Biden Risks Losing Significant Share of Black Vote, King Says
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden risks losing a significant share of Black votes in his rematch with Donald Trump unless his campaign improves his outreach strategy, said the daughter of slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
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“There are people in the Black community who are feeling like not a lot has changed,” Bernice King said Wednesday in a Bloomberg TV interview.
King, chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, said the Biden campaign needs to figure out a way to reach young Black people who are “very disgruntled right now” with the president.
Black voters have long been a reliable mainstay of the Democratic Party. But Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee, is garnering 22% support from Blacks in battleground states including Georgia, a level unseen in modern times, according to recent polls by The New York Times and Siena College.
“It’s not going to be easy, unfortunately, but this probably is the most defining election of my time,” said King, who was 5 years old in 1968 when her father was assassinated.
Biden is scheduled to visit Atlanta this weekend to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College, a historically Black college.
“The messaging has to improve,” King said, including from his supporters. “The people who have benefited from the administration, should I say, need to be speaking, ‘Let me show you how this has impacted my life.”’
--With assistance from Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz.
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