RICHLAND, S.C. \u2014 On two weekends in January, President Biden turned up at churches in South Carolina, telling parishioners about the racism and hatred he ran for office to combat, then detailing the progress Black Americans have made since then.<\/p>\n
Vice President Harris visited this state, too, speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration to criticize efforts \u201cto erase, overlook, and rewrite the ugly parts of our past.\u201d First lady Jill Biden addressed South Carolina teachers last week, urging them to support her husband.<\/p>\n
And Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), one of the co-chairs of Biden\u2019s reelection campaign, said he had to apologize to organizers of a Democratic Party gala recently for going overtime in enumerating everything Biden has done for Black voters.<\/p>\n
There is little mystery about how Biden will fare in Saturday\u2019s South Carolina Democratic primary, where the sitting president is expected to easily capture his party\u2019s first official 2024 contest. The outcome in November is not a nail-biter, either: South Carolina\u2019s electoral votes have gone reliably red for half a century, including 2020, when Trump won the state by nearly 12 percentage points.<\/p>\n
It is unusual for a president seeking reelection to lavish time and energy on a state that is not remotely up for grabs. But Biden seems to view South Carolina as a stage for sending a message to skeptical Black voters more broadly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the lowest Black unemployment rate recorded in a long, long time,\u201d Biden said at Emanuel A.M.E. Zion church in Charleston, interspersing economic tidbits with soaring calls for racial equity. \u201cMore Black Americans have health insurance than ever, bringing peace of mind and dignity to their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clyburn, one of the senior Black officials in America, argued that Biden has a strong case. \u201cOn substance, there hasn\u2019t been a Democratic president that has done as much for Black Americans in this country since Lyndon Johnson,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Yet polls suggest some Black Americans are disappointed with Biden\u2019s record. A Pew Research Center poll in January found that 48 percent of Blacks nationally approved of Biden, and 49 percent disapproved. That was down from January 2023, when 60 percent of Black Americans approved and 35 percent disapproved.<\/p>\n
The Biden team sees South Carolina, which rescued Biden\u2019s teetering candidacy four years ago, as an opportunity to shore up and re-energize a loyal constituency.<\/p>\n
Operatives on both sides foresee a tight potential general election matchup between Biden and former president Donald Trump, the leading GOP contender. Biden\u2019s speeches are routinely interrupted by demonstrators unhappy with his handling of the conflict in the Middle East. And even supporters worry that the electorate has not connected improvements in their lives with Biden\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
Clyburn conceded that Black voters are not overly excited about Biden, but he blamed Republicans. \u201cThe enthusiasm is not there because [Republicans] are working full time tamping down enthusiasm, misrepresenting what\u2019s out there,\u201d Clyburn said. \u201cWe know the misinformation is out there. We know where it\u2019s coming from. And those of us who know need to make other people understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
In visit after visit to South Carolina, Biden, Harris and a small army of campaign surrogates have highlighted the benefits the administration has brought to Black voters, who are central to the president\u2019s coalition.<\/p>\n
At Emanuel A.M.E. Zion last month, Biden stressed that the same sort of grievance that led a man to kill nine members of that congregation in 2015 motivated a pro-Trump mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in 2020.<\/p>\n
In Richland, Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu noted that the president had worked to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month to control diabetes, a disease that afflicts Black people at disproportionately higher rates. In the state\u2019s capital on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harris spoke of Republicans who \u201cattack the sacred freedom to vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden and his allies regularly remind Black voters in South Carolina that their ballots on Saturday will affect how other people view Biden across the country \u2014 just like four years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s because of this congregation and the Black community of South Carolina \u2014 not exaggeration \u2014 and Jim Clyburn that I stand here today as your president,\u201d Biden said at the Emanuel church. \u201cBecause of all of you. That\u2019s a fact. That\u2019s a fact. And I owe you.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2020, Biden had taken fourth place in the Iowa caucuses, calling it a \u201cgut punch.\u201d He did even worse in New Hampshire, and on the night of the Granite State\u2019s primary, he instead dashed to South Carolina, telling voters in a fiery speech that the preferences of Black Americans had not yet been heard.<\/p>\n
Eighteen days later, Biden won South Carolina\u2019s primary in commanding fashion, catapulting him to a slew of Super Tuesday victories and, ultimately, the Democratic presidential nomination.<\/p>\n
In the general election, Black voters helped Biden land victories in swing states such as Georgia. The nation faced a racial reckoning in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and Biden and the Democrats made equity a central plank of their platform, pledging to fight for voting rights, police reform and, more broadly, an end to systemic inequality.<\/p>\n
