Joe Biden Owes It All to African-American Voters
Uncle Joe gives thanks. Photo: Samuel Corum/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
With Bernie Sanders’s decision to suspend his presidential campaign, Joe Biden is not just the “presumptive” Democratic nominee, but the putative nominee: It’s in the bag unless something extremely weird happens. So we can now begin to look at his successful campaign for this designation in the rearview mirror.
Looming in the foreground, of course, is COVID-19 and its drastic effect on the remaining primaries and the overall political climate. But recalling that Biden really won the nomination in an amazing sprint in late February and early March, after a dismal beginning to the cycle for the former veep’s campaign, it’s pretty clear in retrospect that he owes everything to African-American voters. Let us count the ways:
1. Elevating Him Over Cory and Kamala
There were two highly credible African-American candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Both of them hoped to replicate Barack Obama’s 2008 path to victory with a strong early showing in lily-white Iowa followed by a breakthrough in majority-black (among Democratic primary voters) South Carolina. But Joe Biden’s strength among black voters in and beyond the Palmetto State — far more durable than Hillary Clinton’s in 2008 — remained an immovable object.
Booker never caught fire much of anywhere, and despite spending a lot of time in South Carolina, never showed any signs of cutting into Biden’s black support there. Harris had one moment of hope after politely brutalizing Biden’s record on school desegregation in a June 2019 debate, and even saw a spike in black support in South Carolina. But it wasn’t impressive or enduring: A late-July Monmouth poll in that crucial state showed her being crushed by Biden among South Carolina’s African-Americans by a 51/12 margin.
Both these promising black candidates dropped out before voters began voting, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the preference of black voters for Biden did them in.
2. His Saving Grace in Nevada
After finishing fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, Biden’s campaign was on death’s door. But then he finished second in the Nevada caucuses on February 22, and in conjunction with a terrible debate performance by Michael Bloomberg, the former veep was back in the discussion heading toward the last early-state primary in South Carolina a week later and then Super Tuesday on March 3.
Had Biden slipped behind Pete Buttigieg in Nevada, where the former mayor put on a strong and well-financed effort, he might have been written off for good. And according to entrance polls, Biden trailed Mayor Pete by four points among white voters (two-thirds of the total) in the state, and didn’t beat him that badly among Latinos. But among the 11 percent of Nevada caucusgoers who are African-American, Biden trounced Buttigieg 38/2 and nailed down the runner-up position behind Sanders.
3. His Big Win in South Carolina
The whole narrative of the 2020 nominating contest flipped on February 29 when Biden won a big victory in South Carolina, winning nearly half the vote against what was then still a large field, and beating second-place Bernie Sanders by nearly 30 points. Sixty-one percent of the state’s African-American voters, well over half the primary electorate, went for Biden, who not only eclipsed Sanders’s support among young voters of all races but limited Tom Steyer — who made a last-gasp bid for black voters via heavy advertising and a big retail campaign presence — to 13 percent of the African-American vote.
The fact that Biden finally won a state was crucial to his shadow battle with Bloomberg, who for a time was close to supplanting Biden entirely as the candidate of Democratic centrists — and was becoming a threat to win black voters as well. As I noted at the time, Biden had some crucial momentum after South Carolina’s black voters saved him again:
Between centrists looking for a champion against Bernie and regular Democrats wanting a viable alternative to either career non-Democrat, the former veep has a strong potential coalition and — if he can strongly outperform Bloomberg on Super Tuesday — a good shot at his own two-candidate race against Bernie.
4. Croaking Pete ‘n’ Amy
It’s generally recognized that the last-minute conjoined endorsements of Biden by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar on the eve of Super Tuesday had a lot to do with his performance not only in beating Bloomberg but in winding up with more delegates than consensus-favorite Sanders. What is less well-understood is that black voters made the departure of these two centrist candidates from the field inevitable.
