Washington DC - President Joe Biden is facing tough reelection odds as Black voters increasingly move away from the Democratic Party. Delivering on reparations may be the answer to his growing problem.

That is the message Kamm Howard of the Earn the Black Vote Campaign wants the president to hear as the 2024 election heats up.

Citing data from an AI-powered company called Resonate, Howard said there are at least 2.9 million Black voters in the US who disapprove of Biden and do not support his bid for a second term.

Long considered the most loyal Democratic voting bloc, many Black Americans, who comprise around 20% of the party's base, are considering voting third party, Republican, or not at all.

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Various polls have affirmed this shift. A YouGov survey released this month found that 70% of Black Americans would vote for Biden if he were up against Donald Trump.

These numbers make for a bleak outlook for Democrats, who Howard said have historically needed a large turnout and around 89% of the Black vote to win the presidency. With 2.9 million Black Americans staying home or casting ballots for another candidate, Biden is not expected to secure the votes he needs to remain in the White House.

"With those numbers, [Biden] cannot win. That's a sure victory for the Republican Party," Howard warned. "The regular, die-hard Black Democratic voters are going to vote, but that in of itself is not going to win. It's not going to be a margin of victory for the Democratic Party."

"He has to find a way to turn these Black voters, Democratic voters, back on."

The issue, Howard insisted, is that Democrats are making the wrong pitch when it comes to activating Black voters.

"The Democratic Party is putting a lot of money into this messaging on what Biden has done over his previous two to three years, and Black voters are saying that's not enough. You can tell us that until whenever, but that's not going to move us," he said.

The US' racial wealth gap – totaling at least $14 trillion – will take generations to close, with the Institute for Policy Studies and National Community Reinvestment Coalition finding that one in five Black Americans lived in poverty in 2021 compared to one in 12 white Americans.

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Black communities are also ravaged by predatory policing and mass incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Black Americans account for over 38% of the US prison population, despite making up just 13% of the country's overall population.

Meanwhile, many Black men are locked out of the formal labor force at higher rates than white men, while unemployment rates for Black Americans are higher than the national average, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

Biden running on past record isn't going to cut it given these stark socioeconomic realities.

"Black people have already made the decision. 2.9 million have already made the decision they're not voting for you, man. Your only hope of turning that around is an executive order establishing a reparations commission," Howard said.

"Especially with what you're doing in Ukraine and what you're doing in Israel, you're turning more people off, so there's nothing you can talk about with past record that's going to change that," he continued.

"The only thing you can do – and you can do it right now – is establish the reparations commission to chart the healing and repair of the Black community going into the future."

A federal reparations commission would gather a panel of experts to research the ongoing impacts of chattel slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, as well as present-day anti-Black policies and craft a blueprint to address those harms.

Though creating the commission might not have an immediate effect on Black Americans' material conditions, Howard thinks it would give Biden a critical opportunity:

"The only path to victory is an executive order now, and you have to do it quick enough for us to get these Black voters who have turned away from you, to inform them of the importance and the benefit to them in the next administration of them voting right now."

In taking this step, Biden has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Black voters in a 2021 Congressional Black Caucus poll indicated that reparations is their top issue, over voting rights, infrastructure, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

A reparations commission also has support within the president's own party. Democratic-led states – including California, New York, and Illinois – are joining blue cities around the country in forming task forces to address their legacies of white supremacy.

In the previous Congress, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act (HR 40) had 217 confirmed "yes" votes in the House and 23 co-sponsors in the Senate. The Democratic National Committee endorsed a reparations study commission in its 2020 platform, a position it affirmed at its March 2022 Winter Meeting. Biden himself included a reparations study in his 2020 Lift Every Voice plan for Black America.

"[Biden] has gotten the message from as many places as he needs to get it from for him to make the wise choice, and if he doesn't, he can say goodbye to his presidency and he can say goodbye to the Democratic Party leading this branch of the government for a long time," Howard said.

The timeline is key: Black communities could start seeing targeted repair within the second half of the next administration if Biden signs an executive order now on a two-year reparations commission.

But if Republicans win the 2024 presidential election, the commission itself could come under threat.

"We definitely don't want a Republican to rescind the executive order as [President Andrew] Johnson did with Special Field Orders No. 15, where he rescinded the 40 acres and a mule because he was of a different party," Howard said.

In this way, establishing a commission could create an incentive for dissatisfied Black voters demanding concrete steps toward reparative justice to once again cast their vote for Biden.

Earn the Black Vote is engaging communities through teach-ins, a postcard campaign, and various working groups – all in an effort to ensure the White House and voters around the country get the message.

"We're telling Black voters: if you're a Republican or a Democrat, your vote must be earned, and it must be earned by reparations," Howard stressed.

"If neither party is going to act on reparations now before the election, then why are you committed to that party?"