(Headline USA) Joe Biden spent the final days of the presidential campaign appealing to black supporters to vote in-person during a pandemic that has disproportionately affected their communities, betting that a strong turnout will boost his chances in states that could decide the election.
Biden was in Philadelphia on Sunday, the largest city in what is emerging as the most hotly contested battleground states in the closing 48 hours of the campaign. He participated in a “souls to the polls” event that is part of a nationwide effort to organize black churchgoers to vote.
“Every single day we’re seeing race-based disparities in every aspect of this virus,” Biden said at the drive-in event, shouting to be heard over the blaring car horns.
He declared that Trump’s handling of COVID-19 was “almost criminal” and that the pandemic was a “mass casualty event in the black community.”
The event followed President Donald Trump’s massive rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, which drew an estimated 57,000 supporters. The showing drove fear among Democrats, with Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman urging voters to get their ballots in.
“The President is popular in PA,” he tweeted. “I don’t care what polls say. With 700K ballots still out there, you need to BANK YOUR BALLOT. Use a Dropbox. Get them in.”
Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, was in Georgia, a longtime Republican stronghold that Democrats believe could flip if black voters show up in force. The first black woman on a major party’s presidential ticket, she encouraged a racially diverse crowd in a rapidly growing Atlanta suburb to “honor the ancestors” by voting, invoking the memory of the late civil rights legend, longtime Rep. John Lewis.
She later campaigned in Goldsboro and Fayetteville, North Carolina, two cities with a large share of black voters.
But even as 93 million Americans have cast ballots and election officials prepare to count, Trump was already threatening litigation to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day. As soon as polls closed in battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania, Trump said, “we’re going in with our lawyers.”
It was unclear precisely what Trump meant. There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
The state’s top court ordered the extension and the Supreme Court refused to block it, though conservative justices expressed interest in taking up the propriety of the three added days after the election. Those ballots are being kept separate in case the litigation goes forward. The issue could assume enormous importance if the late-arriving ballots could tip the outcome.
Biden is focusing on turning out black voters in the final stretch, a sign that the numbers they usually expect to support Democrat candidates are not there this year.
It’s a challenging dynamic because Democrats have spent months pushing their supporters to vote by mail. But their energy has shifted to urge black supporters who have long preferred to vote in person or distrust voting by mail to get out on Tuesday.
Biden, who has a massive cash advantage over Trump, has flooded the airwaves with uplifting ads that prominently feature African Americans.
One minute-long spot detailing Biden’s proposals to help Black people begins with Biden explicitly stating, “Black lives matter. Period. I’m not afraid to say it.”
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
