Obama on the campaign has one particularly tough crowd: Young Black men

TUCSON, Ariz. — 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’ 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 favorable 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.

Working largely behind the scenes, Obama has already raised a total of about $80 million for the Democratic ticket. At one point, he recorded 21 videos for Harris’ campaign in a single sitting, one of his aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Black male voters have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for President Obama and they will be attentive to what his message is,” said Joel Benenson, a former Obama campaign pollster. “What’s implicit in his message is, ‘You’ve got to rally around her the way you rallied around me.’ That’s the message they’re going to get, and that will be helpful.”

It’s not certain, though, that Obama’s target audience is listening.

The son of a Black father and a white mother, Obama is forever chiseled into America’s fraught history on race. He delivered one of the nation’s most compelling speeches on race relations when he was a young presidential candidate in 2008. Despite the barrier-busting nature of his election, once he took office his aides said he did not want to be the “teacher” leading a kind of national seminar on race in America.

He got an early taste of how perilous it is for a sitting president to delve into the issue. Reacting to the arrest of a Black Harvard University professor who had been locked out of his home and tried to force his way in, Obama said the police had acted “stupidly.” He later invited both the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the white arresting officer to the White House for what was dubbed a “beer summit.”

Obama is 63 now, thin as ever and with close-cropped hair that’s gone white. Since leaving office he’s been selective about his public appearances, hitting the campaign trail when he believes voters are tuned in and he can make the biggest difference.

A Harris aide said the campaign wanted Obama to time his rallies so that they coincide with the start of early voting in the main battleground states. “He’s been an enormously helpful surrogate in that regard,” said Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson.

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.”

Obama’s appeal to Black men earlier this month provoked a backlash. Speaking to a group of campaign volunteers in Pittsburgh, he adopted a tone that some considered scolding. He mused that Black men who are inclined to sit out the race “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, as you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

Blowback came from unexpected quarters including Stephen A. Smith, a prominent sports talk show personality.

Obama isn’t deterred, a person close to him said. His view is that Black male voters are important to a Harris victory and he’s focused on mobilizing what has historically been a loyal piece of the Democratic coalition, the person said.

In an election that remains a toss-up, Harris wants to avoid any erosion in the Black vote. Obama captured 95% of the Black vote in his first presidential bid in 2008 and 93% when he won re-election four years later.

A New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month revealed that 78% of Black voters nationwide favored Harris — 12 points below the level that Biden received in 2020 when he narrowly defeated Trump.

Even if she can’t improve her standing with these voters, Harris can still compensate for the shortfall by outperforming past Democratic presidential nominees with other parts of the electorate.

JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, said in an interview that he would argue “we’re going to do better than the polls indicate with Black men.”

Pritzker, who was in Las Vegas on Saturday for an abortion rights rally, added: “In one sense, you can focus on Black men. But you can also say there’s an enormously higher percentage of non-college-educated women who are supporting Kamala Harris than before. So, there’s a little bit of scrambling going on in the election.”

In his most recent speeches, Obama dropped the argument that sexism might be driving male voters away from Harris.

He made no mention of race in Tucson or Las Vegas, arguing instead that men in general may be drawn to Trump out of the false impression that he’s a strong figure, an alpha male.

“I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who think Trump’s behavior, the bullying and the putting people down and acting all pretend tough guy, that somehow that’s a sign of strength,” he said in Tucson. “I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is. Never has been. Real strength is about working hard and carrying a heavy load without complaining. Real strength is about taking responsibility for your actions and telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient.”

That reasoning rang true for some of the Black men who came to hear him speak. Trump exudes a kind of swagger that some men emulate, they said.

Kalid Meky, 53, is a Black man and Harris supporter who drove 12 hours from California to see Obama’s speech in Las Vegas.

“With Obama, he can help to a certain degree, and he got the dialogue going. But I don’t believe he can do a whole lot,” he said in an interview.

Trump is a white 78-year-old, but he possesses a “charisma” that some younger Black men find appealing, he added.

He described Trump’s attitude as, “‘I do what I want when I want. I got a billion dollars. I don’t obey the rules. I talk the way I want to talk.’ They see that and they see hip-hopishness.”

What’s more, some Black men are wary of Harris because of her record as a former prosecutor in California, Meky said.

“African American men have had harsh experiences with law enforcement,” he said, adding that she is a “former prosecutor and a lot of Black guys are like, does she even like us?’”

There is more to Trump’s rhetoric and life story that others find offensive. Harris’ campaign has highlighted that in 1989 Trump called for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five” — four Black teenagers and a Latino teen falsely accused of raping a jogger in Central Park. Their conviction was overturned.

During the campaign, Trump has faced criticism for claiming that immigrants are taking “Black jobs.”

Johnson, the 23-year-old college student, is cognizant of Trump’s past and the accusations of racism.

“Does that bother me?” he said. “No. Am I supposed to think that Biden, a [81]-year-old white man, isn’t going to be racist, either?”

“Obama talked a lot about race when he was running for president,” he added. “I’m not really sure he was the most race-progressive president there has been. He could have done more if he really wanted to do that. I think he was doing it to get elected and that’s what I worry about with Kamala.”