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After Kamala Harris’ loss, Black voters ask what went wrong

Sakege November 8, 2024

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

The Pittsburgh native, who works as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in Market Square, is dedicated to entrepreneurial endeavors like his TikTok channel with nearly 10,000 followers.

Nothing in the presidential election It affects his daily 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 felt that the Democratic candidate had never tried to earn his vote.

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

For many black men, Republicans Donald Trump’is decisive victory over harris Tuesday landed like a punch in the stomach.

About 72 million Americans voted to return the former president to power despite a record that included questioning Harris’ racial heritage. two political trialsto conviction for 34 serious 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 they can prevent it from happening again.

Many said that to win, candidates must speak up front about policies and positions that are important to black voters, especially men. They must then persuade and mobilize black communities around those issues, said Khalil Thompson, a political strategist and veteran of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

“I think that was not a strategy that either side adhered to, not just the Democrats, not either side,” said Thompson, founder and executive director 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.

While Trump did not win a majority of black or Latino voters, he did make 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 Latino voters.

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

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

Trump’s team sent high-profile representatives to fast-food restaurants, churches and barbershops in predominantly African-American communities with similar messages.

“The fact that white people are racist is not a big problem to me,” former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose prison sentence on corruption charges was commuted by Trump, told USA TODAY in July.

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

Warning signs that pessimism could help Trump

Experts warned months ago how a growing pessimism among a segment of black voters – primarily young, working-class men living in urban centers – could pay off for the former president.

A 2022 Pew Research Center survey, for example, found that 64% of Black Americans said increased attention to issues of race and racial inequality has not improved the lives of Black people.

Another 51% of Black Americans said they believed racism would get worse over their lifetimes, according to a 2023 Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

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

Black voters in the US respond to Kamala Harris’ electoral performance

USA TODAY asked Black voters across the country how they think Kamala Harris performed among this demographic and the issues that matter most.

USA TODAY

Harris, who is Black and Asian American, was at a disadvantage because of the schedule. He did not enter the presidential race until late July, when President Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term amid doubts about whether he could defeat Trump. He had to quickly put together a campaign just weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and with just over three months until the election.

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

Bakari Sellers, a CNN political analyst and longtime friend of Harris, told USA TODAY in September that in most polls at the time, Harris was getting more than 80% of the black vote. However, he said he needed to get closer to 90% to win.

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

There were other alarming signs for Democrats. In Texas, for example, Trump won about a third (34%) of the vote among black men, an increase 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 with dozens of Black pollsters, strategists and community activists on Wednesday, where many expressed dismay over Trump’s return to power but also expressed harsh criticism of Democrats.

Ambrose Lane, president of Million Man Vote, said that although the US economy has been “robust” under the Biden administration, the cost of “the things that people buy every day” remained high to the point where the campaign Harris talked about stopping price gouging.

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

Some blamed the convergence of racism and sexism across the country as a handicap against Harris.

Some of that was brought to the forefront by Obama, who was rebuked in October when he suggested that some black men “don’t feel the idea of having a woman president.”

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

Many in the Win with Black Men debate decried how millions of eligible Black male voters in battleground states were left out this November.

Others sought an agenda to motivate non-voters before the next election. It was even suggested to the group that they should press the returning Trump administration on certain policy goals, which for some was a failure.

“Blacks who voted red 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 has done nothing for black men in his 78 years of life.”

As for gender frictions within the Black community, many at Wednesday’s online gathering 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,” he said.

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

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

One misstep, he said, was the heavy focus on new media and engagement. with social media influencers to deliver a message. That may have been a unique approach, “but not the 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 the device that’s in everyone’s hands,” he said, but it’s not as effective as direct conversations with voters.

Looking ahead, the group plans to host a series of policy-focused regional conversations, 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 in the barbershop, the pool hall or the motorcycle community.

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

“I still believe in our mission to engage Black men at a granular level in how we are going to move them forward to make effective community change – this starts now,” Thompson said.

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