No one really thinks the GOP is about to win black voters. That’s not what we’re talking about here. The point is that black voters have for decades been the most devoted Democratic constituency. It was always a given that 90+ percent of black voters were going to vote for the same party every time. But Joe Biden may be causing that to change, at least in 2024. Last week team Biden held a meeting at the White House to discuss what to do about the fact that he appears to be slipping with black men.

Several attendees said there was general agreement that Mr. Biden, during both his 2020 campaign and his first three years in office, had paid more attention to Black female voters than to Black male ones. These people said they had suggested to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to make a specific argument about how his administration had improved the lives of Black men.

“It’s clear that there’s been a focus on Black women and the question becomes, has there been an equal focus on Black men?” said Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden administration official who is now a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee and who was at the meeting…

Polling released by The New York Times and Siena College last month found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important presidential battleground states said they would support Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden next year, an alarming figure for Democrats given Black voters’ decades-long loyalty to the party.

Last week another survey seemed to back up the general trend described in the NY Times poll.

In the GenForward survey released on Tuesday and shared first with POLITICO, nearly 1 in 5 Black Americans, 17 percent, said they would vote for former President Donald Trump. And 20 percent of Black respondents said they would vote for “someone else” other than Biden or Trump…

Black adults backed Biden more than any other racial group in the survey, but the president notched just 63 percent among this bloc.

It also represents a significant jump for Trump among Black voters overall. During the 2020 presidential election, AP VoteCast found Trump won 8 percent of Black voters, versus 91 percent voting for Biden.

There have been a couple of recent articles looking at Biden’s waning support in Georgia.

“A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”…

Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.

“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”…

Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”

The NY Times published an opinion piece today along the same lines.

What’s more likely is not a widespread shift of Black voters toward Mr. Trump but a vote of no confidence in Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party. Black Americans know they make up the backbone of the party. They believe — correctly — that it has long taken them for granted. And now they seem to be reaching a breaking point…

Whipping up fears over Mr. Trump and taking a victory lap on standard Democratic policies may not be enough to win back these voters. Instead, Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party will have to get serious about taking bolder measures to help a group of people who, descended from Americans once enslaved in the very same region, remain largely without access to financial capital, under constant threat of political disenfranchisement and, too often, in poverty.

No Republican is going to actually win the black vote next year but that doesn’t mean that Joe Biden couldn’t effectively lose the black vote. If his support were to drop another 8-10 percent those are simply votes he can’t afford to lose in a state he only won by about 12,000 votes out of millions cast.

Democrats, as always, have convinced themselves this is only a messaging problem. If they can just land on the right set of talking points, this will all go away. I’m not sure that’s the case. Some of Biden’s problems may improve in the next 11 months but some could also get worse. He not only has to hang on to what he’s got at the moment, he needs to turn this around and I’m not sure he’s up to the task anymore.