May 28, 2024 - 16:27
By npr.org

In Georgia, Biden’s coalition has frayed since his narrow win in 2020

Four years ago, Rev. James Woodall was driven to mobilize new, first-time voters to back Joe Biden during a summer of unrest sparked by COVID-19 fears and racial justice protests after George Floyd was killed by police.

Woodall was at the time the president of the Georgia NAACP, and he was hopeful that working to defeat then-President Donald Trump would lead to changes in policing and criminal justice.

But this year, Woodall, now 30, said he is unsure if he’ll cast a ballot for Biden in November.

“There’s no way in hell I’m voting for Trump,” he said. “But I don’t know if I can actually, with good conscience, vote for Joe Biden. I just don’t know.”

This is one of many warning signs for Biden’s campaign in a state he won by a thin sliver of votes in 2020, backed by support from a multi-racial, ideologically diverse coalition -- progressives, moderates, black voters, Asian-Americans, Latinos, white women in the suburbs, and disaffected former Republicans – united in opposition to Trump.

In 2024, Biden is the incumbent with a record of his own, making it harder for him to cast the election as a referendum on Trump.

“Four years later, the issues still remain,” Woodall said, referring to the lack of legislation on voting rights and policing. “In fact, some of them have exacerbated to crisis conditions.”

There are cracks in Biden’s coalition: disappointment with how the president has handled everything from inflation to immigration. For Woodall, his main reservation is the war in Gaza – the graphic images he sees on social media of starving children, and his belief that Biden has the power to stop the war, if he had the will.