By During a trip to Pittsburgh, former President Barack Obama made a direct statement to black men: shut up and vote for Kamala Harris.
NPR writes that “recent polls show Trump has made inroads with Black male voters. Obama, the first Black president, said he wanted to “speak some truths” about that.
‘My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that 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,’ he said.
He chided voters who were voting for Trump or not casting a vote at all.
‘And you are thinking about sitting out?’ he said. ‘Part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — 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 other reasons for that.’”
Not every Democrats took a liking to the former president’s message.
Nina Turner, a former delegate for Barack Obama laid into the former president for his comments in an op-ed for Newsweek.
His words made my jaw hit the floor. In fact, they made my blood boil.
President Obama had some choice words for the enthusiasm gap for Vice President Harris specifically when it comes to Black men. “My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that 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,” President Obama said, and then went on to lecture Black men about their lack of support for Harris. “Part of it makes me think—and I’m speaking to men directly—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 other reasons for that.”
I was infuriated to hear these remarks. No other group of voters is talked to like this, as if they are children. But it’s not just the paternalistic tone that had me enraged. It’s the underlying message in his words—that Black men are misogynistic and can’t bring themselves to vote for a woman.
This vilification of our men is out of line. For starters, it’s false. Black men are socialized in the same patriarchal society that every other American man is socialized in, yet when Secretary Hillary Clinton ran for President in 2016, 81 percent of Black men voted for her, while only 32 percent of white men did the same.
The problem for Harris, according to Turner, isn’t the misogyny that Obama pointed to, but something more: they’re fed up with Democrats generally. She continued: “The Black men I speak to who are not enthusiastic about Vice President Harris are not enthusiastic with the Democratic Party as a whole. They feel left behind and ignored. Black men are concerned with the economy, jobs, the criminal justice system, and wages—issues they do not see the Democratic Party addressing aggressively enough.”
The polling bears that out. The Associated Press reported that a recent survey showed “Black voters are less certain of whether Harris would set the country on a better trajectory, or make a substantial difference in their own lives. Only about half of Black voters say “would change the country for the better” describes Harris very or extremely well, while about 3 in 10 say it describes her “somewhat well” and about 2 in 10 say it describes her “not very well” or “not well at all.” And only about half believe the outcome of this presidential election will have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of impact on them personally, an assessment that’s in line with Americans overall.”
Another poll, this time by The New York Times, revealed that Harris “still significantly trails Mr. Biden’s 2020 share of that vital Democratic constituency, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of Black likely voters.”
The newspaper noted that Harris has to do at least as well as Biden if she has any shot of winning. “Democrats have been banking on a tidal wave of support from Black voters, drawn by the chance to elect the first Black female president and by revulsion toward former President Donald J. Trump, whose questioning of Ms. Harris’s racial identity, comments on “Black jobs” and demonizing of Haitian immigrants pushed his long history of racist attacks to the forefront of the campaign.
Ms. Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of Black voters, but Mr. Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a longstanding Democratic advantage. His campaign has relied on targeted advertising and sporadic outreach events to court African American voters — especially Black men — and has seen an uptick in support. About 15 percent of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago.
Much of the erosion in support for Ms. Harris is driven by a growing belief that Democrats, who have long celebrated Black voters as the “backbone” of their party, have failed to deliver on their promises, the poll showed. Forty percent of African American voters under 30 said the Republican Party was more likely to follow through on its campaign commitments than Democrats were.”
One voter surveyed summed it up clearly: “They sweep table scraps off the table like we’re a trained dog and say, ‘This is for you,’” LaPage Drake, 63, of Cedar Hill, Texas, just outside Dallas, said of the Democratic Party. “And we clap like trained seals. Regardless of how people call [Trump] racist and stuff, he is for the country of America.”
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