Buttigieg famously worked hard to overcome an antipathy toward his candidacy among African-Americans. Klobuchar had her own problems in this demographic, which she never even began to resolve. When black voters became a factor in the primaries, the inability of either candidate to show any traction with them became an obvious sign they weren’t going anywhere as the primary electorate grew more diverse. In Nevada, Pete ‘n’ Amy each got 2 percent of the African-American vote. In South Carolina, Buttigieg won 3 percent of the black vote and Klobuchar won one percent. It was time for them to go, and they did so at the perfect time for Biden.
5. Vaulting Him Into the Lead on Super Tuesday
On March 3, Biden began putting together the coalition of minority and white-suburban supporters that made him the nominee via wins in ten of the 14 states holding contests that day. Again, though, African-Americans were his base: According to exit polls he won 58 percent of black voters across this vast landscape. The example set by South Carolina’s electorate, and amplified by high-profile endorsements from black opinion-leaders like Jim Clyburn, appeared to boost Biden into the coveted position of leading a multiracial coalition that looked like the Democratic Party as a whole.
6. Sealing the Deal in March
Before the coronavirus put a halt to the 2020 primaries (except for the botched, Republican-engineered April 7 event in Wisconsin), black voters again were crucial to Biden’s drive to presumptive-nominee status. In the March 10 Michigan primary that Sanders supporters thought he might win, Biden won comfortably, in no small part because he won two-thirds of the black vote. On March 17, where three states (Arizona, Florida, and Illinois) held virtually all-voting-by-mail contests, Biden won a sweep, with even higher margins among African-Americans, joined increasingly by white working-class and suburban college-educated voters.
All in all, it’s very clear that Joe Biden would have never survived the tough early going in 2020 without his base of African-American support, particularly if his rivals had managed to take away a significant share of that same support.
To the extent that black support for Biden is attributable to the power of his electability credentials among an element of the electorate determined to get rid of Donald Trump, it’s a good start for him in building an enthusiastic general election coalition. But it also suggests a political debt that may go deeper than Biden’s constant proclamations of loyalty to his great benefactor Barack Obama.
In choosing the woman who will serve as his vice-presidential nominee, the pressure on Joe Biden to thank African-Americans with a running mate from their ranks — a reciprocal gesture to the one Obama made in choosing him in 2008 — could be considerable. If, of course, there’s anyone else who tangibly could help improve the odds of beating Trump, black voters will likely again go with the winning formula.
JAMES WALSH
THE OBAMA-BIDEN HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our borders and into our voting
booths!
Joe
Biden: ‘Absolutely Bizarre’ to Suggest Limit on U.S. Capacity to Absorb
Immigrants
Joel Pollak/
Breitbart News
Trump has flipped the 9th Circuit — and some new judges are causing a
'shock wave'
Surge in Illegal Aliens,
500% Increase in Some U.S. Ports of Entry
Concrete Evidence of the Continuing Plunge in Both Civil and Criminal Immigration Enforcement
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, January 23, 2016
Two recent reports from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reflect the continued erosion of immigration enforcement under the Obama administration.
On January 20, TRAC reported that criminal prosecution for immigration offenses fell 22.3 percent from November 2014 to November 2015, and more than 36 percent over the course of five years, excluding magistrate court (which deals exclusively with petty offenses).
The following day, TRAC announced that "ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Detainer Use Stabilizes Under Priority Enforcement Program". The Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) is the replacement to the Secure Communities Program mandated by Homeland Security Security Jeh Johnson as a part of the president's "executive actions" on immigration. It significantly restricts the ability of immigration agents to file detainers against aliens arrested by police on criminal charges.
I have no idea what TRAC means by "stabilizes". A quick look at Figure 1a of their report shows a more accurate state of affairs, if one considers the number of detainers being filed over the course of five years, from a high in April 2011, when Secure Communities became fully effective nationwide and kicked into high gear, versus October 2015. I would use other phrases: "plummeted" or "Dropped like a stone". Or, as my colleague Jessica Vaughan has noted, particularly in relation to detainers filed at county jails, where the lion's share of criminals of any stripes are held after being booked for offenses small and large: "a stunning free fall".
http://www.cis.org/cadman/concrete-evidence-continuing-plunge-both-civil-and-criminal-immigration-enforcement
JAMES WALSH
THE OBAMA-BIDEN HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our borders and into our voting
booths!
