Pictured is former vice president Joe Biden, who, on Saturday, clinched the Democratic nomination for president
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. (Coleman is a former biology teacher and longtime legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years. She covered, via 26 articles, the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post, former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, elected president in 2008 and reelected in 2012).
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio- Former vice president Joe Biden, who served under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, has officially clinched the Democratic nomination for president and will face incumbent Republican President Donald Trump for the 2020 presidential election in November.
Biden needed 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates to win the nomination.
He won an electoral victory in Guam on Saturday and, in turn, surpassed the necessary 1,991 delegates to claim the nomination on the first ballot of the party's convention.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) will hold its presidential nominating convention the week of Aug. 17 in Milwaukee.
Winning the nomination was all but ensured when Biden's closest opponent dropped out of the race, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist Democrat who was making his second bid for president after losing the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton going on to lose the general election to Trump, a real estate mogul and former television personality.
During his bid this time around for the Democratic nomination Sanders, as was Biden, was effective in narrowing the more than 28 Democratic candidates down to the two of them.
Sanders nearly won Iowa, coming in second place to Pete Buttigieg, who left the race and announced his endorsement of Biden.
Sanders went on to win New Hampshire and Nevada.
But Biden, powered by the Black vote and an endorsement from Black U.S. Rep James Clyburn, subsequently won South Carolina, and Super Tuesday, and never looked back.
Obama and Sanders, and nearly all of the other Democratic candidates for president, and the Dems in general, have endorsed Biden.
Biden, 77, remains the pragmatic choice of Black voters for president, and southern and elderly Black voters simply adore him.
A popular Republican among his strong base of supporters, President Trump still lags behind him in nearly every poll, including Quinnipiac, CNN, ABC News/Washington Post, and Emerson polls.
Such polls have Biden anywhere from four to seven percentage points ahead if the election were held today, the Emerson poll showing a Biden Trump election night showdown in November at 53-47%, and the ABC News/Washington Post poll showing him ahead of Trump by 10 points at 53-43%.
Even the conservative-leaning Fox News poll shows Biden ahead of Trump by 8 points 48-40%.
And while polls show Biden is the favorite to win the presidency this year, when Democrats and Black people stay home and do not vote, or, since the coronavirus outbreak, choose not to vote by mail, it helps the Republicans, data show.
While Black voter turnout for the first time in history outpaced White in 2012 when Obama ran for reelection, it declined by 7 percentage points in 2016 when Clinton lost the presidency to Trump, pundits saying that if Blacks vote in this year's election like they did in 2012 Biden has a good chance of beating Trump.
There is no question that both Blacks and Democrats must vote in large numbers for a win for Biden to materialize
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections officials in Cleveland were on target in predicting a 25 percent voter turnout and at least a 15 percent decrease in voter turnout in the county for this year's primary compared to 2016 in response to the coronavirus outbreak as Ohio's no-voting-at-the-polls deadline was April 28, a rescheduled mail-in ballot election authorized under a new state law approved overwhelming by the state legislature.
Except for special cases, such as the legally blind who could vote in person at boards of elections, Ohio's primary was essentially relegated to a mail-in-only ballot election.
Some 192,065 voters casts ballots in the county for this year's primary out of 858, 057 registered voters, a 23 percent voter turnout compared to 44 percent relative to county results for the March 2016 primary election in Ohio.
In short, there was a 21 percent decrease in voter turnout in the county in comparison to 2016, notwithstanding that neither Trump nor Biden, who won Ohio's primary, had any relevant opposition.
The 29 percent Black Cuyahoga County has a population of some 1.2 million people and includes Cleveland, a largely Black major American city led by four-term Black Democratic mayor Frank Jackson.
The county is a Democratic stronghold.
Among those registered in Cuyahoga County for this year's election are roughly 225,000 Democratic voters, 100,000 Republicans, and 500,000 non-party or Independent voters, county board of elections officials said.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
