President Joe Biden's 2024 reelection campaign is relying on Vice President Kamala Harris to help communicate his platform to black and Latino voters, who express low enthusiasm amid economic struggles.
Harris has been deployed over the last few weeks to make several speeches to top black and Latino groups across the country. Last month, she spoke at historically black sorority Delta Sigma Theta’s 56th national convention, to UnidosUS, a prominent Latino civil rights organization, in Chicago, Illinois, and most recently to the NAACP's event in Boston, Massachusetts.
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The back-to-back events come as Biden's team looks to regain support among key minority groups that ensured his victory in 2020. These aren't necessarily the only groups that Harris is rallying support from. The campaign sees the vice president as a particularly effective coalition builder among young voters and women as well, which is only supplemented by her identity as a black and Indian woman. Further, while Harris isn't considered young, she is about 20 years Biden's junior, putting her in much closer proximity to youth voters.
The move is premised on the campaign's goal of playing to the strengths of Biden and Harris. For example, speeches to labor unions and manufacturers thus far have been helmed by the president.
Biden and Harris's early events with these groups are part of a larger strategy to coalesce each component of the Democratic and independent electorate around the president early on before he heads into a general election with the Republican nominee in 2024.
Harris's role, particularly when it comes to nurturing Biden's support with minority Americans, continued Tuesday as she headed to Orlando, Florida, to speak at the African Methodist Episcopal Church Quadrennial Convention. She was expected to renew criticism against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is currently running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
She recently attacked Florida's new black history teaching standards, saying "they want to replace history with lies, [and] middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefited from slavery." DeSantis pushed back wholeheartedly against her claim, accusing the vice president of lying.
Biden's 2024 campaign needs to ensure enthusiasm among key minority groups in order to win reelection. However, his approval among black and Latino Americans has declined since he took office in 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight. While he saw a dip in approval among black voters, he saw an even steeper decline with Latinos.
Additionally, voter turnout was relatively lower among black voters in the 2022 midterm elections.
In Georgia, which has become a key battleground state in recent years, Biden's struggle with black Americans is evident. According to Bloomberg, black voters in the second-largest Black population in the country, Atlanta, Georgia, are feeling the sting of inflation.
“Right now, they aren’t running and jumping that he is the candidate and would liked to have seen another voice,” said Billy Honor, organizing director at the New Georgia Project.
Voters in the populous, black metropolitan area are feeling particularly let down by the state of the economy and further by the disappointment of Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, which was squashed by the Supreme Court.
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The campaign, though, is confident that it can rebuild enthusiasm among this group. In the works is an aggressive media campaign that Biden's team expects to reach minority voters and address their concerns.
One bright spot for the campaign came in the form of the New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday. Biden's approval among black Americans increased by seven percentage points since October of 2022, reaching 60%. His approval from the Latino community, however, fell by seven points.