How the Democrat party
surrendered America to Mexico:
“The watchdogs
at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama
administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices
Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington
Times
"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the
Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN,
belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and
California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers
via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
The “zero tolerance” program was dismantled by Attorney
General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the transit of
migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made 140,000 arrests per
year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so much that officials
only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to a 2014 letter by two
pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
“The cost
of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit.
Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President
Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million
illegals,
according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”
Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)
WIKILEAKS EXPOSES THE OBAMA CONSPIRACY TO
FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
“The watchdogs
at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama
administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices
Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington
Times
Obama Funds the Mexican Fascist Party of
LA RAZA “The Race”… now calling itself UNIDOSus.
"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the
Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN,
belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and
California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers
via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
Previous
generations of immigrants did not believe they were racially superior to
Americans. That is the view of La Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos,
Mexico’s former education minister and a presidential candidate. According to
this book, republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal
State LA, students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards,
blacks are ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack
enterprise. The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is
replacing them, and all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD
BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag
*
GLOBALIST BARACK OBAMA
AND NANCY PELOSI’S CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY AND KEEP AMERICA
FLOODED WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
"Along with Obama, Pelosi and
Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the
eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
“One of the most disgusting things to come out of the Obama
administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members of the
Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal
gun sales to go through – commonly referred to as "gun walking" – in
order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected to the Mexican
drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were eventually found
throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used to k ill Border
Patrol Agent Brian Terry.” BETH BAUMANN
The “zero tolerance” program was dismantled by Attorney
General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the transit of
migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made 140,000 arrests per
year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so much that officials
only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to a 2014 letter by two
pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
Jose Angel
Gutierrez, professor, University of Texas, Arlington and founder of La
Raza Unida political party screams at rallies: "We have an aging
white America. They are d ying. They are s hitting in their pants with
fear! I love it! We have got to eliminate the g ringo, and what I mean by
that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to k ill him!"
Previous
generations of immigrants did not believe they were racially superior to
Americans. That is the view of La Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos,
Mexico’s former education minister and a presidential candidate. According to
this book, republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal
State LA, students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards,
blacks are ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack
enterprise. The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is
replacing them, and all Yankee “Anglos.” LLOYD
BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag
Joe
Biden: ‘Absolutely Bizarre’ to Suggest Limit on U.S. Capacity to Absorb
Immigrants
18 Feb 20201,578
2:58
LAS
VEGAS, Nevada — Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned inside a Chinese
restaurant on Tuesday evening, telling supporters it was “bizarre” to suggest a
limit on immigration to the U.S.
Biden promised to expand immigration
to the U.S. if elected president.
“Folks, look — the idea that there’s
some limitation on the capacity of anyone who — on the immigrants in this
country is absolutely bizarre! It’s absolutely bizarre.”
Biden, speaking to a packed crowd
inside the Harbor Palace Seafood Restaurant on the eve of the next Democratic
debate, addressed members of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)
community, urging them to turn out the vote ahead of Saturday’s caucuses.
Last
month, the AAPI Victory Fund super PAC endorsed Biden for president, citing
his ability to defeat President Donald Trump and his experience working with
immigrant communities from South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific generally.
Though the AAPI immigrant community
is politically diverse, it has trended Democratic in recent years.
Last
year, Breitbart News reported, another local AAPI organization in Las Vegas
expressed opposition to
President Trump’s proposed merit-based system for legal immigration.
On Tuesday, Biden promised, if
elected, to allow family reunification visas.
“We should be able to increase, to
three million people, the people who could come for family reunification.
Period, period, period, period.”
He called the idea that the U.S.
could not “reunite” more families “absolutely bizarre.”
Biden also reminded his audience
that Latinos were not the only beneficiaries of President Barack Obama’s
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which applied to those
brought to the country illegally as children.
He said there were “thousands and
thousands of AAPI ‘Dreamers'” who had benefited from DACA as well.
