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GREENVILLE — Yvette McDaniel plans to vote for President Joe Biden again in 2024. But she’s not overly enthusiastic about it.
McDaniel, a 64-year-old Black woman who lives in Orangeburg, thinks the president has done a good job with the economy and pandemic recovery. But she has concerns about his age and ability to garner support on both sides of the aisle.
She’s also boxed into a corner. If she doesn’t support Biden-Harris, there’s no other options.
“I’ve not found a ticket that I could be enthusiastic about,” she said.
McDaniel is not the only voter in South Carolina who feels this way. Black women, a key voter base who helped carry Biden to the White House in 2020, are less excited about the president this year over concerns about his age (81), perceptions that his administration could do more on key issues and a sense that Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained too low a visibility in the administration.
Combined, it could spell trouble in the true battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin, polling shows. And while Biden is expected to win South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3 by a wide margin, questions remain whether he can rekindle the enthusiasm Black women brought four years ago that drove the course of history.
“Biden has problems,” Michigan-based pollster Bernie Porn, a leading voice in national political polling, said days after the president launched his South Carolina re-election campaign from the pulpit of Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
“Black woman are much more supportive of Biden,” he added. “However, they have to be a lot more supportive, as well as Black men. Obviously, Black voters were an issue, as evidenced by Biden visiting Charleston.”
More than half the voters in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary were female, and 56 percent were Black, according to exit polls. Equally important is that Black women have a reach beyond one or two spheres of influence, said Valerie Brooks-Madden, who helps lead Greenville County Democratic Women.
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