Biden campaign faces its greatest test: rebuilding his 2020 coalition

Rev. Charles Williams is among those warily bracing for a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This time around, he believes at least one thing is different: Biden can’t win through voters’ fear of Trump alone.

“We saw something that scared us all, but here we are now, four years after that,” said Williams, the pastor of Historic King Solomon Baptist Church. “You realize, maybe this guy ain’t the boogeyman.”

Williams, who had a front-row seat to the soaring Black voter turnout in Detroit that helped propel Biden to victory in Michigan in 2020, said he believes exhaustion at the prospect of another Biden-Trump contest could complicate efforts to generate enthusiasm among young voters.

“The challenge that Joe Biden has is that he speaks to an entirely different generation,” Williams said. “He speaks to the greatest generation. He speaks very well to the baby boomers, but he does not speak to a generation that had a president that listened to Jay-Z on his playlist.”

Four years ago, Biden built a diverse coalition of supporters – from all ages and races – to win the White House. But whether that vast, fraying network can be rebuilt will help determine whether Trump returns to power.

Here in Michigan, which the president visited Thursday, rests one of the biggest tests of his campaign. Trump narrowly carried the state over Hillary Clinton in 2016 – by 10,704 votes – and four years later Biden defeated Trump by about 154,000 votes.

Michigan, along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which the president also flipped in 2020, is a part of Biden’s “blue wall” around America’s Great Lakes, which will be just as essential this year to his chance of winning a second term.

Dearborn distrust and discontent

Biden’s challenges are complicated by deep anger and distrust among Muslim and Arab Americans over the Israel-Hamas war. The searing discontent, which has played out in relentless protests of the president in recent weeks, threatens to undermine one piece of the Biden coalition.

“He’s just not somebody that I can trust,” said Adam Abusalah, who worked as a field organizer for the Biden campaign four years ago, focusing on Arab American voters in Michigan.

Today, Abusalah said that he and many of those voters will not support Biden because they believe his administration is complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

Asked whether he feared withholding support from Biden could help Trump win, Abusalah replied: “It probably will.”

“They’re telling us that as Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, as minority communities who are not supporting Biden, that we are the reason we are going to get another four years of Donald Trump,” Abusalah said. “But the reality is, Joe Biden is the reason that we’re going to get another four years of Donald Trump.”

In the Michigan primary on February 27, Abusalah and other community leaders are urging voters to select “uncommitted” instead of Biden on the ballot. Signs declaring “Abandon Biden” were passed out at a rally on the eve of the president’s visit this week.

The Biden campaign selected a closed-door union training hall in Warren, located north of Detroit in Macomb County, for the president’s carefully choreographed trip on Thursday that also included an impromptu stop at a restaurant. He did not go near Dearborn, which is home to the largest per capita Muslim population in the United States.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that the administration would send officials to Michigan this month “to hear directly from community leaders on a range of issues that are important to them and their families, including the conflict in Israel and Gaza.”

A campaign spokesman said Biden would fight for support from Michigan voters.

“President Biden won in 2020 by mobilizing a broad and diverse coalition of voters and fighting for the issues that matter most to them: their rights, their pocketbooks, and our democracy,” spokesman Kevin Munoz told CNN. “The president’s campaign is working hard to not ask, but earn the support of the voters who will decide this election.”

Bridge to the future

It was nearly four years ago, on the eve of a Michigan primary that helped Biden all but seal the Democratic nomination, when he presented himself as a bridge to the party’s future appearing onstage with Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said over booming applause in the gymnasium at Renaissance High School in Detroit. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”

The unspoken message, at least at the time, was that Biden might only serve one term.

This week, a small group of high school seniors who will be eligible to vote for the first time this year, spoke with CNN about the presidential race ahead and their views of Biden and Trump.

“[Biden] wouldn’t be my pick because I don’t feel like he represents the young voter demographic at all,” said Emani Williams, who added that she often watches memes of the president on social media. “’Sleepy Biden’ is just the main thing people call him. I think it comes from him being the oldest president and people kind of treat him – I don’t want to say as a joke – but they don’t have respect for him as much as they’ve had for other presidents.”

Dante Parker, a fellow student, said he would study the race, including third-party candidates, before reaching a decision this fall. He said a vote for Biden is hardly guaranteed.

“I’m a free thinker. I like to think outside the box,” Parker said. “We’ve been stuck in this system for far too long, maybe it’s time we venture outside of it to make some progress now.”

Second-term plans

Norman Clement, the founder of the nonprofit Detroit Change Initiative, said rebuilding the Biden coalition starts with fighting significant misinformation, particularly among younger voters, about what the president has done or tried to do. But, he said, the burden was on Biden and his campaign to spell out what he would do in a second term.

“We’re not happy with Biden,” Clement said, recalling a frequent refrain he hears from voters. “But we understand the other option is not an option that’s favorable to us.”

He said he often hears complaints about promises that Biden hasn’t been able to achieve, including voting rights reform, policing reform and more, but the reasons why aren’t as well known, such as the narrow majorities in Congress or, in the case of student debt forgiveness, the Supreme Court blocking the Biden administration’s plan.

Asked whether he was more worried about people backing Trump or young people not voting at all, Clement said: “I’m worried about the protest vote.”

“A protest vote is that I’m not voting for either candidate,” he said. “There’s such a notion on social media, ‘Hold my vote, hold my vote.’ My message to them is that we did that in 2016, we held our vote, and folks didn’t come out.”

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