On the final Sunday of October, Vice President Kamala Harris stepped inside Philly Cuts Barbershop in West Philly. “We’re behind you 100 percent,” said owner Darryl Thomas in a video posted to C-SPAN. “All the misnomers, put them to the side. You’re home. We got you.”
Wearing a blue flat-brim Phillies cap, Thomas looked the part of an ambassador for the entire city. But given the recent coverage of this election, the words “We got you” held some additional meaning.
There’s been incessant buzz this election cycle about the leanings of Black male voters. It’s arguably been the story of the lead-up to November, a narrative that’s been driven by a number of factors: Trump’s bombast (“I seem to be doing very well with Black males”); polls showing Black men, especially younger ones, increasingly dissatisfied with the Democratic Party; and the Harris campaign’s frantic attempts to rally one of their most reliable voting bases — who have supported her party’s candidate by upwards of 80 percent since the year 2000.
“We have to do a better job, and it can’t be every four years. It has to be every four months, every four weeks, where we’re explaining to the people what we’re doing on their behalf.” Rep. Jordan Harris.
The level of angst had grown so high that it brought former President Barack Obama out of semi-retirement and onto the campaign trail, where, since the Democratic National Convention, he’s been primarily speaking directly to Black men at a variety of events. In Pittsburgh, during one of those appearances, Obama controversially addressed the narrative by asking why “the brothers” weren’t “feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”
But lately, it’s seemed like the Harris campaign’s late-game strategy might actually be working. Following Obama’s stick-like approach, it’s been all carrots from the campaign. Harris released a policy plan called the Opportunity Agenda For Black Men in late September, which was followed by a blitz of selective media appearances — including taped interviews with Charlamagne Tha God and the All The Smoke podcast.
Indeed, several late-October polls have shown Harris improving her numbers with Black men. An ABC / Ipsos poll from Oct. 27 showed Harris with 85 percent support among the demographic. (By comparison, Biden received just 79 percent.)
“The campaign has recognized the fact that you can’t badger people or shame them into voting. You got to give them a reason to,” says State Rep. Jordan Harris, the chair of the Appropriations Committee in Harrisburg. “I think what you saw with the Black male plan, I think what you’re seeing with Vice President Harris coming to barbershops and going to churches, is she’s doing exactly that. She’s given Black men a reason to vote for her.”
A reason to vote is at the heart of the appeal to Black men — and with good reason. At its core, the hesitation for many Black male voters is letting something be known to the Democratic Party: You want our votes? Then how about showing up for us, listening to what we need, and seeking our input more than every four years?
A win for Kamala Harris might happen because enough Black men in Philadelphia and other cities in swing states come out in droves. But it might also mean that their underlying frustrations will once again be an afterthought in the press and among politicians. And if Trump wins? No matter how many Black men vote, and for whom, a narrative has been established for months now.
Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke put it bluntly: “Whether it’s intentional or unintentional, one could reason that Black men, per the usual, will become the scapegoat.”
“What’s up with the brothers?”
In the wake of the 2016 election, White women got the brunt of the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Polls leading up to Election Day showed Clinton holding a clear majority with the demographic. But in a stunning development, Trump earned about 52 percent of their vote, which launched a thousand think pieces that blamed White women, who took a step to the right, for Trump’s rise to the White House.
What’s different this time around is that the media has seemingly preordained a culprit in the event of a Trump victory. Instead of focusing on the larger and more volatile voting demographics — White women are 30 percent of the electorate, for example — there’s been an avalanche of articles about Black men (6 percent of the electorate).
In a razor-thin race, losing a point here or there in any demographic could be a decisive blow to Democrats. But to O’Rourke and others, poll numbers alone don’t fully explain why the media’s gaze has been so affixed to this one voting group.
“It’s fascinating to me that all the polls show a severe disparity between how women are projected to vote and how men are projected to vote in this election,” says O’Rourke. “As opposed to asking the question, ‘What up with men?’ it’s ‘What’s up with the brothers?’ That is insanity.”
If you take a step back, O’Rourke and others note, Democrats are freaking out over the prospect of Black men voting for Harris at a rate of 70 percent. If that came to pass, it would still be magnitudes higher than the support coming from all but one other demographic: Black women. ”There is a washing away of these particularities by the powers that be — except when, surprise, surprise, someone needs to be blamed for something.”
“Whether it’s intentional or unintentional, one could reason that Black men, per the usual, will become the scapegoat.” — Councilmember Nic O’Rourke
That’s not to ignore the discontent either. As a member of the Working Families Party, O’Rourke has seen those frustrations up close. But he thinks it’s been broadly mischaracterized in the media as a uniquely 2024 problem for Democrats, or one that’s specific to Harris as a candidate.
“I think what we are seeing is the continual result of a particular demographic either not feeling as if they’re being heard or not actually being heard,” he says. “And the consequence of that is a sense of disenfranchisement, a waning enchantment with the powers that be.”
One of the reasons for Obama coming under criticism was the implicit suggestion that Black men need to fall in line or, as he put it, “get off their couch and vote.” It assumes an unquestioned loyalty to a party, even while Black men continue to be shot by police; attend underfunded schools; and get paid 56 cents for every dollar earned by White men.
Mustafa Rashed, a Democratic political strategist and CEO of Bellevue Strategies, notes how some of the criticism of Black men this cycle coming from the media and party insiders has carried the implicit message of, “[Black men] don’t know how to vote in their own best interests, and we’d rather you not participate in the process, unless we trust that you can.” Meanwhile, in return for those votes, “they feel like their lives haven’t changed.”
Coming through in the end
It’s worth one last look at those poll numbers, the source of all this hand-wringing to begin with. According to a Siena / NYTimes analysis from the end of September, an estimated 70 percent of Black men had decided to vote for Harris, another 20 percent for Trump, with 10 percent still undecided.
Lest we all forget that the polls have been wrong before, I’ll offer you one final reminder: a headline from FiveThirtyEight in late-October of 2020, “Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters But Gaining Among Black And Hispanic Americans.” Sound familiar? In the waning stages of the campaign four years ago, more than one pollster raised concerns about the Biden campaign slipping with Black voters.
And what ended up happening? Black men still overwhelmingly voted for Biden as the Democratic candidate — in fact, doing so at even stronger levels than in 2016.
Both things can be true: Black men can be drifting away from the Democratic Party and they might still hold it down for Kamala Harris. But that still might not make them a guaranteed voting bloc for Democrats the next time a presidential race comes around — unless the party ensures their loyalty beyond the polling booth.
“We have to do a better job, and it can’t be every four years. It has to be every four months, every four weeks, where we’re explaining to the people what we’re doing on their behalf,” says Rep. Harris. “You lose people by not recognizing the pain that they are actually feeling.”
