Harris and Biden to address Black leaders amid battle for voters of color

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, addressing a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner Saturday night, are expected to highlight the stakes for Black Americans in November’s election and take aim at what they view as an effort by Republicans to tip the scales by rolling back voting rights.

Their joint appearance — culminating a series of events known as “CBC week” in Washington — is part of an intensive push by the Harris campaign to ramp up enthusiasm among Black voters, a critical voting bloc that could determine the outcome of the election in several battleground states.

At a fundraiser for her campaign earlier Saturday that featured high-profile Black Democrats like Sen. Laphonza Butler (Calif.) and Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), Harris called the November contest “probably the most important election of our lifetime,” and underlining the fight for voting rights as she outlined what she called a “freedom agenda” for the country.

She noted that Republican officials in Georgia pushed for a law that bars anyone from giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote. “The hypocrisy abounds,” Harris said. “Whatever happened to ‘Love thy neighbor?’ ” Republicans say the law’s intent is to prevent outside groups from trying to influence voters, while Democrats say it just makes it harder for Georgians to wait in long lines to vote.

Earlier this week at campaign events in Charlotte and Greensboro, N.C., the vice president sought to galvanize voters by noting the historical battle for voting rights in states like North Carolina and promising that as president she would fight to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would require changes to state voting laws to be cleared by the Justice Department to ensure they are not discriminatory.

“Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom, and now the baton is in our hands,” Harris said in Charlotte. “So we who believe in the sacred freedom to vote, will finally pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. … So much is at stake in this election.”

Although Harris would become the first woman of color elected president if she wins in November, she has deliberately avoided playing up that potential historic first in her campaign. The vice president, who joined a Black sorority while attending Howard University, does not explicitly mention her race or her gender in her stump speech, focusing instead on how her economic agenda could lower costs and the threats that she says Republican nominee Donald Trump poses to democracy.

But the possibility of crossing that historical milestone has ignited excitement about her bid among Black women voters, the most loyal Democratic constituency and one that helped deliver Biden the White House in 2020. Harris has carefully tended to that constituency, appearing several times this summer at gatherings held across the country by historically Black sororities and inviting the marching bands of historically Black colleges and universities to perform at her campaign events.

Biden was facing what his campaign viewed as a worrisome dip in support among Black voters before he dropped out of the race in late July. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that the commitment of Black Americans to vote this fall rose after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee.

The Post-Ipsos poll of 1,083 Black Americans found that 69 percent said they are “absolutely certain to vote” in November, up from 62 percent in April. Still, that was a drop from the 74 percent who had said they were “absolutely certain to vote” in June 2020.

With an eye toward shoring up their support among Black voters, both Biden and Harris have appeared at numerous events honoring Black leaders in recent months, and the administration has been highlighting its work on behalf of HBCUs.

Biden spoke Friday at what was billed as the first-ever brunch hosted by the White House in honor of “Black excellence.” Next week, the president heads to Philadelphia as that city hosts the 2024 National HBCU conference.

Harris — who has given few interviews since she began running for president — will participate in a “fireside chat” hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday.

That organization recently hosted Trump for a similar conversation, in which he questioned Harris’s racial identity and said she “happened to turn Black” recently, suggesting she had adopted that identity for political purposes. Harris has written extensively throughout her career about the impact of being raised in a multiracial household as the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

Trump’s remarks outraged many of Harris’s supporters, but she dismissed them both in a television interview and during the recent presidential debate, noting Trump’s long history of racially divisive rhetoric. “Same old tired playbook,” Harris said in the CNN interview. “Next question, please.”

Harris next week is headed to the critical battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan as she tries to shore up the “blue wall” states that are the linchpin of Democrats’ ability to hold the White House in November. In Michigan, she will join Oprah Winfrey at a “Unite for America” live stream event that organizers say will bring together about 140 grassroots groups that formed after Harris’s entry into the presidential race.