How Biden Can Reclaim Black Voters’ Support in 2024

South Carolina activist Lawrence Moore and other Black residents in the state are worried about losing the right to vote. And they don’t think President Joe Biden is taking a strong enough stand.

The Columbia resident and longtime Democrat’s irritation is particularly acute because the Palmetto State is a major site of the assault on Black equality. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on a crucial racial gerrymandering case out of South Carolina. And Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, beloved as Mother Emanuel, is nearing the 10-year anniversary of a racist massacre that claimed the lives of nine Black congregants.

“Maybe the biggest problem is that Biden isn’t as vocal about some issues as he is about others,” Moore, the director of the social justice organization Carolina for All, told Capital B. “If he stood with us on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act the same way he’s standing with Israel, we might’ve gotten something passed.”

Biden appears to be trying to remedy this disconnect with Black voters. On Monday, he spoke at Mother Emanuel — but he still has a lot to do to regain trust. 

Moore’s frustration reflects a nationwide challenge for Biden as he gears up for the 2024 presidential election. Recent polling shows that 63% of Black voters support Biden — almost 25 percentage points lower than the support he enjoyed in 2020. This eroding enthusiasm springs from Biden and the Democratic Party’s meager engagement with Black voters, who for more than half a century have formed the party’s spine.

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If the president doesn’t want a key part of his base to sit out the election, Black voters and advocates told Capital B, he must have more direct and consistent conversations with minority communities about the issues that matter to them. He must also make plain what his wins have been, from securing student loan forgiveness for millions of borrowers to shrinking the unemployment rate to investing in historically Black colleges and universities.

Neglecting an essential voting bloc

Last fall, Kristin Powell was driving her child to school when she heard a report on the radio detailing how the economy is rebounding. While that’s true, she was struck by how out of sync that newscast seemed with too many Black voters’ economic realities.

“Black voters are concerned about low wages, about the cost of housing, about their pocketbooks,” said Powell, the deputy director of Black Futures Lab, a voter mobilization organization. She added that these kinds of reports disregard what Black voters are actually feeling.

Over the course of almost 20 months, Black Futures Lab talked with 211,000 Black voters to conduct the Black Census Survey — the largest survey of its kind in modern history. The data collected will inform the Black Economic Agenda, a policy roadmap that will be released in February.

What the group found is that Black voters’ chief concerns include the economy, abortion access, safety against white supremacy and gun violence, and the right to vote.

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Notably, some younger Black voters are souring on Biden — believe that he’s “really putting a stain on his presidency” — because of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war that’s been raging in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 attack, USA Today reported last month. They want the president to call for a ceasefire, but he’s refused.

On the whole, “Black voters’ frustration is about the fact that Biden and the Democratic Party aren’t engaging them year-round and are ignoring a population that could truly deliver,” Powell said. “I was recently knocking doors in a community, and people there were like, ‘No one’s ever knocked our door. No one’s ever come to our neighborhood. No one’s ever talked with us.’”

She explained that this is the very same thing she heard in 2020: that Black voters — especially low-propensity Black voters, or those with a history of skipping elections — aren’t being engaged enough, if at all.

“That’s why we’re so committed to a strategy of electoral organizing during every month of the year, not just the few weeks before Election Day,” Powell said.

“Come speak to us”

The good news, for Biden, is that he still has 10 months to turn things around. Plus, the Democratic Party has overcome these kinds of less-than-ideal odds before.

Consider that, in November 2019, 20% of Black voters said that they’d consider endorsing Donald Trump’s reelection bid. But, ultimately, Trump received only 8% of Black voter support in 2020; Biden won 92%.

The road forward, according to Black voters and advocates, is obvious.

“Come speak to us, and get some results. We’re asking for tangible things,” Moore said. “I understand that Biden isn’t a king or a dictator, but I want him to be more aggressive. I want him to convince his people [other Democratic leaders] that it’s important to move on the issues we care about and make this country work for everybody.”

Powell also emphasized outreach. In particular, she underscored the significance of engaging not only constantly but widely.

“Many groups,” she said, “are focused on likely Black voters in major cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, New York. But we should be clear that rural voters are Black. They’re not just white. And they have a lot to say, as do millennials and Gen Xers, who are often ignored because everybody’s like, ‘Let’s just get young voters out. They’re the winning ticket.’”

Though it isn’t possible to “out-organize” voter suppression, regular engagement has become even more critical in recent years. Republican-dominated state legislatures have been introducing and passing a record number of restrictive voting bills, per multiple tallies by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, since 2021.

Wins matter

Moore has another piece of advice for Biden: Zero in on triumphs.

“I’ve heard South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn talk [with Black voters] about Biden’s success when it comes to student loan forgiveness — how Biden hasn’t gotten everything he set out to get, but he’s gotten parts of it,” Moore said. “Biden should be stronger on this. He needs to reach out to people who’ve been affected. A lot of times they don’t connect the dots. They don’t know that their loans were forgiven because of his work.”

Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, a national organization focusing on political engagement, echoed some of these sentiments.

In focus groups, her organization found that Black voters were surprised to learn that Biden has achieved so much, from slowing the spread of COVID-19 to cutting unemployment.

“Black voters support the accomplishments,” Shropshire said. “But they don’t hear about the accomplishments from Biden or in the news media. He needs to be out there telling people what he’s done and busting myths, including the sense — specifically among younger voters — that no student loans have been forgiven. There just isn’t accurate information out there. There’s confusion.”

Biden’s visit to Mother Emanuel on Monday came a few weeks before South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation Democratic primary on Feb. 3. He addressed the ongoing threat of white supremacy to multiracial democracy.

“The word of God was pierced by bullets of hate and rage,” he said, referring to the 2015 rampage, “propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison — poison that for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow, or ever.”

For her part, Vice President Kamala Harris on Jan. 15 will headline King Day at the Dome, an annual demonstration at the South Carolina State Capitol commemorating the slain civil rights leader’s life and legacy. And on Jan. 22, she’ll kick off a “reproductive freedoms tour” to highlight the attack on abortion access.

Moore said that, looking ahead, Biden must put these issues — and what he’s doing about them — “in front of everybody every single day.”

The post How Biden Can Reclaim Black Voters’ Support in 2024 appeared first on Capital B News.