of big questions. You know, can Trump chip away and win more black voters than Republicans normally do? And can Joe Biden turn out more black voters than Hillary Clinton did? So, Juana, let's begin with Democrats. How would you describe what their outreach has looked like, what it's felt like this cycle? Yeah, so Asma, I mean, as you know, from covering the Biden campaign, if you talk to any Democratic strategist, Democratic activist, they will talk about over and over again

the importance of the Black vote. You'll often hear them reference Black women in particular as the backbone of the Democratic Party, both in terms of their votes and in terms of the work that they do for the party. But something interesting that we've talked about a lot this cycle is how Democrats are reaching out to Black men in particular this cycle. Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign has been spending a lot of time thinking about this. And one of the things that they've been doing is employing local validators in these black communities across the country. So I'm talking about your barber, your pastor, your city councilman, your imam, any of the community leaders who they can get to implore black men to turn out to vote, to vote for Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot, and to make the case

to them, as one organizer explained it to me, that there is power in voting, that there's agency in voting, and that voting is the central thing that connects the dots between all of the things that these Black men are concerned about in their communities and making a change. And that seems like a good idea from the experts that I've talked to about, you know, voting and the way black people vote or why black people are more likely to vote Democrat, because so much of it is it's a social thing. It's it is, you know, talking to Cheryl Laird, who is someone who has co-written a book on Black politics and why people, you know, Black political behavior. And, you know, what she talks about is how there is a, an innate kind of social pressure that keeps Black people voting for

Democrats. Not, it's, this is not, you know, when people talk about, you know, black people all think the same, it's not that, but it's this idea that there are certain interests of the community and that to keep that in line, people have a pressure to vote for Democrats because that's the best thing for the community or that's what the community has decided. And so you don't want to stand out from your neighbor,

your friends, your mama, your grandma. You don't want to stand out from them because you're trying to be in line with your community, which is natural. But do you feel like this strategy, right? The first step is like recognizing that you need to do this. And then the second question is like, is it working? And Juana, do you feel like Joe Biden as a candidate is speaking to those folks who might have been disillusioned from four years ago? And I ask that in part because I was out in Philly with Barack Obama at this roundtable focused on African-American men the other week.

And I felt like almost every question from one of these community leaders was about how they convince the young people in their community that voting is worth it. Yeah, Asma, so I think that's an open question. I'm thinking back to a conversation I had a few weeks back with the head of the Black Male Voter Project, and he made the point that one of the issues he sees, not just with Joe Biden's campaign and fellow Democrats, but with Republicans who are also trying to reach out to black men, is the fact that these are often one and done conversations that they're not built as habitual. They're not starting from a place of openness of hearing these men and the issues that

are of import to them. There's often he points out an assumption that if you're a black man, the entry point is criminal justice. When while that's an issue that many black men certainly do care about black men certainly do care about, black men are fathers, they're small business owners, they're students, they're community leaders, they care about the whole bevy of issues that all of us care about. So I do think some folks are still concerned that despite this very robust effect by Democrats by the Biden campaign, that there's still not enough of a robust effort being made to meet these men where they're at and not just to talk at them, but to hear what they have to say. So, Aisha, on the other side, you know, how would you describe President Trump's message, his outreach to black voters?

Well, the message from President Trump has been negative, right? Like negative in the sense of making a negative case against Joe Biden. And so it's less about him, even though he talks a lot about how he's the greatest for black people since Abraham Lincoln. That message is probably not really directed at black people. Right. Like that's that's more of a message to push back against the idea that he is racist. But the message that he made, like when he unveiled his plan for black voters for the second term, he talked, most of the speech or much of the speech was about Joe Biden and how Joe Biden has, you know, is responsible for basically, you know, all the ills of that black people face. I mean, he name-checked Joe Biden in that speech more than 20 times. I mean, he said that Joe Biden should be asking for forgiveness

from the black community. And so really the case that Trump has made is, whatever you do, don't vote for Biden. If you want to vote for Trump, that's okay. But whatever you do, don't vote for Biden. And that's because black people overwhelmingly, if they come out, they're going to vote for Democrats. And so you lose less voters because less are likely to vote for Republicans. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk through some more of our reporting.

