By Peter Nicholas, senior White House reporter for NBC News digital
If there’s a prototypical Kamala Harris voter it might seem to be Charles Johnson, a 23-year-old black college student.
Johnson is informed and politically engaged; he went to hear former President Barack Obama speak Friday at a Democratic campaign rally on the University of Arizona campus.
Yet he isn’t all that impressed with Obama, the nation’s first black president, nor Harris, who would be the second. He says he’s leaning toward voting for Donald Trump.
“The media says he [Trump] is horrible and he’s racist and he’s going to bring us back, but he’s only gaining support with black voters,” Johnson said in an interview. “He’s only gaining support with black men.”
Democrats have been unnerved by recent polls that show Harris’s numbers sagging among black voters, particularly young black men. As he campaigns for Harris, one of Obama’s tasks is to persuade black men like Johnson that voting for Trump would be a grievous mistake. In the remaining days before the election, he’ll be doing interviews with podcasters and various internet personalities who command a large black following, an Obama aide said.
He remains a singular figure in national politics, widely popular to this day. Obama is the only president since Ronald Reagan to win the presidency twice with more than 50% of the vote.
An Emerson College survey this month showed that a majority of voters in each of the seven key swing states that will decide the election hold a favourable opinion of the 44th president.
He and Harris talk regularly, with Obama serving as a “sounding board” on issues like her choice of a running mate, his advisers said. He has offered any help she might need with campaign strategy, fundraising and personnel, they added. After Harris replaced Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe signed on as one of her senior advisers.
But a younger generation of black Americans may have seen little of Obama, possessing only a dim recollection of a presidency that ended nearly eight years ago.
At a pair of rallies in Tucson and Las Vegas in recent days, Obama drew thousands of cheering supporters, though the turnout among young black men appeared sparse.
When it comes to this distinct slice of the electorate, Obama may not be the compelling messenger he once was, some in attendance said.
Miles Covington, 35, a black student at the University of Arizona, said he hasn’t yet decided how he’ll vote. He came to hear Obama speak and as he stood in line for the event on campus, he said he didn’t see Obama as a figure who would be especially influential with young black men.
“He is resonating with a different culture,” Covington said. “They’re going to need a young guy to come and stand up who is black. He’s not the young guy.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-21 02:39:00
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