But many of those initiatives have been stymied in Congress. In 2022, Biden signed an executive order on police reform that fell short of the more sweeping legislation he\u2019d hoped for.<\/p>\n
In many ways, Biden has spent the past three years repaying South Carolina for its pivotal role in sending him to the White House. He put his weight behind making the South Carolina primary first in the nation, saying its population represents the party\u2019s diversity far more than Iowa\u2019s or New Hampshire\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Political analysts give several reasons for the declining enthusiasm for Biden among Black voters: Many of the race-related promises that Democrats campaigned on in 2020 have not come to pass. They did not have enough votes to codify voting rights protections into law. Efforts at police and criminal justice reform fizzled as Republicans accused Democrats of being soft on crime.<\/p>\n
Others cite a lack of information about the advances Black people have made under Biden, including the appointment of Black officials to numerous high-profile positions as well as the brick-and-mortar projects that have come to Black neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Biden and Democrats have been delivering is tangible. You can feel it. You can touch it. You might be able to hear it if you ride down the interstate,\u201d said Christale Spain, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. \u201cSo it does excite people when they realize \u2018Oh, that was Biden. This did happen because of Biden.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Spain said the Biden campaign\u2019s effort to talk about searing racial struggles in this Southern state has been especially potent.<\/p>\n
An estimated 80 percent of African Americans can trace their ancestry through the Port of Charleston. The state was the first to secede from the United States during the Civil War, and the Confederate Flag flew over the statehouse until 2015. Emanuel A.M.E. Zion, where Biden spoke on Jan. 7, was the site of a mass shooting of church parishioners by a man who said he hoped to ignite a race war.<\/p>\n
Biden and his surrogates have tried to stress his administration\u2019s high-profile achievements: He ushered in the first Black woman as vice president and the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court Justice. He has appointed more Black women to the federal bench than all other presidents combined.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the president\u2019s team has sought to highlight economic benefits baked into the larger bills that Biden has pushed through Congress.<\/p>\n
Clyburn said many people assume that because Biden isn\u2019t full of fiery venom on the campaign trail, he must not be fighting hard for Black Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ask them a question, \u2018What\u2019s your problem with Joe Biden?\u2019 and they immediately start talking about his style \u2014 \u2018He doesn\u2019t seem like he\u2019s fighting for us,\u2019\u201d Clyburn said. \u201cFor some people, you\u2019ve got to be yelling. You\u2019ve got to be calling people names to show that you\u2019re fighting. You can fight a pretty good battle with a pen and a piece of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
But some party insiders say the enthusiasm problems run deeper than messaging.<\/p>\n
Black voters often have a hard time squaring what Biden supporters tout as one of the most successful presidencies in history with what they see as a dearth of progress on issues like voting rights, and sometimes with a lack of visible changes in their communities, they say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn South Carolina, the negative statistics are still off the charts,\u201d said one South Carolina Democratic strategist, who asked not to be named for fear of sullying relationships. \u201cYou name it: infant mortality, and diabetes, and we\u2019re still 43rd in education. Black people are bearing the brunt of the worst of what Republican domination has done to South Carolina. But we are expected now to be the reason why Biden is running again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fletcher Smith, a former state representative who was a Biden surrogate in the 2020 primary, said he is worried that Biden is leaning too heavily on symbolism and lofty words, rather than the specifics of what he has brought to the community.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s signature achievements, from an infrastructure law to a climate package, were designed in part to put resources into Black communities, his supporters say, but that is not always recognized.<\/p>\n
\u201cSymbolism can get you only so far. We want to know what you\u2019re going to do,\u201d Smith said. \u201cHow many Blacks were actually standing up there saying they\u2019re going to make some money with the infrastructure bill? If you don\u2019t have Black folks out there with some shovels, saying, \u2018We\u2019re going to make some money, too,\u2019 it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to go down there and talk about God and an equal piece of the pie and all that. But we want to see real results.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
RICHLAND, S.C. \u2014 On two weekends in January, President Biden turned up at churches in South Carolina, telling parishioners about the racism and hatred he ran for office to combat, then detailing the progress Black Americans have made since then. Vice President Harris visited this state, too, speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}