Detroit’s Black Voters Have Mixed Feelings About Joe Biden

DETROIT ― Kermit Williams is a political organizer with the Oakland Forward Action Fund, a grassroots organization that focuses on the Black community in some of Detroit’s northern suburbs. Following Joe Biden’s dismal performance in last month’s presidential debate, Williams said he felt pretty rattled — until he spoke to his mother.

“She put it in really good perspective for me,” Williams told HuffPost on Wednesday. “She said Joe Biden has never been the most phenomenal speaker, but he’s got phenomenal morals.”

This is the sort of sentiment that Biden is counting on to save his embattled presidential candidacy. With an increasingly loud chorus of pundits, activists and elected Democrats calling on Biden to step aside, the president has repeatedly cited his popularity with the party’s core voting groups. At the top of the list are Black voters, who have played the role of political savior before.

Back in the 1990s, Black voters and their representatives in Congress rallied behind Bill Clinton when other party leaders were ready to cut him loose after the revelations about his sexual relationship with a White House intern. Much more recently, Black voters gave Biden a critical boost when he was nearly vanquished in the 2020 Democratic primaries ― and then, in the general election, when Biden nearly lost his lead against then-President Donald Trump.

On Friday, Biden is set to hold a rally at a Detroit high school. It’s a chance to get media coverage in Michigan, the fourth swing state he’ll have visited since June’s debate debacle. It’s also a chance to showcase Biden’s support in what was historically and may still be the nation’s largest majority-Black city.

But support for Biden isn’t the same as a conviction that he should keep running. National polls have found Black voters to be divided on that question, just like other Democratic voters are. The surveys include a YouGov/Economist poll out Wednesday in which a 49% plurality of Black voters said they favored Biden making way for another candidate.

And at least among such voters in Detroit, local organizers and activists told HuffPost this week, those numbers reflect mixed, conflicted feelings — about the limits of Biden’s abilities, the perils of a late switch, and even the implications of Vice President Kamala Harris taking his place at the top of the ticket.

Biden didn’t always have great standing in the Black community, though it’s easy to forget now. For years there were bad feelings over the way Biden as Senate Judiciary Committee chair handled the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas and accusations by Thomas’ former employee Anita Hill that he’d made sexually inappropriate comments.

But that changed in 2008 when Biden signed on to become Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate, according to the Rev. Charles Williams II, a pastor at the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church. During a conversation about local politics at a downtown diner Thursday afternoon, the reverend, who also chairs Michigan’s chapter for the National Action Network civil rights group, said many voters he knew thought the Obama nod said a lot about Biden’s values — and his willingness to take action, rather than just make promises, when it comes to standing up for the Black community.

“He sealed the deal when he gave Obama legitimacy with white voters,” said the reverend. “And then he showed himself again when he picked Kamala Harris to be his own vice president.”

Since then, Biden’s performance as president appears to have made an impression of its own. Jonathan Kinloch, a county commissioner whose history in local and state politics goes all the way back to his high school days in the 1980s, marvels at the construction that is (finally) spreading prosperity into Black-owned businesses and heavily Black neighborhoods.

Speaking in the shadow of a newly rising downtown skyscraper Thursday, Kinloch said a big part of that economic revival is money from Biden’s pandemic relief, infrastructure and green energy legislation. And while lots of Detroit voters don’t make the connection, Kinloch acknowledged, almost all know about Biden’s history of overcoming personal tragedy — and defying doubters.

“This man’s life has been nothing like a bed of roses,” Kinloch said. “His whole life has been people telling him he can’t.”

But even the affection for Biden has some complicating layers when it comes to how Detroit’s Black voters think about his future in presidential politics.

“I think these voters like Joe Biden — actually, they love Joe Biden,” Norman Clement, the founder of the Detroit Change Initiative, a voter engagement nonprofit, said in a phone interview Wednesday. But following Biden’s debate performance, Clement said, he and his colleagues heard from voters concerned about the president’s well-being.

“They don’t want to see him in a state where that stressful job is taking such a toll on him that he’s no longer the same person,” Clement said. “And they want him to leave with some dignity and respect.”

Of course, he and other organizers made clear, voters are more worried about the country — and whether Biden still has what it takes to stop Trump, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. It’s not so much that Black voters doubt Biden’s ability to serve as president, the organizers stressed. It’s that they doubt Biden’s ability to assuage voters who have less faith.

“People are open-minded; they just know we have to win,” Clement said.

Williams, the pastor, said he’s hearing similar sentiments: “They’re not married to Biden. He is still a means to an end.”