Afterwards, Biden greeted attendees,
some of whom proceeded to the Chinatown Mall to cast early votes before the
polling place there closed.
Biden hopes to finish in the top
three in Nevada, and to win South Carolina on Feb. 29, to make the case that he
is still a top contender for his party’s nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
now leads national polls, as well as Nevada polls.
Joel B.
Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social
Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a
J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak
Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How
Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
ICE ignores California laws and arrests illegal aliens at the
courthouse door
In 2018, California implemented the California Values Act, which gave special protection to illegal
aliens by mandating that California law enforcement agencies cannot cooperate
with federal immigration authorities. Last week, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (“ICE”) thumbed its nose at California and arrested two people in Sonoma
County Superior Court.
BLOG: CALIFORNIA HAS 15 MILLION
ILLEGALS!
California has lots of reasons to hang
onto its roughly 2.2 – 3.5 million illegal immigrants. They provide cheap,
easily-exploited labor. They swell the state’s population, which matters for
electors and congresspeople, as well as the distribution of certain federal
funds. As illegal immigrants are fed into the system, they provide reliable
(legal or illegal) Democrat votes. And they make Californians feel virtuous
even as they allow corrupt Latin American states to continue exploiting their
own citizens and destroying their economies by relying on remittances from
people illegally in America.
For these reasons, California enacted the
pompously named “California Values Act.” Although the act refers to
“immigrants,” it’s obviously intended to affect only illegal aliens because the
Act’s entire purpose is to use the agencies of the state to prevent ICE from
gaining access to people illegally in California – including people who have
committed crimes in California. This is the type of law that could only come
from legislators and other virtue signalers ensconced in comfortable middle-
and upper-middle-class enclaves unaffected by felonies that would never have
happened but for open borders and sanctuaries.
Throughout the Obama administration,
sanctuary cities and states were able to get away with these policies because
the Obama administration, despite Obama’s sworn obligation to upload the laws
of the United States, approved of open borders. Trump promised to change all
that.
During the first three years of his
administration, rather disappointingly, Trump was able to have little effect on
illegal immigration or on deportation. However, Trump was just getting his
ducks in a row. He was hampered by a reluctant Republican Congress, which was
superseded by a violently resisting Democrat House. He also had to deal with
“resistance” judges who blocked every immigration initiative he made.
Finally, though, things are changing.
Trump was able to squeeze money out of Congress for his wall and, even more
importantly, with help from Mitch McConnell, he’s changing the judiciary:
Great news for the U.S. Constitution! @realDonaldTrump has flipped the 9th Circuit — and some new judges are
causing a 'shock wave' https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-22/trump-conservative-judges-9th-circuit …
Trump has flipped the 9th Circuit — and some new judges are causing a
'shock wave'
With a judiciary that believes in
interpreting the law, not making it, Trump’s administration is able to act in
accordance with the Supremacy Clause (Constitution, Art. VI, Clause 2):
This
Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in
Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the
Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or
Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
In other words, when there’s a direct
conflict between state laws and federal laws, federal laws prevail.
Because the critical mass of judges is no
longer deliberately inserting itself as an obstacle between federal laws and
illegal immigrants, ICE is beginning to carry out its duty as written under the law:
U.S.
immigration agents arrested two people at a Northern California courthouse, including
a man detained in a hallway on his way to a hearing, flouting a new state law
requiring a judicial warrant to make immigration arrests inside such
facilities.
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agents made the arrests Tuesday at Sonoma County Superior
Court, prompting an outcry from criminal justice and court officials who said
the action undermines local authority and deters immigrants who are in the
country illegally from participating in the U.S. justice system.
ICE said
California's law doesn't supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct
of federal officers acting pursuant to duly-enacted laws passed by Congress
that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens
inside the United States."
“Our officers
will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration
laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities," David Jennings,
ICE's field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.
At long last, in Trump’s America, the rule
of law matters again. The reliability of law is one of the essential
ingredients of a just and successful civilization. In that context, if you
don’t like the law, you change it through the democratic process, not through
illegal and unconstitutional resistance.
