A ‘Laundry List’ or a ‘Feel’: Biden and Trump’s Clashing Appeals to Black Voters

President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump both see Black outreach as critical to winning in November. But their approaches differ in fundamental and revealing ways. As President Biden took the stage in Philadelphia on Wednesday to kick off his Black voter outreach program, he methodically ticked through more than a dozen accomplishments, executive orders, appointments, investments and economic statistics. “The bottom line,” Mr. Biden said in summing up his pitch, “is we’ve invested more in Black America than any previous administration in history has.” It was a compelling catalog that stood in contrast to the blunt appeal that his rival, former President Donald J. Trump, had made a week earlier about the economy at a rally in the Bronx designed to highlight his appeal to nonwhite voters. “African Americans,” Mr. Trump had said, “are getting slaughtered.” The two events captured a fundamental difference between the Black outreach that both camps see as crucial to winning in 2024. Mr. Biden has a list. Mr. Trump has a vibe. Black voters are at the very foundation of the Democratic coalition, pivotal electoral building blocks in cities across the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and beyond. And while polls...