As Democrats amplify their concerns about President Biden’s status with Black voters, South Carolina has emerged as a proving ground for his campaign: one where he can test his message to a predominantly Black electorate and use it as a largely ceremonial launchpad for his re-election.
At events over the last few days, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris offered reverential, policy-heavy re-election pitches to largely Black audiences and celebrated the Black organizers and community leaders who helped deliver the White House to Democrats, starting with those in the Palmetto State.
They also drew a contrast with former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders, whose election denialism and efforts to “whitewash” history, they said, threaten the progress that Black Americans have spent generations fighting for.
Black voters have expressed frustration with the Biden administration for falling short on key campaign promises, and have shown less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden’s re-election in polls and interviews. But in South Carolina, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris aimed to highlight the lesser-known victories their administration has notched over the last three years, and they argued that a second term would allow them to achieve even more. Black voters’ disaffection with Democrats, campaign aides and allies argue, is rooted in their lack of awareness of the White House’s accomplishments rather than in fundamental flaws with the Biden-Harris ticket.
“People don’t understand exactly what role the president has,” said State Senator Tameika Isaac-Devine, who was elected to her Columbia-area seat on Jan. 3. “But when you break down the policy on ‘because of this act, you are able to get dot dot dot,’ I think that is where we have to do a better job.”
Their visits were the first of several they will make before the state’s primary election on Feb. 3, according to campaign aides. Their presence was reassuring to many of the Black lifelong Democrats in South Carolina who fear that Black voters nationally may not turn out in large numbers in November, helping hand the election to Mr. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination.
Carolyn Reynolds Brown, a retired school counselor from Charleston, S.C., attended Saturday’s event sporting a pink-and-green jacket emblazoned with the Greek letters Alpha Kappa Alpha, the same sorority that Ms. Harris belongs to. She welcomed Ms. Harris’s visit, and said the Democratic ticket’s heightened presence in the state could help voters turn out again and counter a troubling theme she has observed in U.S. politics.
“A lot of things that are happening in our country at this particular time seem to really play havoc on taking us back,” she said, pointing to herself while using “us” to refer to Black Americans. “As a race it is necessary for us to vote. It is necessary for us to be engaged.”
Standing in the pulpit at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where a white gunman killed nine Black parishioners in 2015, Mr. Biden excoriated the “poison” of white supremacy that he said had “ripped this nation apart” during the Civil War and Jim Crow eras. The United States, he said, was in “an era of the second lost cause” that could bring about a return of that same racial violence. But where multiracial democracy was again at stake, Mr. Biden argued, Black voters had an opportunity to salvage it.
“It’s because of this congregation and the Black community of South Carolina and — not an exaggeration — Jim Clyburn, that I stand here today as your president,” he said, referring to Representative James E. Clyburn, a staunch Biden ally and the state’s most influential Democrat.
Ms. Harris expressed a similar sentiment in a keynote address at the annual retreat of Emanuel’s Women’s Missionary Society on Saturday. Recalling the campaign four years ago, she told the group of Black women, which included many of the voters who helped elect Democrats in 2020, that “you showed up to vote, and you organized your friends and family members and neighbors to do the same.”
“I am here, of course, to say thank you for your work and your leadership and your vision for what is possible in our nation,” she continued.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris included several specific policy points in their speeches to emphasize that their administration has, indeed, delivered for Black Americans. They highlighted the record-low Black unemployment rate and large-scale investments in historically Black colleges and universities. Mr. Clyburn, who sat behind the president in Emanuel’s pulpit on Monday, underscored Mr. Biden’s efforts to reduce student loan debt and his appointment of a record number of Black judges to the federal bench during his presidency — appointments, he said, that include Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court.
“We know Joe. But more importantly, Joe knows us,” Mr. Clyburn told the congregation of more than 700, echoing the words he told South Carolina voters four years ago in an endorsement that revitalized the president’s lagging campaign. Mr. Biden rewarded the state by reordering the presidential primary calendar to put South Carolina first.
Democrats have invested heavily in South Carolina in recent weeks, hiring senior advisers and field staff workers to bolster the president’s re-election campaign, even as battleground states have yet to build strong organizations. In the coming weeks, Ms. Harris and several Democratic surrogates will return to the state to try to gin up enthusiasm among Black and rural voters. Ms. Harris will mark Martin Luther King’s Birthday next week from the State Capitol in Columbia alongside Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, and other national Democrats.
Still, Mr. Biden will have a greater challenge appealing to younger voters of color, who have signaled more openness to supporting a Republican in November or staying home altogether. To some South Carolina Democrats, playing up the administration’s accomplishments is unlikely to be enough to provoke enthusiasm among this bloc. Instead, it will require more targeted messaging — and not necessarily from those atop the ticket.
“I think it’s less about Black voters not understanding policy,” said State Representative J.A. Moore, a North Charleston Democrat whose sister was killed at Emanuel A.M.E. “I think it’s, are there messengers at the national level in the Democratic Party exciting the electorate to take action?”
Mr. Moore plans to join Democratic surrogates in campaigning across the state to encourage younger, more reluctant voters to turn out. “It’s not going to be enough to say, ‘We’ve done this,’” he later added. “I think it’s a style thing.”