Former President Barack Obama warned supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday that not enough black voters are backing her for president, especially “the brothers.”
The warning suggests top Democrats are panicked about Harris’s reduced support among black voters.
Only 84 percent of black voters say they would vote for Harris, according to a Pew Research poll from September 30, while 13 percent said they would vote for Trump. Harris’s support among the demographic is down eight points from President Joe Biden’s support in 2020, when he won 92 percent of their vote.
Among black men, only 80 percent support Harris, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll recently found, while a NAACP poll found one in four under the age of 50 showed support for Trump.
“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities, as we saw when I was running,” Obama told Harris supporters in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty.
“Now, I also want to say that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers,” Obama said. “So if you don’t mind, just for a second, I’m going to speak to y’all, and say that when you have a choice that is this clear, when on the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences.”
“She’s had to work harder and do more and overcome and achieves the second highest office in the land,” Obama said of Harris:
Black voters appear to be trending towards leaving the Democrat party. From 2018 to 2022, the Republican share of the black vote jumped from nine percent to 13 percent.
The movement toward the Republican party indicates the realignment of the parties since Trump entered politics in 2016 and advocated for a citizen first agenda.Obama on Thursday also pushed back against Trump’s argument that the black community in the inner city is especially hurt by the southern border invasion, which suppresses wages, increases rents, and overloads first responders.
“Now if you challenge Trump to elaborate and enumerate his concepts, he will fall back on one answer. Vance does the same thing. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, housing, healthcare, education, paying bills, their only answer is to blame immigrants,” Obama said. “They want you to believe that if you let Donald Trump rounds up whoever he wants, by the way, and ship them out, all your problems will be solved.”
Many polls show the public wants to welcome some immigrants. Polls also show, however, deep and broad public opposition to labor migration and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into the jobs needed by the families of American taxpayers.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