Surge in Illegal Aliens,
500% Increase in Some U.S. Ports of Entry
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, December 30, 2015
The agency’s own statistics certainly contradict that, showing that the southern border region is as porous and vulnerable as ever. Other entry ports that saw large hikes in Central American illegal immigrants during the first two months of this fiscal year include Del Rio, Texas (269%), El Centro, California (216%) and Rio Grande Valley, Texas (154%). The Border Patrol breaks the stats down by “family unit” and illegal immigrants under the age of 18, referred to as “Unaccompanied Alien Children” or UAC. The Rio Grande Valley port of entry topped the list in both categories with 8,537 family units and 6,465 UACs during the two-month period. In all, the nation’s nine southern border crossings saw an average of 173% increase in family units and a 106% increase in minors during the short period considered.
Some of the illegal immigrants are Mexican nationals, but the overwhelming majority comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government records show that somehow 4,450 family units from El Salvador evaded our topnotch border security and entered the United States in a period of only two months. Guatemala and Honduras had 3,934 and 3,203 respectively. Mexico had 538 family units. Of interesting note is that, during this period, the Border Patrol reports 35,234 apprehensions in the region of foreigners labeled by the government as “Other Than Mexican” or OTM. This is a term used by federal authorities to refer to nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S.
. . .
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/12/surge-in-illegal-aliens-500-increase-in-some-u-s-ports-of-entry/
The agency’s own statistics certainly contradict that, showing that the southern border region is as porous and vulnerable as ever. Other entry ports that saw large hikes in Central American illegal immigrants during the first two months of this fiscal year include Del Rio, Texas (269%), El Centro, California (216%) and Rio Grande Valley, Texas (154%). The Border Patrol breaks the stats down by “family unit” and illegal immigrants under the age of 18, referred to as “Unaccompanied Alien Children” or UAC. The Rio Grande Valley port of entry topped the list in both categories with 8,537 family units and 6,465 UACs during the two-month period. In all, the nation’s nine southern border crossings saw an average of 173% increase in family units and a 106% increase in minors during the short period considered.
Some of the illegal immigrants are Mexican nationals, but the overwhelming majority comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government records show that somehow 4,450 family units from El Salvador evaded our topnotch border security and entered the United States in a period of only two months. Guatemala and Honduras had 3,934 and 3,203 respectively. Mexico had 538 family units. Of interesting note is that, during this period, the Border Patrol reports 35,234 apprehensions in the region of foreigners labeled by the government as “Other Than Mexican” or OTM. This is a term used by federal authorities to refer to nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S.
. . .
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/12/surge-in-illegal-aliens-500-increase-in-some-u-s-ports-of-entry/
Concrete Evidence of the Continuing Plunge in Both Civil and Criminal Immigration Enforcement
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, January 23, 2016
Two recent reports from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reflect the continued erosion of immigration enforcement under the Obama administration.
On January 20, TRAC reported that criminal prosecution for immigration offenses fell 22.3 percent from November 2014 to November 2015, and more than 36 percent over the course of five years, excluding magistrate court (which deals exclusively with petty offenses).
The following day, TRAC announced that "ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Detainer Use Stabilizes Under Priority Enforcement Program". The Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) is the replacement to the Secure Communities Program mandated by Homeland Security Security Jeh Johnson as a part of the president's "executive actions" on immigration. It significantly restricts the ability of immigration agents to file detainers against aliens arrested by police on criminal charges.
I have no idea what TRAC means by "stabilizes". A quick look at Figure 1a of their report shows a more accurate state of affairs, if one considers the number of detainers being filed over the course of five years, from a high in April 2011, when Secure Communities became fully effective nationwide and kicked into high gear, versus October 2015. I would use other phrases: "plummeted" or "Dropped like a stone". Or, as my colleague Jessica Vaughan has noted, particularly in relation to detainers filed at county jails, where the lion's share of criminals of any stripes are held after being booked for offenses small and large: "a stunning free fall".
http://www.cis.org/cadman/concrete-evidence-continuing-plunge-both-civil-and-criminal-immigration-enforcement
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