Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said Saturday that black voters cannot be taken for granted in the 2024 presidential election between President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The Georgia Democrat made the comment as polling data indicate the president’s support is waning among black voters. Just before he appeared on MSNBC to discuss the matter, the network flashed a clip from a USA Today report showing black support for Biden at 56% and 54% in Pennsylvania and Michigan, respectively. Both are states the president will almost certainly need to win to keep the White House, and both figures are 20-point drops from 2020.
Warnock, who is also a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, said he has intertwined his two lines of work to preach the gospel, which he pointed out “literally means ‘good news,’” of the Biden-Harris administration and its record on matters of concern to black voters.
The senator said black wealth is up 60% from pre-pandemic levels, touted the administration’s move to cancel student loan debt for 5 million people, and praised the $16 billion invested in historically black colleges and universities.
“I know that there’s work to be done,” Warnock said. “People are still struggling after coming out of a once-in-a-century pandemic. The question is: Who’s going to stand up with black America? Joe Biden has receipts. Donald Trump has enough problems of his own.”
Host Charles Coleman Jr. asked Warnock about the effectiveness of the Biden campaign’s messaging to black voters, which the senator portrayed as superior to that of the former president.
“Black voters cannot be taken for granted, and I like the fact that (the) Biden-Harris campaign is not taking black voters for granted,” Warnock said. “This idea that black folks should just show up is wrong-headed, and I believe that Joe Biden understands that — Kamala Harris certainly understands it — which is why, as we move forward into this campaign, you will see the ways in which they have invested far more than Donald Trump.”
Warnock’s comments come on the same day as Trump’s rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, one that was specifically designed to court black voters. He likened Biden’s 2024 contest against the former president to his own 2022 Senate campaign, “as if black people are so unsophisticated that they couldn’t tell the difference between (Herschel Walker) and me.”
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“The question for voters is: Do you want to go backwards, or do you want to go forward?” Warnock said. “I think that the contrast could not be more stark here.”
Biden and Trump are set for their first debate of the 2024 election cycle at 9 p.m. Thursday in Warnock’s home state. CNN will televise the event at its Atlanta studio.
