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Vice President Kamala Harris pivoted her campaign to Black voters on Monday amid signs that former President Donald Trump’s support among this critical voting bloc threatens to sink her chances of becoming America’s first Black female president.
Ms. Harris announced an “opportunity agenda” for Black men who, polls show, are gravitating toward Mr. Trump in record numbers. Her five-point plan included legalizing recreational marijuana, regulating digital currency, providing “fully forgivable” startup loans, incentives to become teachers and apprenticeship programs.
She said her strategy “focused on equipping Black men with the tools to achieve financial freedom, lower costs to better provide for themselves and their families and protect their rights.”
The Harris campaign also increased its outreach to Black voters in crucial swing states by deploying former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures such as Stacey Abrams. They labeled Mr. Trump a racist whose agenda would hurt Black Americans.
At a Pittsburgh campaign field office, Mr. Obama urged a group of Black men in Pennsylvania to vote for Ms. Harris in the pivotal swing state. On Monday, Mr. Clinton campaigned in south Georgia, seeking to shore up Black voter support for the vice president.
“She’s panicking,” said Vernon Jones, a former Democrat and Trump supporter who served as the first Black county executive in Georgia and served in the state legislature. “They don’t know what the hell to do.”
SEE ALSO: Harris pledges plan to help Black men ‘build wealth’ as they gravitate toward Trump
In Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama told Black men, “We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. That seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Ms. Harris, he told them, “grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes with that.”
Black Trump supporters said Mr. Obama’s lecture amounted to an attempt to scold them into backing a candidate without a plan to turn around the economy and secure the southern border.
“He essentially tried to guilt-trip Black men into voting for a candidate who seemingly doesn’t give a damn about us. And I think that that sort of hubris is going to be their undoing as we approach November,” said C.J. Pearson, a member of the Black Men for Trump Advisory Council and co-chair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council.
Less than three weeks before the election, Ms. Harris, the nation’s first Black female nominee for president, is in the unusual position of having to provide incentives for Black voters, typically the most reliable Democratic voting bloc.
Polls show that Black voters support Ms. Harris overwhelmingly over Mr. Trump.
SEE ALSO: Kamala Harris accused of plagiarism in her 2009 book
Still, the shift toward Mr. Trump in 2024 has been unstoppable. Even a few percentage points, especially in swing states, will make a massive difference in the election outcome.
In 2020, Black voters comprised 11% of the electorate, casting more than 17 million votes. Nearly 9 out of 10 voted for Mr. Biden, playing a decisive role in his narrow victory.
Now, Black voters may prove to be Ms. Harris’ downfall.
Among likely Black voters polled recently by the New York Times/Siena College, Mr. Trump received 15% of support, a jump of several percentage points from 2020, when presidential exit polls found him with 7% to 12% of support.
Mr. Biden won the 2020 election with help from 87% of Black voters, but polls show Ms. Harris doesn’t have the same level of support.
The New York Times/Siena poll found among Black likely voters, 78% said they would vote for Ms. Harris, nearly a 10% drop from the support for Mr. Biden in 2020 and a difference that would amount to millions of lost votes for Ms. Harris.
Some polls show Mr. Trump cutting even further into support among Black voters, particularly young men.
An NAACP poll conducted in September found that more than 25% of Black men younger than 50 would vote for Mr. Trump.
Growing support for Mr. Trump among Black men turned up in the New York Times/Siena College poll.
The poll found that 20% of Black men planned to vote for Mr. Trump, a share that could doom Ms. Harris.
“If Trump gets close to 20% of Black males, it will be extremely difficult for Harris to win the election. And right now, Trump appears to have all the momentum,” Democratic strategist and political analyst Doug Schoen told The Washington Times.
The same poll found less support among Black women, 83%, for Ms. Harris than the 90% who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020.
The polls suggest Mr. Trump could win more Black votes than any other Republican since 1960, when 29% voted for Richard Nixon in an election he narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy.
The Trump campaign seized on the former president’s support among Black voters. A campaign memo released Monday declared, “Kamala Harris is in full-blown desperation mode as she spends the waning days of the campaign attempting to stop the bleeding among voting blocs most traditionally aligned with Democrats.”
The campaign listed Mr. Trump’s first-term accomplishments for helping Black Americans, including record-low unemployment, record-low poverty and an increase in median household income. The memo touted the $250 million in annual funding Mr. Trump signed into law for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Mr. Jones said Ms. Harris announced her agenda too late to make a difference with Black voters. He said they felt left behind by Democratic leadership, which led to inflation, skyrocketing interest rates and millions of illegal immigrants flooding into communities.
“She comes in now with a Christmas tree with all these ornaments on it when the lights don’t work,” Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Trump lost Georgia by 12,000 votes in 2020, but Mr. Jones said the Black vote could hand the former president the state this time.
“He’s going to get a lot more than 12,000 votes from just Blacks alone.”
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