Earlier today, Kamala Harris unveiled an economic plan geared towards a very specific audience: the “Opportunity Agenda for Black men.” The proposed policies include “fully forgivable” startup business loans; mentorship, education and training programs for jobs in “high-demand industries;” and healthcare programs targeting Black men’s health, who suffer disproportionately from ailments like prostate cancer and diabetes. Despite this particular demographic’s well-established history of voting for Democratic presidential candidates by a wide margin, Harris said she was not taking their support for granted: “Black men are like any other voting group; you’ve got to earn their vote […] So I’m working to earn the vote. Not assuming I’m going to have it because I am Black.”
The unveiling of Harris’ new plan comes after Barack Obama caused a stir last week when he criticized Black men who might not support Kamala Harris. In front of a crowd in Pittsburgh at a Harris campaign event on Thursday, the former President bemoaned a lack of “energy and turnout” that he says his own presidential campaign benefited from in 2008, adding that the problem “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.” He then went so far as to accuse those who don’t support the Democratic nominee of misogyny: “part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that.”
Obama’s statements elicited strong reactions from across the political spectrum, including progressives. “Why are Black men being belittled in ways that no other voting group [is]?” Asked former Ohio state Senator and Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner on CNN. Wendell Pierce, a film and television actor with a long record of political activism, called Obama’s statements an “awful message” in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating that “black men aren’t the problem. White men and White women are. No other group votes at 87-90% for Dems but Black folk. Men and women.”
Recent polling does appear to back up Pierce’s statements, as an AP poll from September shows roughly 7 in 10 Black voters holding a positive view of the Democratic nominee, with only slight differences between men and women. Still, experts say the trend over the course of multiple elections is cutting against those results. “Democrats have experienced erosion—a two-to-three-point erosion amongst Black men—in every election since Barack Obama exited the political stage,” says the head of HIT Strategies Terrance Woodbury, whose firm has done extensive work studying this issue. “This is not just a Kamala Harris problem. This is a Democratic Party problem.” In the 2020 election, Trump improved his margins with the Black community, gaining 12 percent of their vote, up two points from his victory in 2016.
An AP poll published today also showed that only around half of Black voters fully agreed that Harris “would change the country for the better,” with another 3in 10 saying that this statement describes her “somewhat well.” On the other hand, the same poll found that Black voters preferred Harris to Trump by wide margins on their top issues – the economy, health care, and crime.
That Harris will win the Black vote overall is not in question, but with the fine margins on which this election is playing according to polls, her campaign will need every advantage possible to put her over the top.
