Is Biden in trouble with men of color?

How race and identity are shaping politics, policy and power.

Aug 15, 2023 View in browser   By Brakkton Booker With help from Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala, Jesse Naranjo and Teresa Wiltz President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan at the Flex LTD manufacturing plant July 6, 2023, in West Columbia, S.C. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by Getty Images What up, Recast family! Ex-President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies are hit with racketeering charges in Georgia and the death toll climbs from the Maui wildfires. First, though, we focus on the Democratic Party’s current struggle.  There are troubling signs for President Joe Biden and the Democrats as the 2024 presidential and federal campaign cycle accelerates, particularly when it comes to men of color. “Discouraged,” “pathetic” and “pessimistic” were some of the words offered by a focus group of men — all of whom voted for Biden in 2020 — when asked to fill in the blank for the sentence: “I feel ___ about how things are going in the country.” “Not a lot of good words on this list,” said Terrance Woodbury, the chief executive officer and founding partner of HIT Strategies, a liberal-leaning public polling firm that facilitated the group. Woodbury’s organization specializes in reaching marginalized voters — who were key to Democrats sweeping both the presidency and both chambers of Congress following the 2020 election. This group of disillusioned Biden voters, surveyed during a two-hour session conducted virtually last week, discussed a range of topics, from voting rights, to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, to border security and the legal challenges facing former President Donald Trump. Chief among this group's concerns, though, above anything else, was the economy.   Was The Recast forwarded to you by a friend? Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter here. You'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy.   POLITICO was given exclusive access to sit in on the HIT Tracking Focus Group and agreed to not identify any of the participants by name so they could express themselves freely. Many talked about their frustrations with the economy, despite many positive indicators, including a 3.5 percent unemployment rate in July ticking in a tad higher than 3.4 percent in January. January’s unemployment rate was the lowest it had been in more than a half-century, according to the Commerce Department. But that wasn’t reassuring news for the men in the focus group. “Our economy is the lowest it's been in god knows how long,” said a Hispanic respondent who lives in New Jersey. “We keep [sending] money to Ukraine and other countries rather than helping ourselves. I think those are plenty for me.” Another man said the “mixed messages” about the economy are giving him pause, leaving him less than enthused about the president’s ability to handle things. Biden speaks about the economy at Arcosa Wind Towers factory on Wednesday, Aug. 9 in Belen, N.M. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo “We don't know what's going to happen,” said the respondent, who identifies as Asian American and Pacific Islander. “They're kind of like saying that there possibly is going to be a soft landing, but they're also expecting a recession of some sorts.” At one point the group was asked whether Republicans or Democrats were better at handling the economy, crime and migrants at the border. They gave Democrats a failing grade across the board. On the issue of crime, it was split evenly among those who favored Republicans and those who said neither party handled the issue well. “I don't feel like Democrats really have my back … or Republicans, you know?” said one respondent from Los Angeles, who identifies as Black and Latino. “I think as a president, you only have so much power. I mean, unless you're someone like Trump to where he just — he really didn't care. He did what he wanted to do.” This respondent spoke highly of the Trump-era economy, citing the cryptocurrency boom under the former president. He said he considers himself “middle of the road” politically and talked about why he’s soured on Biden. “People had [such] high hopes for him because he said he's gonna set the bar here … and everything he's done has [fallen] short,” the Los Angeles man continued. “Trump got in there and he changed stuff.” When pressed on Trump’s legal woes and what many see as an embrace of white nationalist sentiments, he added: “It's one of those things … where your beliefs are one thing, but you know, if you’re getting the job done, I can't really hate on that.” Some of the group’s negative sentiments appear to be rooted in the high expectations attached to the Biden presidency, given his more than four decades in public office, including eight as Barack Obama’s vice president. Because of that, many said they’d assumed Biden would deliver on campaign promises sooner — especially because Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress during his first two years in the White House. The pessimistic view of Biden’s performance does not mean that all men in this focus group were ready to break for Republicans in the next election. One of the respondents, a Black man who lives in Cleveland, expressed disdain for Trump and described the Republican Party as rich, elitist and self-serving. “I don't think it makes any difference. … The economy seems to be fried, no matter who's in office,” he said. He also said he was frustrated by Congress’ inability to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, aimed at rooting out racial bias and curbing the use of force by law enforcement. And while the Cleveland man said it’s a given he won’t be voting for Trump — or any other Republican candidate who might win the GOP nomination — at this point he doesn’t know if he’ll be casting his vote for Biden. The president signs an executive order on policing on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death, May 25, 2022, at the White House. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo “I'm definitely not happy with where America was when Trump was president. And I'm not happy with where America is now that Biden's president,” the man said, adding that he remains a registered Democrat. “So I'm hoping there's some other candidate or alternative besides these two.” Woodbury said he was surprised there wasn’t more of an appetite for a third-party candidate, unlike the other sessions he’s conducted. One thing is clear, he said: Biden’s boasting about the success of “Bidenomics” just isn’t hitting home with the voters he needs to energize ahead of the election. “When I hear the president talk, I think he’s saying a lot of the right things,” Woodbury told POLITICO. “When he talks about the Emmitt Till memorial, when he talks about the need to protect Black history, when [he] talks about the impact of Bidenomics — I mean, he’s saying it.” “They’re just not hearing it.” Officials with the Democratic National Committee say they are making intensive efforts to reach voters of color, including the launch of its so-called Campaign Readiness Project which included bootcamps for organizing and coalition building during last year’s midterms. Additionally the chair, Jaime Harrison, has been conducting in-person events, such as