Biden’s trip to Atlanta highlights duel with Trump for black voters

ATLANTA — President Joe Biden is stepping up his efforts to reach Black voters with weekend visits to students in Atlanta and business leaders in Detroit, signaling his need to lock down a bloc critical to his chances of re-election in November .

Even though overwhelming support from Black voters was key to Biden’s 2020 victory, his supporters are worried and polls show former President Donald Trump making inroads. That increases pressure on Biden to connect with Black voters who say he hasn’t delivered on enough promises such as canceling student debt or increasing their prosperity.

“I feel like there are people who feel like their issues aren’t being heard or represented,” warned Bernice King, the youngest child of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, in an interview with Bloomberg Television this week. “I think there are people in the black community who feel like not much has changed, especially economically.”

Biden’s team is stepping up its efforts as some black leaders call on him to step up his engagement and as his electoral revenge with Trump takes shape with this week’s announcement of two debates, starting in June.

Biden is scheduled to deliver the commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta and the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr., on Sunday.

He will also visit a black-owned small business and speak at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People dinner in Detroit, capping a week that included a White House event celebrating the decision to the 1954 Supreme Court to desegregate public schools and a reunion with the “Divine Nine” are historically black fraternities and sororities.

Campus protests over Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas add risks to his bid to repair ties with black voters. Senior presidential adviser Stephen Benjamin met with a group of Morehouse students and faculty on May 10, amid concerns about Biden’s selection as inaugural president, largely due to rifts over his handling of the war in Gaza.

Closer to home, Black unemployment increased by nearly a percentage point over the past year, compared to its record low of 4.8% in April 2023.

Black voters make up about 33% of the electorate in Georgia, while Atlanta, the state capital, is home to the second-largest black population in the United States. Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes in 2020, meaning the state’s 16 Electoral College votes could have gone the other way if fewer than 1% of Black voters had chosen Trump or stayed home them.

Black voters favored Biden over Trump 63% to 27% in the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states, which has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. That compares to 92% of Black people’s support for Biden in the 2020 election, according to Pew Research Center data.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson suggested he wasn’t convinced.

“I believe the polls have been proven wrong over the last four election cycles,” he said at the White House on May 16.

Biden’s top deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said there are “no concerns” that the president has no connection with black voters. Any hesitation is not a worry “but a fire behind what he has to do,” he says.

Rachel Bailey is one of those 2020 Biden voters who needs convincing to participate again. She said Biden hasn’t done enough for the Black community.

“I’m honestly not excited about the vote,” said Bailey, 35, a black Atlanta-area resident who works at Georgia Tech. “I’m disappointed.”

Trump’s campaign is making a concerted effort to increase appearances before black audiences, where his aides believe his message about inflation and ending U.S. involvement in overseas wars will appeal to black voters. and their frustration on portfolio issues.

The former president will seek to avoid the campaign mistakes he made in Georgia four years ago, the NAACP’s Johnson said. “They’re going to try to exploit some of the Democratic base, particularly black men,” he said.

Trump’s challenges include his long and controversial history on race dating back to the Central Park Five case in the 1980s, when he urged New York state to reinstate the death penalty to punish five black teenagers and Latinos wrongly accused of assaulting and raping a woman.

More recently, his comments about race at a dinner in South Carolina drew attention from critics.

Trump’s black supporters say voters should monitor his actions rather than take what he says at face value.

“Some people just have their feelings on high alert, and there are hypersensitivities that don’t need to be there,” said Pastor Darrell Scott, who organizes a group called the Garfield Project to promote Trump’s policies . Biden has “done nothing proactive for the Black community,” he said.

“Every week, Trump welcomed black people to the White House,” Scott said. “I know that for a fact because I was there.”