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“Former President Barack Obama gave a blistering critique of his White House successor Donald Trump and urged Black men to show up for Kamala Harris as he opened a swing-state tour for the Democratic ticket…
“At a campaign field office to thank volunteers, Obama said Thursday he wanted to ‘speak some truths’ after hearing reports on the ground that there was lower enthusiasm for Harris than there was for his own candidacy and that some Black men were thinking of sitting out the election. ‘Part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — 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,’ Obama said.” AP News
Both sides are critical of Obama’s comments:
“According to a recent New York Times poll, 70 percent of Black men plan to vote for Harris. It’s true that Obama won an even higher percentage of their vote, but so did Hillary Clinton. If sexism is the reason that some men don’t support Harris, White and Latino men are way more biased than Black men. For those groups, Harris is polling at 35 percent and 55 percent, respectively. But don’t expect the former president to wag his finger at them, too…
“It’s difficult to imagine any group other than Black men being put down in an effort to win their support. Harris is actively campaigning for the Polish vote in Pennsylvania and the Latino vote in Nevada and Arizona. It would be political malpractice for her operatives to suggest that bias is the reason that some in those groups are reluctant to support her. Even if it’s true, it’s just not the way to win their votes.”
Paul Butler, Washington Post
“[Obama explained] that the reason as many as 20% of black men were considering Mr. Trump, according to opinion polls, must be, as Mr. Obama put it, that the Republican shows himself to be a real man by ‘putting women down.’ Got that? Black men could support Mr. Trump only because they like putting women down. Can you imagine what Mr. Obama would call a conservative who made such an invidious generalization?…
“Do Democrats really believe that those who are inclined to support [Trump] in this contest are morally depraved or cognitively incapable? Is it impossible, for example, that black men may think Mr. Trump would do a better job for the economy than another Democratic administration, or that the Democrats’ denial that sex is a biological reality is a serious threat to both the nation’s values and science?”
Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal
Other opinions below.
“One need not equivocate to recognize that there are substantive reasons for Black voters to reject Democrats like Obama and Harris on the same basis as they do Republicans. The framework Obama uses leaves little room for misgivings about the fact that Harris is going to great lengths to collapse the distance between herself and the GOP…
“When she learned that former vice-president Dick Cheney, a chief architect of the United States’ atrocities during the War on Terror, was planning to vote for her, Harris unironically thanked him for ‘what he has done to serve our country.’ She has become more hawkish on immigration in response to Trump’s naked xenophobia, and she has recommitted to unconditionally sending arms to Israel…
“Just as his condescension is unlikely to move actual votes, it leaves unanswered the question of how destructive Democratic policies have to be before they merit the same moral opposition as Republican ones… As long as this attitude holds sway among the party elite, it risks a continued erosion not only of Black loyalty but of claims to a moral high ground.”
Zak Cheney-Rice, New York Magazine
“So eager to prove that he isn’t beholden to Black people — he is the president of all Americans, he would often say — Obama has frequently singled out Black people for reprimanding. This approach only underscores the stereotype of Black Americans as a problem that needs solving. He once told the Congressional Black Caucus to stop grumbling and put on their marching shoes…
“It’s doubtful that icons of the civil rights movement like the late congressman John Lewis or Representative Jim Clyburn needed to hear that from him… Black men, at a higher rate than men of every other group, will go with their daughters and their wives and their sisters and their aunts to the voting booth so they can all make history together. Perhaps that’s the picture Obama could paint, one of hope and change, not condescension.”
Nia-Malika Henderson, Bloomberg
“There are clearly enough black men in the Democratic coalition who are skeptical of Kamala and unoffended enough by Trump to terrify the people crunching numbers inside the campaign. You do not send Barack Obama, of all people, out there to sermonize to ‘the brothers’ — note the sudden duck into the vernacular, a tell from the patrician Obama if ever there was one — about this unless the Harris campaign is sweating…
“The petulance of Obama’s tone was perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the entire encounter, and what bodes most ill for Harris underneath the surface. There is something supremely condescending about the way Obama comes out, with vinegar sobriety, and addresses Harris’s weaknesses while fulminating about how black men just aren’t feeling the joy…
“It’s a shamelessly unintellectual argument, an appeal to pure tribalism, and the sort of thing someone as smart as Obama deploys only after every other better weapon at hand has failed.”
Jeffrey Blehar, National Review
“For the better part of the last decade, the left and all of the cultural institutions it controls, has been sweeping men aside, pushing the idea that traditional masculinity is toxic with mottos like ‘men are trash’ and ‘the future is female’ (All while also unable to define a woman). Men have been falling behind in education and wages. The Harris campaign’s solution was to go all in on abortion and assume she could girl boss their way through the campaign…
“On Friday morning, the hilarious ‘Man Enough’ commercial dropped online. While not an official Harris/Walz ad it was created by a collective of creatives trying to elect them. The ad features various male actors butched-up in flannels, jeans and gym clothes with one even propped up in the back of a pickup truck looking more dainty and demure than blue collar gritty… It was so cringe inducing, and pandering, that I was curious if the director… had actually ever met a dude in the wild, one who didn’t carry an NPR tote.”
Kirsten Fleming, New York Post