this one last week in Mississippi, to tout the Biden-Harris administration’s accomplishments. Cornell Belcher, a veteran Democratic pollster who worked on both the Obama campaigns, said this is not a time for Democrats to panic. Biden, he said, is in a similar position to where Obama was at this time in 2011. A Gallup Poll from August of that year showed Obama in tight contests with leading GOP presidential hopefuls including Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. That same poll showed Mitt Romney, who eventually would secure the GOP nomination in 2012, having a slight advantage over Obama. Those polls didn’t hold, because, he said, Democrats’ narrative of economic success gradually began to resonate with the American electorate. “It is a slow burn,” Belcher said, pointing to how the president is ginning up support as he travels the country, touting the anniversaries of both the PACT Act, which is the largest expansion of veterans benefits in decades, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Another aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked, according to Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, is the number of people of color in high-ranking positions in the party. This includes Harrison, Biden’s campaign chair Julie Chávez Rodriguez and deputy campaign manager Quenton Fulks, all of whom will likely play key roles in creating targeted approaches to wooing men of color. Black and brown men are “still overwhelmingly voting Democrat, but there's definitely been a slippage,” Rocha said. “We’re looking for immediate results and changes for something that's been a long-term problem.” We’ll continue to track this as the campaign kicks into high gear, All the best, The Recast Team   TRUMP, 18 OTHERS INDICTED IN GEORGIA  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks at a news conference Monday in Atlanta. | John Bazemore/AP Photo A grand jury in Georgia has indicted 19 individuals, including Trump, in a sweeping series of racketeering charges tied to the intent of subverting Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in the state. The charges, announced by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis late Monday, is the culmination of a more than two-year probe. She launched her investigation following the leaked audio of a January 2021 phone call in which Trump urged Brad Raffensperger, a Republican serving as Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” the roughly 11,000 votes his campaign needed to tilt the Peach State in his favor. As my POLITICO colleague Kyle Cheney noted Monday, the 98-page indictment “tracks several well-known aspects of Trump’s conduct in the chaotic weeks that followed his defeat…” He added that it was “breathtaking in its scope and is the first to charge the coterie of Trump’s enablers with crimes for their efforts to help facilitate his bid to remain in power.” A total of 41 felony charges were brought against the group of defendants, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, and a group of lawyers who represented Trump at the time, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. Trump is facing 13 counts. While not all of the defendants face the same counts, they are all charged with violating the state’s RICO statute. Jon Elswick/AP Photo “Every individual charged in the indictment is charged with one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act through participation in a criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Ga., and elsewhere,” Willis said during a Monday night press conference, “to accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term of office beginning on Jan. 20, ‘21.” Willis said she planned on trying those named in the indictment together and has given them until Aug. 25 to surrender. She also noted she is seeking a trial date within the next six months. Some of the names in the indictment are not as widely known but certainly add to the intrigue of the case. For instance counts 30 and 31 of the indictment refer to a trio that includes Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison William Prescott Floyd and Trevian C. Kutti, a one-time publicist for R. Kelly and Kanye West, now known as Ye. The charges of “conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings “ and “influencing witnesses” stems from their alleged efforts to influence the testimony of Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman. Freeman has stated she faced death threats after Trump wrongly accused her of manipulating votes in favor of Biden. In this case, Trump’s alleged offenses hinge on his alleged attempt to assemble false slates of presidential electors — and to date they are the most sweeping charges against him. It’s also the one case — should he win the presidency in 2024 — he can’t simply make go away by paying a fine or pardoning himself. As president, Trump could direct his attorney general to shut down the federal prosecutions conducted by special counsel Jack Smith. That presidential power does not reach to the state level, which means that, should he be convicted in the Georgia case, there is a real possibility he may end up serving time in prison.   ICYMI @ POLITICO A Black former employee is alleging she was discriminated against at centrist group No Labels because of her race. | Getty Images No Labels, New Lawsuit — No Labels, the centrist political outfit, is being sued by a former Black employee alleging she was discriminated against because of her race, then faced retaliation for reporting the alleged discrimination. POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman has more. Big Tech and Affirmative Action — Some Republicans are zeroing in on the tech industry’s efforts to hire workers from underrepresented racial groups. Check out this episode from our POLITICO Tech podcast which tackles what some see as the latest GOP battle in its war against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Biden Unveils New College Admission Guidance — POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan breaks down the latest guidance from the Biden administration to help colleges navigate what remains legally viable in admissions to help ensure their campuses recruit and admit diverse students.   THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Nigar Alam explores friendship, generational trauma and the echoes of Partition in “Under the Tamarind Tree,” the author’s standout debut. “All Up In The Biz” investigates what made Biz Markie, aka the Clown Prince of Hip-Hop, so great. Stream it on Showtime. And remember his iconic hit, “Just a Friend,” here. Listening to Olivia Rodrigo is never a “bad idea right?” (See if you catch all the pop culture Easter eggs in the ‘90s-themed MV). In Netflix’s Taiwanese thriller “Eye of the Storm,” a hospital goes into lockdown in the wake of a deadly virus outbreak. Sounds all too familiar… In honor of hip-hop’s 50th birthday, Rolling Stone ranks 150 of the genre’s best videos. Iyanya finds love in a grocery store in the sweet music video for “Plans.” TikTok of the Day: Clever paws https://www.tiktok.com/@sapphie_the_pomsky/video/7265512442724207918?_r=1&_t=8ekUK0NenoG   Follow us on Twitter Brakkton Booker @brakktonbooker Rishika Dugyala @rishikadugyala Teresa Wiltz @teresawiltz Jesse Naranjo @jesselnaranjo   Follow us

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