Biden wants to appeal to Black voters during a campaign trip to Charleston, S.C
President Biden plans to reach out to disaffected Black supporters on Monday by taking his campaign to the site of one of the most horrific hate crimes in recent years and criticizing the racism and extremism that have shaped American politics.
Mr. Biden will fly from Wilmington, Del., where he spent the weekend at his parents’ home, to Charleston, S.C., to address parishioners and other guests at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where a white supremacist gunman killed the pastor and eight killed others. in 2015.
The visit will be the second part of the president’s two-phase opening campaign of the election year, following a speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on Friday. There he condemned his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on the eve of the third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. By appearing at Mother Emanuel, as the church is known, the president hopes to important voting bloc of the importance of the November elections.
In a statement on Sunday, the Biden campaign called the church “a location that embodies the commitment to the nation in this moment.” After the 2015 massacre, Mr. Biden, then vice president, joined President Barack Obama in Charleston at the funeral of the pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator, where Mr. Obama delivered a eulogy and sang “Amazing Grace.” . .” Mr. Biden, who was then mourning his son Beau, who had died of cancer weeks earlier, returned a few days later to pray with the congregation at church.
Mr. Biden has often attributed his decision to run for president in 2020 to Mr. Trump’s racist provocations, especially when Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But Mr. Biden has lost support among black supporters, who could be crucial to his hopes of beating Mr. Trump in a rematch this year.
Twenty-two percent of black voters in six battleground states told pollsters from The New York Times and Siena College last fall that they would vote for Trump, while the president drew 71 percent. Such support signals a surge for Mr. Trump, who won 6 percent of black voters nationally in 2016 and 8 percent in 2020.
Black Democrats in South Carolina helped save Biden’s flagship campaign for the party’s 2020 nomination after weak showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. The president has since orchestrated South Carolina’s emergence as the first primary state for 2024. To shore up support, Democrats have flooded the state with money, staff and surrogates in recent weeks ahead of the Feb. 3 primary.
After his appearance in Charleston on Monday, Mr. Biden is scheduled to fly to Dallas for a wake for former Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a trailblazing Black congresswoman for three decades who died last week at the age of 89.