And whatever warm feelings Black voters have toward the president, there have been signs for a while that they are not as energized about his candidacy as they were in 2020. At 77%, the percentage of Black voters leaning Biden in a spring poll from Pew Research Center was significantly lower than the roughly 90% support he got in the 2020 election, or that Hillary Clinton got in 2016.

Even if Biden can bring those numbers back up, turnout could be an issue, especially among younger Black voters for whom the Civil Rights revolution — and the decades of Democratic Party support that followed — are something they know mainly from history books.

“The issue with the people that I talk to is not Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, or the Democratic candidate versus Donald Trump,” Kermit Williams said. “It’s Joe Biden versus the couch, right? There’s an enthusiasm gap that you have to make up before November, especially in Michigan, when you have the issues with Gaza and other things, and then you just have overall voter apathy.”

All of that would seem to make the choice about dumping Biden easy, or at least not that difficult, for Black voters — especially given that Harris would become the first Black woman to serve as president if she got the nomination and won. There’s little doubt, the organizers said, that Harris would generate a lot of excitement.

But they said they were already sensing wariness too, especially when it comes to the mechanics and repercussions of a switch at the Democratic National Convention.

“I think it’s hard for people to shift gears, to go from voting for somebody that they voted for in the past as an incumbent to voting for somebody new,” Kermit Williams said, adding that some voters he and his colleagues have contacted seem confused about what’s happening. “What I’m hearing is that a lot of people don’t know what the convention is. They don’t know what an open convention will be.”

Kinloch, who has worked on previous political campaigns, warned that it’s easy to underestimate just how disruptive a change could be. “I think a lot of people will be like: ‘What the hell is this? We’ve been told to back Joe Biden, and now it’s somebody else?’” he said.

The election is only four months away, Kinloch noted. “It’s almost impossible to run for president when you don’t have a year’s start,” he said.

And for all of the interest that a potential Harris presidential candidacy is already stirring, the organizers said, it’s also stoking anxiety over a possible backlash. “The fear is that ― and I heard this in outreach we did this morning ― is that white voters won’t support her,” Clement said.

Another issue for Harris could be one that plagued her run in the 2020 presidential primaries: her experience as a prosecutor in California. “It’s been a real challenge for some people,” said Williams, the reverend. “They look at her and think she was a prosecutor who was putting Black men in jail. I’ve heard from people who are not that happy with her.”

He added that the Black community has the same sorts of gender and class divides as any other group, and that some voters — especially young Black men, who polls suggest are least attached to the Democratic Party — might not embrace Harris as much as others.

The pastor was careful to say he could see Harris winning over these voters, or most of them, especially if she promotes concrete initiatives that would affect their lives. “More than just spicy hot sauce in her bag,” he said, “she needs to have some vigorous policy.” He also said it would help to get Harris out from behind a podium, whether through social media visits with influencers or direct personal contact with voters.

“The best thing that Harris can do is really reach, grab, hug, talk to people ― make a personal connection,” he said. “I’ve gotten to meet her, to feel that warmth. It’s the real deal.”

The organizers made clear that the Detroit voters they’ve met feel genuinely conflicted and uncertain about the best way forward ― and that they understand why.

“I don’t believe that President Biden is where he was eight years ago or four years ago,” Kermit Williams said. “But I do believe that as a person he’s able to set the vision for the country, he’s capable and has great staff around him. So I think that nationally, they’re trying to paint this narrative of Super Joe, and I just really need him to be Average Joe.”

Whatever the concerns about Biden’s abilities and whatever the anxieties about switching to Harris or some other nominee, it’s all taking place against the backdrop of an election with high stakes for Black Americans. And voters in Detroit are increasingly aware of this, the organizers said.

One reason for that is the publicity around Project 2025, the proposed governing agenda from the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The plan calls for everything from restricting abortion drugs to slashing federal funding for early childhood education and health insurance. The agenda also envisions a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a rollback of voting rights.

Organizers said they started hearing about Project 2025 from voters after actor Taraji P. Henson issued a warning on the proposal while hosting the BET Awards late last month. Since then, voters have been asking questions and researching on their own, they said.

Trump has recently tried to distance himself from the plan, even though it’s the handiwork of current and former aides. It may not make a difference. The Detroit organizers said they’re hearing from voters even more determined to keep Trump out of the White House — no matter which Democrat is on the ballot.

“I think the questions are going on because this election is so monumental, it’s so impactful,” Clement said. “At this point, we can’t have egos involved. People are saying if you are healthy enough, all right, we’ll ride with you 100 percent and go from there. And if you’re not healthy enough? Then that’s an issue.”

This article has been updated to properly identify Kermit Williams’ organization as the Oakland Forward Action Fund.