There has been some anxiety among Democrats that creepy Donald Trump has made inroads with Black men, resulting in fewer of them supporting Kamala Harris than Joe Biden in 2020. There has been speculation that Black and Hispanic men may be finding that creepy Trump’s aggressive macho posturing, however phony and condescending it may seem to us, may be striking a chord within those two demographics.

Jelani Cobb looks at the data more closely. He says that back in 2016, progressives blamed white women, who might have been expected to be highly enthused about the idea of the first female president, for not voting is sufficient numbers for Hillary Clinton ,and that this time, similar attention is being paid to Black men.

In the traumatic wake of the 2016 contest, progressives blamed white women, more than fifty per cent of whom, initial reports alleged, had voted for Donald Trump, compared with forty-three per cent for Hillary Clinton. (Subsequent analysis revealed the numbers to be closer to forty-seven per cent for Trump and forty-five for Clinton, but it was still a win.) This year, Black men have come under special scrutiny as the potential weak link.

Even Barack Obama stepped in and gave a stern lecture those Black men who may be hesitant to vote for Harris just because she is a woman.

While at a campaign office for Harris in Pittsburgh this month, he tapped into Democratic anxiety that enthusiasm among Black men has been lower for her than it was for him and could dampen turnout.

Obama then said the quiet part out loud, asking a group of “brothers” if they were planning to sit out the election. He suggested that misogyny was clouding their judgment and helping former President Donald Trump eat into a critical part of Harris’ base.

Harris “knows you” and “went to college” with you, Obama said. She is “putting forward concrete proposals to directly address” housing and prescription drug costs, protect health care and promote entrepreneurship.

“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” he told them. “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.”

But Cobb argues that this supposed decline is support among Black men may not be as dire as portrayed in mainstream media, and that any erosion may not be entirely due to gender concerns.

Whatever the perceptions, though, Harris is doing better with Black male voters than Joe Biden was earlier this year. According to a recent Pew survey, seventy-three per cent will vote or are leaning toward voting for her. Even in mid-July, before Biden dropped out of the race, Harris’s favorability rating among Black voters in battleground states exceeded his by five points. A more recent poll from Howard University found that, in swing states, eighty-eight per cent of Black men over fifty and seventy-two per cent of those younger say they will likely vote for her. Still, Terrance Woodbury, who leads HIT Strategies, a firm that has done extensive polling on this part of the electorate, has pointed out that the issue goes far beyond Harris as a candidate, or—as Barack Obama chided last Thursday, at a campaign field office, before he spoke at a Harris rally in Pittsburgh—the reluctance that some Black men may have to vote for a woman for President. (It’s worth remembering that Black men voted for Clinton in 2016 at a level that surpassed white women by thirty-six points.) Woodbury notes that “Democrats have experienced erosion—a two-to-three-point erosion amongst Black men—in every election since Barack Obama exited the political stage. This is not just a Kamala Harris problem. This is a Democratic Party problem.” A higher share of Black men than Black women identify as conservative. The declining number of Black male Democratic voters, like the Party’s diminishing appeal to Latino and working-class white voters, may portend an ongoing realignment. Or it may, as Woodbury contends, simply reflect the Party’s failure to craft messages that appeal to this part of its base.
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Should Kamala Harris not prevail in November, it will not be the fault of any single faction of the electorate. She will receive a large majority of Black men’s votes. Whether that—and the turnout among the other parts of her coalition—will be enough to win her the Presidency remains to be seen. 

As the election draws nearer, the macro picture has remained steady and so the media will tend to look for this or that sliver of voters in order to find something new to say. While no demographic group should be taken for granted, crafting messages that will sway niche creepy Trump voters or the so-called undecided voters, be they Black men or any other group, may be difficult at this late stage. Getting those who already lean towards you to vote early and go to the polls on election day is likely to provide a better payoff.