We keep getting headlines from media outlets about polls supposedly showing Black voters peeling off a bit from Kamala Harris.
And then we get a new poll from YouGov/CBS News that has Black support for Harris in line with what Joe Biden got in 2020 – at 87 percent, with Donald Trump at 12 percent.
The headlines on this poll suggest that Harris has “erased” Trump’s “gains.”
What’s really going on? Polls in 2024 have a lot of noise.
(That’s geekspeak for: they’re not all that reliable.)
Maybe Harris joining influential Black radio host/podcaster Charlamagne Tha God on Tuesday for an audio town hall was her trying to run up the score, then.
Actually, no.
That one was about shoring up her strong Black support.
The callers in the town hall didn’t go easy on her. One asked her about reparations for slavery, and she couldn’t pivot fast enough, because that isn’t going to fly even with mainstream left-of-center white voters, much less moderates, and you can just imagine the headlines.
The pivot: she talked up her platform for improving economic conditions for Black families, working to reduce child poverty in the Black population, building up homeownership in the Black community.
Another caller asked her why she hadn’t started specifically addressing Black concerns sooner.
She had a good answer:
I’ve been in this race about 70 days. You can look at all my work before those 70 days to know that this, what I’m talking about right now, is not new, and is not for the sake of winning this election. This is about a longstanding commitment, including the work that I’ve done as vice president and before, when I was senator.
A third caller asked Harris what she plans to do to address police violence and its disproportionate impact on Black Americans.
The VP noted her work with Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which they introduced while she was still a member of the U.S. Senate.
“We couldn’t get the votes in Congress,” Harris conceded, “but what we did when we came in office, and during the time that I’ve been vice president, is we passed an executive order that says that for federal law enforcement, the following things have to happen, which we, for the first time, put in place: no-knock warrants, barring chokeholds, a national database for us to collect information and track police officers who have broken the law.
“I’m still going to always work on getting the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Harris said. “Part of the work that I’m doing as a candidate for President of the United States includes lifting up those candidates who are running, either for re-election or for the first time to Congress, who are supportive of what we need to do on all of the issues we’ve been discussing.”
To a fourth caller who suggested that frustrations over the lack of progress in meeting the needs of the Black community could get some Black voters to say home, Harris had this to say:
We should never sit back and say, OK, I’m not going to vote because everything hasn’t been solved. I share a desire that everything should be solved. By the way, I think it is what we should all want. But that doesn’t that shouldn’t stand in the way of us also knowing we can participate in a process that’s about improving things.
And by voting in this election, you have two choices or you don’t vote, but you have two choices if you do. And it’s two very different visions for our nation. One, mine, that is about taking us forward and progress and investing in the American people, investing in their ambitions, dealing with their challenges. And the other, Donald Trump, is about taking us backward.
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Chris Graham
