This is an opinion column.
President Joe Biden couldn’t be any more blatant in courting Black voters —whom he needs in November — if he tickled a sax while donning shades for a Black late-night talk show audience.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee/defendant, couldn’t be more flippant and contemptuous of Black voters if he were Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. (Abbott recently pardoned a man whom a jury convicted of murdering a 28-year-old Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protestor.)
Last month, Biden’s VP/running mate Kamala Harris grabbed the keys to Air Force Two and embarked on a multi-state “Economic Opportunity Tour” touting the accomplishments during Biden’s four years in office in areas the administration hopes appeal to Black voters: jobs (15 million created, they say), healthcare (capping insulin costs to $35 per month for seniors and those with other disabilities), and access to capital for small business owners.
Meanwhile, Trump, earlier this year said Black people “like me” because they’ve been “hurt so badly and discriminated against.” He insultingly compared his prosecution to the persecution of Black civil rights leaders, adding. “I’m being indicted for you, the Black population.”
No, thanks.
Last week, Biden trumpeted his administration’s record $16 billion in HBCU support. Trump’s claimed he “saved” HBCUs as president; that’s a lie.
Last Sunday, Biden donned all the pomp of the commencement season and successfully navigated the delicate complexities of young Black (potential) voters in a speech to historically Black all-male Morehouse College’s Class of 2024—now “Morehouse Men.”
His trajectory extended from the expected and very real “trail of broken promises that leave Black communities behind” to acknowledging the pro-Palestine sentiments that protested his presence.
“Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them,” he said. “[There is a] humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that’s why I’ve called for an immediate cease-fire to stop the fighting.”
He left to chants of “four more years” (watch speech here) and departed for Detroit. That same night, he pitched more than a thousand bedazzled attendees at a gala hosted by the NAACP’s Detroit chapter, the historic Black organization’s largest branch.
“Because of your vote,” he told them. “It’s the only reason I’m standing here as president of the United States.”
That’s real truth. More than 90% of Black voters checked Biden over Trump. That’s a high bar to maintain and there are indications Trump has made gains among potential Black voters—though not as much as some may have you believe.
Two polls — the 2024 National Black Voter Project and Black Women’s Round Table/Essence poll — showed Trump’s support among likely Black voters at 14% and 15% respectively. That’s well below the sky-is-falling-for-Dems polls being wildly cited, including a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last year in six “battleground” states. It trumpeted that 22 percent of Black voters in those states planned to vote for Trump in 2024—while polling just a few more African Americans than might fit in your living room.
Real truth, still: Biden will need every Black vote he can muster.
His most dangerous opponent in the fall, though, won’t likely be Trump, but another candidate. I call them Complacency.
Thus, Biden should continue to push the shopping cart of accomplishments he hopes will stir Black voters from their homes in November as if he were on Supermarket Sweep.
Yet his single most vital, unchallengeable pitch is in a realm too often ignored by African Americans, even though it unquestionably impacts not just us but America (and will for decades): Federal judgeship appointments.
Federal judges serve for a lifetime and thus shape policies for generations. We are living in Exhibit A: Trump’s staggering three highest-court appointments are unequivocally to blame for a SCOTUS that stripped women of their right to make one of the most wrenching personal choices of their lives and universities of a decades-utilized tool for creating a diverse student body.
Trump also made a tsunami of 237 federal appointments in just one term, many of which were openings left from Sen. Mitch O’Connell’s Republican-led block of appointments that should have been Obama’s. More than eight in 10 (84%) were white, according to an analysis of the presidential federal appointments conducted by the Washington Post. Sixty-five percent of Trump’s appointments were white men.
By unadulterated contrast, Biden, in less than one full term, has already made more non-white federal judge appointments than any president ever 125 of 197 overall. (120 of Obama’s appointments were not white; Trump appointed just 37 non-white federal judges).
Biden’s appointed 57 African Americans, according to the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights, among them 36 Black women.
Thus far, only 13 percent of Biden’s appointments are white men, with the overall majority, for the first time in history, being female.
Dig even deeper: Federal judicial appointees have long traditionally served long tenures as judges, prosecutors or corporate attorneys. The legal journey of many Biden appointees wound through the courtroom as public defenders or civil, voting, or consumer rights attorneys. That was especially true during Biden’s first two years (when blue state vacancies were prioritized). To fill openings in red states, and obtain needed Republican approval, the president later shifted towards appointees with prosecutorial experience.
Though still diverse.
Former U.S. Senator Doug Jones knows the delicate, byzantine nature of federal judicial appointments, which may in part be why voters—Black or otherwise—yawn at talk of judicial appointments and rarely rank them among their top ballot considerations.
“It’s been overlooked by voters for so long,” Jones shared with me. “What [Biden’s] tried to do is to utilize appointments so that the overall judiciary reflects us because it hasn’t for so, so long.
“What he did with the U.S. Supreme Court in appointing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and has done with the Court of Appeals, that’s diversity in views and positions strengthens the judiciary and should strengthen the independence of the judiciary — which I believe is in jeopardy.”
The RSJ version: Another Republican administration, another four years of Republican judicial appointments, will lead to the further erosion of liberties, rights, and freedoms generations before us fought and died to obtain.
To erasure, if not for us, for our children, grand, and more.
That shouldn’t only matter to African Americans—though especially so to us.
It should matter to us all.
