Why Joe Biden prioritizing 'shovel-ready projects' in 'racially diverse' suburbs could be key to 2024: report

16 January 2023

From Philadelphia’s Main Line to Burbank, California to the suburbs of Houston, Texas, suburbia was once known for being white and Republican. Philly Proper and Chicago Proper were overwhelmingly Democratic during the 1960s and 1970s, but their suburbs were much more GOP-friendly.

Times have changed. Many suburbs are more racially integrated than they used to be, and they have become much more important to Democrats. A major factor in some areas is gentrification; many metropolitan areas having become increasingly unaffordable, more African-Americans have been moving to suburbia in search of both affordable housing and job opportunities.

In an article published by The Bulwark on January 16, journalist Daniel McGraw examines the evolution of suburbia and its political impact. That evolution, according to McGraw, isn’t lost on President Joe Biden. The Biden Administration, McGraw notes, is keeping suburbia in mind with its emphasis on “infrastructure investment” and “shovel-ready jobs.”

“An underappreciated challenge of the present era in American politics — a challenge for policymakers, for candidates and their staffs, for pollsters, for journalists — is defining what now counts as ‘suburban,’” McGraw explains. “Over the last half-century, suburban voters came to be recognized as a bloc distinct from urban and rural voters. By the 1992 presidential election, suburban voters were casting more votes than urban and rural voters combined.”

McGraw continues, “But across those decades, the nature of the suburbs evolved. What we nowadays call suburbs look very different from place to place: The older suburbia of the Northeast is quite different from the newer suburbia surrounding cities in the West. We should not assume that the dynamics of age and race and income levels in the populations living in cul-de-sac-ville across the country are identical.”

The journalist cites Lakewood, Ohio (the Cleveland suburb he calls home) as an example of a suburb that is still 87 percent white. He points out that being an older white midwestern suburbanite doesn’t automatically make him MAGA, and The Bulwark is a conservative website with a decidedly Never Trump focus.

“The urban planners and political analysts would likely put me in the suburban bucket, since Lakewood is technically an inner-ring suburb,” McGraw notes. “And given my age and race and location — 60+ and white and Midwest suburban — there is probably no doubt in their minds that I am MAGA. But I am not — and most of the other 50,000 people living here in Lakewood are not either: In 2020, Lakewood voted 75-25 for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.”

McGraw continues, “What’s my point? The suburban voters in the 2024 election are thought to be key to who will be voted in as the next president, and some analysts are treating this large segment of the population as comparable to the national voter mix — 40 R/40 D/20 independent — and not much differentiating between suburbs in different states and around different urban areas.”

McGraw observes that one of the things making suburbia “more racially diverse” is “Black flight” — that is, African-Americans leaving cities and moving to suburbia.

The MAGA movement focuses heavily on culture-war ideas and identity politics. But according to McGraw, identity politics are of no interest to many suburbanites.

“Though the suburban demographics are very different nowadays,” McGraw writes, “the issues that matter are still, as they always have been, at the top of the lists of what suburban voters care about: education, public safety, affordable housing, transportation, fair pay. What’s not up there, at least based on the polls: the Big Lie, climate change, gentrification, and voting changes. Which suggests that in the 2024 cycle, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ political thinking will likely predominate over matters of ideological identity.”

But investments in suburbia have a hefty environmental cost.

In an article published by the New York Times on December 13, 2022, reporters Nadja Popovich, Mira Rojanasakul and Brad Plumer noted how suburbia is affecting climate change compared to urban areas.

“Households in denser neighborhoods close to city centers tend to be responsible for fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases, on average, than households in the rest of the country,” they explain. “Residents in these areas typically drive less because jobs and stores are nearby and they can more easily walk, bike or take public transit. And they’re more likely to live in smaller homes or apartments that require less energy to heat and cool. Moving further from city centers, average emissions per household typically increase as homes get bigger and residents tend to drive longer distances…. In more distant suburbs and exurbs, average emissions per household can be two to three times as high, with some of the largest climate footprints in the nation.”

McGraw wraps up his Bulwark article by discussing the Biden Administration’s relationship with suburbia.

“So, which party is better positioning itself for success in the suburbs in 2024?” McGraw writes. “Republicans are playing the ‘We won’t fund anything, and we’ll investigate everyone’ game. That never plays well in the long term. As for the Democrats, going into 2024, the Atlanta, Phoenix, and Las Vegas metro areas will all be getting their share of the trillion-dollar infrastructure investment, pandemic relief, and economic stimulus cash cow that the Biden Administration dropped.”

McGraw continues, “Those areas’ suburban voters are going to see shovel-ready projects begun, see electric vehicle battery plants open, chip and semiconductor manufacturing plants opening as well, as well as clean-energy job creation taking place. Already, the Biden Administration is targeting such job creation in Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Because in the end, the American people like to eat and buy clothes and drive their cars.”

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