U.S. born Latinos are turning 18 in record numbers. We finally have power. We have the most voters under the age of 30 of any other racial and ethnic group. First time Latinx voters have their say. Listen to the Code Switch podcast on NPR. And we're back. And, you know, to both of you, one of the data points it feels like that is worth highlighting is that there is this gender gap when you look at how Black voters feel about President Trump as well as Joe Biden. And, you know, Black men are still, it seems quite unlikely

to support the president, but they seem more likely to support him than Black women. And I'm curious what you all make of that. It's kind of actually a two-prong gender gap. So I've been looking at data from the Democracy Fund's voter survey, and this kind of mirrors what we saw four years ago. Their survey found that 93% of Black women said they supported Joe Biden compared to 5% for Trump. But when you look at Black men, Biden does have a slimmer lead, where we see that 85% of Black men favor Biden versus 12% who favor Trump. And the other thing about that that I want to flag that's important

is that surveys show this gap between Black men and Black women in terms of who they're supporting. There is also this turnout gender gap. If you look back at the Pew Research Center's data from 2016, 64% of Black women said that they voted in 2016 elections. And that's compared to 54% of eligible Black men. That's a bigger gap than for their whiter Hispanic counterparts. So the gap is in who Black men and Black women support, but it's also in who shows up during the election season. And this gets into kind of, you know, something that we've heard a lot in the last few weeks or so, you know, the Trump campaign has highlighted like a lot of former athletes, like Hershel Walker, they've highlighted him um you know jim brown uh to you know clearly trying

to make a play for black men but they've also in the past few weeks started talking about these rappers who you might have heard of 50 cent uh in the club um 50 cent uh i know i'm aging myself uh ice cube uh we have to tell us what did 50 cent say though 50 cent said he was he tweeted about or was on social media and he was raising concerns about biden raising taxes on people who make a lot of money um and so he was like well if that's the case well i can't i'm gonna have to get with trump and so basically but he said it in a 50 cent way um apparently he has you know walked that back uh his maybe his ex-girlfriend chelsea handler reached out to him and he walked it back but 50 cent is an example of a black male voter who is concerned more concerned about his individual interests and less concerned about

the group right so you know talking to experts that I talked to, what they said was I talked to Cheryl Laird, who I mentioned earlier, who has studied these issues. What she said was he is the individualist. So he's focused on his monetary gains, what he can get. And he doesn't care what other black people think about it. And he basically said that. And that is the type of voter who Trump can really appeal to. So, Aisha, I know that this is something that Ice Cube has also been talking about. What has he been saying? Ice Cube kind of takes a different

position from, you know, from 50 Cent and represents a different type of voter. He is talking about the group. So he, Ice Cube has this plan for black America to help black Americans. And so the Trump campaign was willing to work with them with him on that plan. His perspective is he's willing to work with whoever is willing to help black people. The interesting thing about Cube is that he has not said he would vote for Trump or Biden. So even though he worked with Trump on this plan, he still hasn't committed to voting for him. Okay. So the other sub-demographic I want to ask you all about are young voters. Ayesha, I know in your reporting, you found that younger Black voters seemed to be slightly more open to President Trump. But Juana, I know you've also been looking into this demographic. So what do you make of all of that? Yeah, so one thing that we've seen fairly consistently through polling from early on in the campaign is that younger Black voters and

broadly younger voters of color have expressed more skepticism and uncertainty about former Vice President Biden and his campaign than their white counterparts. Harvard University has a poll that they put out somewhat regularly, their youth poll that took a look about this. And it found that broadly, across the board, Joe Biden, Joe Biden's favorability is gaining among this group of vote among this group of voters, youth voters broadly, and that includes black and Hispanic voters. But the thing about young voters is that sometimes the concern is they don't turn out. But, Juana, you see that that in this election, that may not be the case. Yeah, that's right. All of the experts that I talk to who study youth voter behavior say there are a number of indicators that point to a record breaking year for young voters, folks under the age of 30. And I just want to talk about one, and that is the early voting figures.

Right now, in a day-to-day analysis from the firm TargetSmart, which is a Democratic firm, we see that more than 6.8 million people under the age of 30 have voted early or by mail in the election. And that's more than two and a half times what their voting levels looked like at this point four years ago. It's been a big trend in states like Texas, where people under 30 have cast more than 800,000 ballots already. So they see that as a positive sign because we also know from past electoral behavior that young folks tend to vote later in the game, and they also tend to prefer to vote on election day. So the thinking there is if the numbers are this robust in the early vote, it could be much like 2018, a record breaking night as we look at the

returns that come in on election night and the days to come. All right, well, we are going to leave it there for now. You can always find ways to stay connected with us by following the links in the description of this episode. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Aisha Ros Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And a special thanks to our funder, The Little Market, for helping to support this podcast.