Democrats on Sunday fanned out on the major cable TV talk shows in defense of President Joe Biden‘s record with predictions that by November he would win a second term behind the support of Black voters.
Recent polling in a handful of swing states shows support for the incumbent Democratic president slipping with a voting bloc that was crucial to electing him in 2020. In Pennsylvania, for example, 69% of Black voters said they favored Biden over Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who earned 91% percent of the Black vote during his 2022 Senate run, said during an appearance on CNN that he still thinks the president will “prevail” in Pennsylvania.
“Joe Biden is showing up again and again,” Fetterman said. “I can’t speak specifically about the Black (voters) and their own opinions. I can’t speak to their experience. But I do believe that Joe Biden is going to carry those kinds of margins and I think he is going to win Pennsylvania. But it’s going to be very close.”
While Fetterman appeared on the Sunday show, Biden took the stage in Atlanta as the commencement speaker for Morehouse College, a historically Black men’s college.
The Biden speech follows a series of events by the president aimed at engaging Black voters, including marking the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Biden met with families of the plaintiffs in the Oval Office on Thursday and on Friday, the day of the anniversary, gave remarks at the African American History Museum in Washington, D.C.
The president will also be in Michigan, another swing state, later Sunday to speak at the Detroit Branch NAACP’s annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, suggested that better messaging on what the Biden administration has done for Black Americans may help his reelection campaign.
“It’s about whether or not people understand what he has done for them. It’s tough to kind of connect the dots sometimes. And honestly, this administration has done so much,” Crockett told CNN Sunday. “They’ve done so much, but I don’t think that the information has been pushed out continually.”
Among the list of achievements, Crockett said, is a historic investment in historically Black colleges and universities, like Morehouse. “I think that Black folk need to know that this administration has actually invested in them,” Crockett said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats defend Biden and his record with Black voters
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