CNN's Van Jones Explains Why the Obama Coalition Is Collapsing Right Now

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall 

He might have shot his mouth off during the Obama administration, which cost him his job, but Van Jones does have his moments of clarity. He’s another unabashed liberal who can give reasonable analyses on the political landscape much better than any clown at MSNBC. Again, I know that’s not challenging, but Jones has said the Russian collusion story was a nothing burger. What isn’t a ‘nothing burger’ is the Obama coalition collapsing before our eyes, much like Joe Biden’s mental health. 

At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, Jones gave a damning assessment of the health of this coalition that was, by all intents and purposes, unbeatable at the time. Yet, as Republicans and Democrats have learned under the Bush and Obama presidencies, there is no permanent political majority. Liberals may scoff, and Jones admits he gets beaten up over it, but the evidence is clear that the core voter groups that overwhelmingly back Democrats aren’t going to be as strong this year. 

It’s all about the margins.

Jones admits that the vast majority of black people are going to vote for Biden, but that’s not the point: there is a segment that is “hurtin’ and uncertain” about their place in the party. The white working class has defected en masse—that’s over. Now, black and Latino working-class voters are following. Jones isn’t the only one to make this point. James Carville has already conceded that Democrats are going to lose Hispanic men this year. And both men pointed to the same reason: they’re tired of the woke lectures.

 “They're just tired of being lectured, tired of being wrong, tired of being criticized, tired of being called toxic; tired of, frankly, a lot of other groups getting more out of the Biden administration than black folks got,” added Jones. 

Biden’s support among blacks under 50 has been more than halved, falling from an 80-point advantage in 2020 to just 37. Trump is on pace for a historic performance among black voters. If it holds, this election is over. 

And it goes beyond black and Latino voters; Biden does not enthuse young people. One pollster noted how, in less than a generation, the ‘yes we can’ brigades have de-mobilized to levels where Democrats should be nervous. Labor union support is fractured. The front office of the United Auto Workers’ union might be pro-Biden, but even its president conceded that a majority of UAW members won’t be voting for Biden in 2024. Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, will speak at the Republican Convention this summer. You can’t look at that other than it’s a soft endorsement of Trump. 

Jones has been a canary in the coal mine of sorts for Democrats in the past. In 2016, he warned that his party was grossly overlooking their footing along the so-called blue wall. He was right; Trump shattered that Democratic stronghold in his upset win over Hillary.

The cracks in the Democratic Party base are evident, and a visible, vibrant, and pugnacious Democrat with elite political skills, like Obama, is a candidate who could resolve many of these issues. That’s not the case: Democrats have Biden, who is a brain cell shy of being a drooling vegetable and who cannot be in public as often due to his repeated mental collapses. Once the sun goes down, forget it. Biden is also a beer league-style politician in a world of heavyweights. Even Democrats agree that Biden didn’t win the 2020 election; Trump just lost it—a tacit acknowledgment that COVID is what got Biden over the top. It wasn’t precisely his skills as a politician.