Biden heads to South Carolina church rampage site to underline support for racial justice

President Biden Monday was set to head to where a racist gunman killed nine parishioners in an effort to . The president’s emotional return to the scene of is aimed at reminding “the American people that the same hate that plagued the Mother Emanuel Church years ago hasn’t gone away,” one . The visit could also distinguish Biden from Republican rivals who have stumbled when discussing the Civil War and slavery.

The speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church comes just a couple of days after with a speech warning about the danger to democracy posed by former President Donald Trump tied to the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack. “Rather than a cookie cutter launch — you know, here are my five policy platforms — he’s speaking to people in a way that connects that and that lays out the stark challenges that are coming down the barrel,” said Kate Bedingfield, a former top Biden communications aide.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D South Carolina) said to reverse sagging poll numbers reflecting soft support among the Democratic base. “We have not been able to break through (and tell) people exactly what this president has done,” said Clyburn, an elder statesman in the party who is widely with his timely backing.

It was June 17, 2015, when Dylann Roof, a white man, shot and killed nine Black parishioners in what Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston, where then President Barack Trump, the dominant Republican presidential front runner, was not in office at the time and has denounced the shooting as “horrible.” But Democrats want to tie Trump’s current ugly rhetoric to violence including Jan.

6, 2021 and the 2017 white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia that . The Charleston speech comes two days after Trump inexplicably suggested that President Abraham by negotiating with the slave holding South. His claim came after Nikki Haley, one of his only serious rivals in the GOP presidential race, stumbled by when a voter asked her what caused the Civil War.

Democrats believe that Trump’s remarks will galvanize Black voters and perhaps other traditional Democratic voters behind Biden’s campaign, especially when coupled with the former president’s increasingly harsh rhetoric about immigrants and support for the violent Jan. 6 attack. Biden heads into the presidential campaign year beset by .

He is doing particularly poorly among : Blacks, Latinos and young voters. Aides hope to use a series of events to make specific appeals to those normally strong Democratic voting blocs and to remind them over why they voted against Trump in overwhelming numbers in 2016 and 2020. Unlike Trump, Biden does not face a serious primary challenge and is virtually certain to be the Democratic nominee, barring some unforeseen crisis.

The rejiggered official Democratic primary race kicks off in South Carolina in February, although rival that the party does not recognize. In his Jan. 6 anniversary speech, Biden told supporters that , not the nation’s shared future. “Trump is now promising a full scale campaign of ‘revenge’ and ‘retribution’ — his words — for some years to come,” Biden .

“They were his words, not mine. He went on to say he would be a dictator on Day One.”.