Summary:
Democrats are becoming increasingly concerned about a possible drop in Black voter turnout for the 2024 presidential election, according to party insiders. The worries arise from a 10% decrease in Black voter turnout in the 2022 midterms compared to 2018, a more substantial decline than any other racial or ethnic group, as per a Washington Post analysis. The decline was particularly significant among younger and male Black voters in crucial states like Georgia, where Democrats aim to mobilize Black voter support for President Biden in 2024.
The Democratic party has acknowledged the need to bolster their outreach efforts to this demographic. W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, highlighted the need for Democrats to refocus their attention on Black male voters, who have shown lower levels of engagement. In response, Biden’s team has pledged to communicate more effectively about the benefits that the Black community has reaped under Biden’s administration, according to Cedric L. Richmond, a senior advisor at the Democratic National Committee.
However, Black voter advocates have identified deep-seated issues affecting Black voter turnout. Many Black men reportedly feel detached from the political process and uninspired by both parties’ policies. Terrance Woodbury, CEO of HIT Strategies, a polling firm, suggests that the Democratic party’s focus on countering Trump and Republican extremism doesn’t motivate younger Black men as much as arguments focused on policy benefits. Concerns are growing within the party that if they fail to address these issues, disenchanted Black voters might either abstain or, potentially, be swayed by Republican messaging on certain key issues.
I mean… there was the whole superdelegate thing
Yeah, the primary field essentially went up like flash paper over the course of a week or two, IIRC, with everyone committing to give their delegates to Biden, who wasn’t who their voters had voted for.
Superdelegates have never decided a democratic primary.
At the end of the day the delegates are fully aware that if they take the nomination away from the candidate that won the most votes that it would utterly destroy the party and they would be surrendering that year’s election up and down the ballot. Even in an extreme scenario like e.g. credible accusations of sexual assault coming out, they’d still be reticent to do it and would basically be stuck picking how to lose the election.
And before anyone says it: superdelegate pledges do not sway primary voters in any meaningful numbers. I’d wager >90% of democratic primary voters don’t know what the fuck a superdelegate is, and likely only have superficial understanding of the overall process by which a nominee is selected. They’re not going to know the superdelegate pledge counts or any of that bullshit. The people that follow politics enough to know that stuff are also overwhelmingly the people that care enough about politics that they’re still going to vote for the same person, even if they do not outright know it’s bullshit. The audience of voters that could be swayed by those pledges is so vanishingly small as to be borderline imaginary.
Superdelegates have only mattered to give losing candidates a justification they can offer to their supporters to keep running. Clinton tried it in 2008 and Sanders tried it in 2016. Amusingly this makes both of them a bit hypocritical on the subject…
The 2020 primary came down to the not-Sanders wing of the party starting off heavily divided and then consolidating on a single candidate after enough of them were winnowed out by the early states. Biden only survived that long because he ran a frugal campaign and had a strategy on SC that he was going to stick to. Honestly, going in I thought it was a horrible strategy with no chance of success. I was clearly quite wrong.