US President Joe Biden addresses Morehouse College graduates during commencement ceremonies in Atlanta, Georgia, US, May 19.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
Chairperson Joe Biden on Sunday mentioned the war in Gaza and discussed his investment Black community in his opening speech at Morehouse Collegepart of a larger effort to energize the voter alliance that helped elect him in 2020.
“We are connecting Black neighborhoods cut off by aging freeways and decades of disinvestment,” the president said at Morehouse, a historically Black men’s college in Atlanta. when no one cares about the community.”
The president highlighted several other policy wins to appeal to his audience, including his own. student loan assistance program and $16 billion in new investments in historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.
Biden’s commencement speech at Morehouse was given recently vote has shown a decline in enthusiasm for the president among black voters, especially young ones.
Biden’s support among Black voters so far is 7 percentage points lower than the same period in 2020, according to one report. NBC News average of national polls as of April 1. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trumpsupport among Black voters increased by 9 percentage points. But Biden still has the majority of support from Black voters, at 69% compared to Trump’s 18%.
While he remains strong with older Black voters, Biden’s weakness with younger voters is partly due to ongoing tensions in the Israel-Hamas war, which has peaked in recent weeks. recently when university has become a hotbed of protest.
“Your voices should be heard and I promise you I hear them,” Biden said in the speech. “What is happening in Gaza and Israel is heartbreaking. … That is why I am calling for an immediate ceasefire.”
The nearly half-hour speech was largely uninterrupted by protests, although some students and faculty expressed support for Gaza during the ceremony. Biden’s remarks were even well received by some students.
“I was pleased with what he said,” Morehouse graduating senior Sebastian Gordon told NBC News after the speech. “I will continue to monitor to ensure his actions are consistent with that.”
Morehouse’s speech is a spearhead of a multifaceted strategy to reach out to a coalition of Black voters and recapture the momentum that carried Biden to the White House in 2020, when 87% of Black voters supported him, according to NBC News exit polling data.
On Saturday, before his commencement speech, Biden held a campaign event with Georgia voters and is scheduled to meet with small business owners in Detroit the following Sunday, after which he is scheduled to speak before the NAACP, according to a campaign memo obtained by the NAACP. NBC News.
The campaign events come alongside an administration-wide effort to explain why Biden would be an effective president for Black communities.
Vice president Kamala Harris spent years reaching out to Black voters during Biden’s first term. Most recently, she was there for a week.”Economic Opportunity Tour,” highlights the administration’s efforts to reduce costs and promote economic freedom for underserved groups, especially the Black community.
That pitch doesn’t just come from the top of the ticket.
For example, Undersecretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, who often makes international trips to discuss economic security issues at the G7 level, has traveled around US battleground states to highlight the US agenda. Biden’s economics.
Adeyemo is scheduled to tour Nevada, a key voting bloc, with state Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford on Monday to tout Biden’s progress in reducing energy costs and take care of children.
That follows a trip to Wisconsin last Thursday with the Harris Economic Opportunity Tour.
“The number of Black small businesses has doubled under the Biden-Harris administration,” Adeyemo said at Thursday’s event. “And when black Americans do well, everyone does well.”
