By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
Two things happened within the space of 48 hours that raise a red flag for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris.
The first was the stern dressing down by former President Barack Obama of Blacks at a Harris campaign rally in Pittsburgh for even contemplating doing what he termed the unacceptable. That is not voting. Obama has read the news clippings and heard the chatter from many Blacks, especially some Black men, who profess either apathy toward the election or, to Obama’s horror, an affinity for Donald Trump.
The second potential red flag was a New York Times poll that reiterated what various other polls have found. Black support for Harris is soft. How soft? It found that a stunning 15% of Blacks said they’d back Trump and that Black support for the Democrats had plunged since the 2020 presidential election.
While the Times poll may be questionable, even overblown, Obama’s public reprimand of possible non-voting Blacks or those Blacks enamored of Trump isn’t. Trump, of course, takes special delight in claiming that Blacks love him because, as he fraudulently and insultingly puts it, he’s done more for them than any president since Abraham Lincoln.
Still, there’s reason to worry about this deeply troubling possibility of measurable Black voter defection from the Democrats.
In Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 and loss in 2020, he did marginally better with Black voters than previous Republican presidential candidates. That alone was not much cause for concern, let alone cause to get out the worry beads that Trump, and the GOP had made any kind of real breakthrough in prying Blacks away from the Democrats.
Despite all the supposed grousing among Blacks about Joe Biden in 2020, there was no break in the solid Democratic ranks by Blacks. Focus groups of Black voters during the election that year confirmed that while more than a few Blacks continued to voice criticism and concern about some of Biden’s policies, and even dredged up his enthusiastic support of the punitive Clinton Crime Bill, almost none said they had any love, like of, or desire to throw their lot in with Trump.
Yet, the harsh reality was that thousands of Blacks did vote for Trump in 2020. Their reasons were easy to explain. Trump touched a tiny nerve with his shout that poor, underserved Black neighborhoods are supposedly a mess with lousy public schools, high crime and violence, and chronic joblessness and poverty.
He dumped the blame for that squarely on the Democrats who run and have run most of these cities for decades. Trump doubled down on that slam with a handful of carefully choreographed appearances with high-profile Black preachers at name Black churches.
That was just enough to take the hard and sharp edge for some Blacks off the almost-set-in-stone image of Trump as a guy with a white sheet under his suit.
There was more. As far back as the 2004 presidential election, there was a sign that more than a few Blacks, most notably Black conservative evangelicals, were deeply susceptible to conservative pitches on some issues. A considerable number of them voted for George W. Bush that year and that was enough to give him the cushion he needed to bag Ohio and win the White House.
The same polls that election that showed Black’s prime concern was with bread-and-butter issues — and that Bush’s rival Democrat rival John Kerry was viewed as the candidate who could deliver on those issues — also revealed that a sizable number of Blacks ranked abortion, gay marriage and school prayer as priority issues. Their concern for those issues didn’t come anywhere close to that of white evangelicals, but it was still higher than that of the general voting public.
In 2008 and 2012, Black Republican advocacy groups ran ads hammering the Democrats again for their alleged indifference to and outright aiding and abetting Black suffering in the inner cities, and touting the GOP’s emphasis on small business, school choice and family values as the best path to Black advancement. That pitch has always had some appeal to many Blacks. And though it would never trigger any kind of stampede to the Republican Party by even most of these conservative-leaning Blacks, it was enough to take some of the sting out of the GOP’s naked history of racial abuse.
Trump understood enough of that history. He tailored the few pitches he made to Blacks for their votes to reflect the stock Republican pro-business, free enterprise and the healthy economy line as something that Blacks also could and should embrace. He’s using the same template in 2024 with the added twist that he’s supposedly a victim of a horribly racially skewed criminal justice system, just as Blacks are.
The overwhelming majority of Blacks will remain dutifully loyal Democrats and will back Kamala Harris to the hilt. They recognize the danger a second Trump presidency represents to civil rights and social justice progress in America.
Still Obama was right to worry. Even a marginal increase in Black Trump backing could hurt. We pray that it won’t happen.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of multiple books on race and politics in America. His weekly The Hutchinson Report is streamed on Facebook Livestream.
