A dozen years after Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy led Democrats to dream of a post-racial America, toxic issues involving segregationists and a shooting by police are casting a shadow over the 2020 campaign.
Going into the first Democratic primary debates in Miami, issues of race loom over several first-tier candidates, each of whom is trying to court black voters ahead of the early nominating contests. The issues span the generations of Democratic candidates, from Pete Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to Joe Biden, 76, the former vice president.
Buttigieg will take the debate stage after grappling with racial tensions and unrest in his city sparked by police shooting a 52-year-old black man this month. “You running for president and you expect black people to vote for you?” one protester in South Bend told Buttigieg last Friday.
The shooting underscores Buttigieg’s challenge in appealing to black voters. A poll of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina found Buttigieg with 6% support among black voters in June, up from 0% in May.
Biden leads in polls among black voters. The former vice president had 52% support from black voters in the June South Carolina poll, and a Black Economic Alliance survey released earlier this month found that 43% of black Democrats nationwide said they were enthusiastic about Biden’s candidacy.
There was fierce criticism last week, however, from his primary competitors after he touted his friendships with segregationist James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, conservative Democrats who were Biden’s Senate colleagues in the 1970s.
“[Eastland] never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son,’” Biden said at a fundraiser, according to a pool report. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done.”
Senators Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey – the two black candidates in the Democratic field of 24 – condemned Biden for the comments.
Booker, 50, condemned Biden for making light of calling black men boys. “Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone,” he said.
“To coddle the reputations of segregationists, of people who, if they had their way, I would literally not be standing here as a member of the United States Senate is … misinformed and it’s wrong,” Harris, 54, said.
The attacks may not harm Biden’s strength with black voters, however. South Carolina-based Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said that most black voters that he knows had not heard about Biden’s comments about segregationists.
“People in the Beltway, or coastal elites, are not in touch with some of the on-the-ground realities,” Seawright told the Washington Examiner. “When you look at South Carolina, and I use myself as an example, as a young, black Democrat in a state that’s mostly Republican, we have to work with people” on the other side, he explained, an attitude that could make voters sympathetic to Biden’s core point about working with ideological opponents.
It remains to be seen whether the “Beltway” or “coastal elites” criticism will stick to Booker and Harris, who are a quarter-century or more younger than Biden.
More damaging to Biden than his friendships with segregationists could be his opposition to busing – in which those segregationists were allies – to forcibly end school segregation, and his work on crime bills, which affected black Americans disproportionately. In 1975, Biden even spoke in favor of segregation, saying it was a matter of “black pride.”
Biden’s support among blacks is closely connected to his eight years in the White House with President Barack Obama. In South Carolina last weekend, Biden once again invoked Obama when he hyperbolically called Rep. James Clyburn, the Majority Whip and number three Democrat in the House of Representatives “the highest ranking African American in the history of the United States of America, other than the guy I worked with for eight years.
Buttigieg could have a harder time than Biden recovering from racial tensions, Seawright said: “Joe Biden was speaking to his past. What Pete has to answer for is current. He has to handle this with delicacy.”
Both Booker and Harris are vying for support with black voters, but polls show that they lag behind Biden and, depending on the poll, white Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70. She came in second behind Biden in support from black Democratic primary voters in the June South Carolina poll, garnering 14% support, while Harris got 11% and Booker 3%.
Warren has crept up in the polls while releasing progressive policy proposals that directly address race issues, such as federal grants for black and minority entrepreneurs and a housing plan that aims to close the racial wealth gap.
Bernie Sanders, at 77 the oldest Democratic candidate, struggled to secure black support during his 2016 primary battle with Hillary Clinton, winning just 14%.
Though some candidates may be tempted to try to bring down Biden during the debates, Seawright advised against it. “People want to hear what you’re for, what you’re going to do, not hear how you’re going to take the opportunity to beat down another candidate,” he said.
