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After Kamala Harris’ defeat, black voters wonder what went wrong

Pabio November 8, 2024

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Maurice Myers didn’t bother going to the polls.

The Pittsburgh native, who works a day job as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in Market Square, pursues entrepreneurial pursuits such as his TikTok channel with nearly 10,000 followers.

Nothing in the presidential election affects his everyday life, he said. The 44-year-old black man was inclined to vote for vice president. Kamala Harris based on concerns expressed by his mother, but he felt the Democratic candidate never tried to win his vote.

“I didn’t vote at all,” Myers said. “I just didn’t see the need for it.”

For many black men, Republicans Donald Trump’it’s decisive victory over Harris Tuesday landed like a punch to the gut.

Around 72 million Americans voted for the former president’s return to power, despite a record that notably called into question Harris’ racial legacy. two indictmentsA conviction for 34 crimes and the violence of January 6, 2021.

Trump defeated Harris by maintaining his base and widening his margins among black and Latino voters — a confusing statistic for many black men, who are trying to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

To win, many said, candidates must talk up front about policies and positions that are important to black voters, especially men. Then they need to persuade and mobilize black communities around these issues, said Khalil Thompson, a political strategist and veteran of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

“I believe this is not a strategy that either side has bought into — not just the Democrats — neither side,” said Thompson, founder and CEO of the grassroots organization Win With Black Men .

Black voters have long been the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting bloc, often catapulting Democrats to victory. That includes black men, who have been the second-largest bloc of progressive voters for decades, behind black women.

Even though Trump didn’t win a majority of black or Latino voters, he still made progress. He won the support of about 13% of black voters nationally and 45% of Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls. In the 2020 election, Trump won only 8% of Black voters and 32% of Latinos.

For months, Trump and his allies have focused part of their strategy on alienating men of color from the Democratic coalition.

The campaign continually undermined the black vote, for example, with messages of discontent about the economy, illegal immigration and culture war issues.

Trump’s team has sent high-profile surrogates to fast food restaurants, churches and hair salons in predominantly African-American communities to deliver similar messages.

“White racism is not a big deal to me,” former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose prison sentence for corruption was commuted by Trump, told USA TODAY in July.

“My life doesn’t change because a white person said something racist.”

Warning signs of pessimism that could help Trump

Experts warned a few months ago that growing pessimism among a portion of the black electorate – mainly young, working-class men living in urban centers – could bear fruit in the former president’s favor.

A 2022 Pew Research Center poll, for example, found that 64% of Black Americans said increased attention to issues of race and racial inequality had not led to an improvement in Black lives .

According to a 2023 Washington Post-Ipsos survey, 51% of Black Americans said they think racism will get worse over their lifetime.

That strategy paid off as about 3 in 10 black men under 45 went for Trump, according to AP VoteCast figures, nearly double what he received four years ago.

Black voters in the United States react to Kamala Harris’ electoral performance

USA TODAY asked Black voters across the country how they think Kamala Harris has performed in this demographic and what issues are most important.

THE UNITED STATES TODAY

Harris, who is black and Asian American, was at a disadvantage because of the schedule. She only entered the presidential race in late July, when President Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term amid questions over whether he could defeat Trump. She had to quickly mount a campaign just weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and just over three months before the election.

The vice president’s allies were confident her numbers would steadily rise as the election approached.

Bakari Sellers, a CNN political analyst and longtime friend of Harris, told USA TODAY in September that most polls at the time showed Harris garnering more than 80 percent of the black vote. However, he added that she had to get closer to 90% to win.

Harris carried black voters 86% and Latino voters 53%, according to CNN exit polls. But in the 2020 election, Biden won black voters by a wider margin of 92% to 8%, compared to Trump and Latinos by 65% to 32%.

There were other alarming signs for Democrats. In Texas, for example, Trump won about a third (34%) of the vote among black men, a gain of nearly 20 points from four years ago. In 2020, Trump won only 15% of black men in the Lone Star State.

Win With Black Men hosted an online forum Wednesday with dozens of black men canvassers, strategists and community activists, where many expressed dismay at Trump’s return to power, but also expressed strong criticism of Democrats.

Ambrose Lane, president of Million Man Vote, said that while the U.S. economy has been “robust” under Biden, the cost of “things people buy every day” has remained high to the point that the Harris campaign spoke to put an end to price gouging.

“So Biden very well could have stopped the price increases during his term before even handing over to Kamala, but he didn’t,” he said. “And so I think those economic issues played a big role.”

Some have blamed the convergence of racism and sexism nationally as a handicap against Harris.

Some of this was highlighted by Obama, who was reprimanded in October when he suggested that some black men “don’t feel for the idea of having a woman as president.”

Preliminary exit polls show that about 78% of black men supported Harris, more than any other group of male voters in the country.

Many participants in the “Winning with Black Men” discussion pointed out that millions of eligible black voters in battleground states sat out in November.

Others were looking for a program to motivate non-voters before the next election. The group was even suggested to pressure the Trump administration back on certain policy goals, which was a failure for some.

“Black people who voted on the red side are voting against their own interests,” William Mitchell, a North Carolina political activist, told the group.

“Trump has no interest in helping the black man,” Mitchell added. “He did nothing for black men in his 78 years of life.”

When it comes to gender friction within the Black community, many participants in Wednesday’s online meeting praised Black women for their role in the election.

Holli Holliday, president of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote, which among other things conducts research on black women running for local and national office, said black men “engage differently than we do” politically.

That “doesn’t mean they’re not aligned with us,” she said.

Thompson, the Win With Black Men leader, said he doesn’t blame Harris, who entered the race late and didn’t have enough time to engage with black voters in the way they needed to. ‘be approached, he declared.

“There was excitement around her candidacy,” Thompson said, “but did she have the opportunity to really start a conversation with black men as a candidate?

One misstep, he said, was the emphasis on new media and engagement. with social media influencers to deliver a message. It was perhaps a unique approach, “but not one I would have taken,” he said.

Thompson said he would have knocked on more doors and had more direct conversations with voters. “Texting is great because it’s a tool that everyone has in their hands,” he said, but it’s not as effective as direct conversations with voters.

Looking ahead, the group plans to host a series of regional conversations focused on politics, including with conservative-leaning black men who may have voted for Trump.

The goal, Thompson said, is to reach working-class black men wherever they are — whether at the barbershop, at the pool hall or in the motorcycle community.

And to reach men like Myers, who don’t vote at all.

“I still believe in our mission of engaging Black men at a granular level on how we’re going to get them to bring about effective community change — it starts now,” Thompson said.

Contributors: Erin Mansfield, Deborah Berry, Joey Garrison and Rebecca Morin