Are Black voters — particularly working-class men — really contemplating voting for Donald Trump? What is happening in 2024 that the polls and pundits are missing?
Black voters are sick and tired of being ignored by the Republicans and taken for granted by the Democrats and are looking for ways, however imperfect, to express that frustration.
In 2020, Joe Biden received 92% of the Black vote, but he was polling at 77% in May, according to the Pew Research Center. With the looming threat of a second Trump presidency, Democrats are desperately hoping that most of this group “returns home” to vote for Biden in November.
Perhaps this will occur. But the Democrats are severely underestimating the anger that is being expressed by the people who have been their most loyal voters and who feel locked out, left behind and abandoned.
I’m a working-class Black man who has built a successful career in youth development and community organizing. But I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I am an independent activist and community leader in Chicago who organizes based on my love for poor and working-class people, the vast majority of whom are struggling to survive in the richest nation on earth.
Unlike the “expert” TV pundits, I speak with ordinary people every day — the people changing bedpans in our hospitals, stocking shelves and ringing up our groceries in our supermarkets, packing and delivering our boxes and driving us in their ride-hail vehicles. Many of them are working 70 to 80 hours a week to survive. Many of them are part of the erosion of Black, Latino and young voters who propelled Joe Biden to the presidency four years ago.
Sixty-five percent of people in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck, and nearly 40% are unable to pay an emergency $400 bill. Beyond these abysmal statistics are hardworking Americans who live every day with the fear of becoming homeless or the frightening inability to pay for lifesaving medications — or both.
Coronations instead of conversations
It’s not just those living paycheck to paycheck who are frustrated by our politics. The entire country is feeling the stress of our political leaders’ inability to make our streets safe from violent crime, find answers to the border crisis, talk honestly about inflation and our spiraling debt or articulate a coherent foreign policy.
This is where the American people deserve to have robust presidential campaigns where various candidates put forth their ideas and vision for America — and American voters decide who will be the best person to lead our nation. Instead, we had coronations instead of conversations. Both parties worked overtime to stop the presidential primary process before it even began.
At exactly the time we need more debate, more competition and more ideas about how we can develop solutions and move forward as a nation, the Democratic Party’s message to Black voters in 2024 is that you have to vote for Biden. With so many working-class people fighting to survive, many Black voters deeply resent being told that we have to do anything.
Stop blaming Black voters for our lack of enthusiasm for this year’s candidates. When a candidate inspires us, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, we enthusiastically go to the polls in huge numbers to vote.
Younger voters, in particular, see very little to inspire them in electoral politics in 2024. This is why they are leading the exodus from the two-party system and into the independent movement. They have had enough of being taken for granted and locked out of opportunities to achieve the American dream.
So, will Black voters help elect Trump? Black voters trying to prevent Trump from returning to the White House will vote for Biden. But working-class frustration and anger will convince many to stay home or lead to Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and even Trump getting more Black votes than most people expect.
The days of Black voters automatically voting Democratic are over. And this growing independence offers new possibilities to create new coalitions which can create new solutions — for Black people and our entire country.
David Cherry is president of the Leaders Network, an organization of faith and community leaders from the West Side, and founder of the All Stars Project of Chicago, a youth development organization. He also is a senior national organizer for Open Primaries, a national advocacy organization working to enact and protect open and nonpartisan primaries.
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