Maybe the elite doesn’t care if Joe Biden sexually assaulted Tara Reade but the voters have a different idea. At least 26% of them do. Alyssa Milano, Cher, Lisa Bloom and Martin Tolchin all agree. If Biden is guilty they still support him for president. This spells huge trouble for the Democratic party, especially since only 61% of voters are with Biden after the Tara Reade story broke. 13% are still undecided.
All signs point to a low turnout of Democratic voters in 2020. The enthusiasm gap is widening by the day with President having a commanding lead. The Emerson poll on enthusiasm for the candidates is now at 19% advantage for Trump.
Emerson found that Trump has a sizable 19-point advantage in the enthusiasm gap, 64%-45%. Some 36% of his supporters said they are “extremely excited” to vote for Trump, and 28% said they are “very excited.” For Biden, those numbers are 22% and 23%.
But with Sleepy Joe as the presumptive Democrat nominee, the evidence that voters are simply falling in line is scant. In fact, Biden appears to be facing mounting problems with multiple key groups of voters:
Latino voters:
- “[N]o group should concern Democrats more than Hispanics. A recent Latino Decisions poll reveals a clear enthusiasm gap among Latinos for both Biden and the 2020 election itself,” writes Univision anchor León Krauze at Slate. “[T]he lack of interest Biden generates within a community already plagued by low voter turnout should be an immediate cause for alarm for the Democratic Party.”
- “A new poll of Latinos nationwide finds lower-than-usual support for former Vice President Joe Biden’s White House bid when compared to past Democratic nominees,” reports CBS News.
Black voters:
- “Joe Biden’s advisers and allies have become torn over whether it is more important to choose an African American or a progressive running mate,” reports Politico. “While the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, there is an ongoing debate about whether Biden ‘has the black vote locked up’ or ‘whether the bigger need we have is to put someone left-leaning’ on the ticket, a strategist familiar with discussions said.”
White working class voters:
- “The president begins the campaign with strong support from the white working class who powered his upset win four years ago… matching or perhaps even exceeding his margin over Hillary Clinton in methodologically similar polls conducted late in the 2016 campaign,” writes Nate Cohn at The New York Times. “The results suggest that Mr. Biden, despite his reputed appeal to blue-collar workers, has made little to no progress in winning back the white voters without a college degree who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but swung to Mr. Trump in 2016.”
Female voters:
- “[I]t is also possible that [the problem of Tara Reade’s allegations] won’t just go away, and that it will demoralize voters and place Mr. Biden at a disadvantage against Mr. Trump in the general election,” writes Elizabeth Bruenig at The New York Times. “For a candidate mainly favored for his presumed electability and the perception of empathy and decency, that’s a serious liability.”