President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are making a concerted effort to reach out to black voters by launching “Black Voters for Biden-Harris,” a national organizing program.
The campaign within a campaign comes as Biden and Harris struggle to generate enthusiasm among a voter demographic that has supported them, and Democrats more broadly, in the past.
“Today’s launch of the Black Voters for Biden-Harris coalition is yet another example of our campaign working diligently to earn every single vote,” Biden deputy manager Quentin Fulks said Tuesday in a statement. “This coalition and the newly announced summer outreach and engagement programming serve as the next phase of our campaign’s ongoing historic investments in outreach to the backbone of the Biden-Harris coalition — black voters.”
Biden and Harris will announce “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” during a campaign rally on Wednesday at Girard College, a majority black school in Philadelphia, before Biden is expected to attend a small business event with the Black Chamber of Commerce at a nearby black-owned small business later in the afternoon, according to the Biden campaign. There will then be a voter registration phone bank event, commencing a weekend of action.
Biden is anticipated to underscore the black unemployment rate, black wealth, black healthcare insurance coverage, and black federal student loan debt forgiveness, despite poor public sentiment regarding the economy, during his remarks.
The announcement will be supplemented by “an eight-figure investment in engagement programming” with black student organizations, community groups, and faith centers nationally and in battleground states, in addition to advertising spending, per the Biden campaign.
Other steps the campaign said it would take include:
● Working with black organizations to increase black voter outreach and the campaign’s presence in key states;
● Collaborating with groups on voter education and registration, both online and in-person; and
● Utilizing partner networks to strengthen voter protection efforts.
Former President Donald Trump, who is once again Biden and Harris’s Republican opponent for this November’s election, made a similar appeal to minority voters last week in New York during a campaign rally of his own in the Bronx.
“While we are busy putting in the work to earn black America’s support, Donald Trump continues to show just how ignorant he is,” Fulks added, “hosting janky rap concerts to hide the fact that he lacks the resources and competence to genuinely engage our community. We will continue to be aggressive, innovative, and thorough in our work to earn the support of the very voters who sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020 and will do so again in 2024.”
In a fact sheet distributed by the Biden campaign, the campaign repeatedly described Trump as “racist.” It also addressed a black voter concern: that Biden assumes their support without trying to earn their ballot.
“That’s exactly what we are doing through historic investments in black media and outreach, creative engagement efforts, culturally competent content, and innovative organizing initiatives,” the Biden campaign wrote. “No campaign has valued black voters like we have, including through investing earlier.”
Although most black voters tell pollsters they support Biden over Trump, the president’s margin of 59 percentage points, 77% to 18%, is lower than it was in 2020 or for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to Pew Research Center-validated voter studies.
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Trump has sought to take advantage of those numbers by pitching himself to black voters, telling the crowd last week in the Bronx that “it doesn’t matter whether you’re black or brown or white or whatever the hell color you are.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We are all Americans, and we are going to pull together as Americans!”