Whether you prefer the language of the street or the elitist tones of The New York Times, the message is clear that Vice President Kamala Harris cannot count on a solid wall of black voter support.
A recently posted video shows a number of black customers at a gas station being asked how they would be voting.
The language is not really fit for prime time, but the disdain for Harris comes through even louder than the stray F-bombs.
Over at The New York Times, a more refined approach conveyed the same message – black Americans are skeptical of Democrats in general and Harris in particular.
The Times released a poll that said beneath the comforting message for Harris that most black voters nationally support her, 40 percent of black voters under 30 said Republicans are more likely than Democrats to actually do what they promise. The poll surveyed 589 black voters and has a 5.6 percent margin of error.
“They sweep table scraps off the table like we’re a trained dog and say, ‘This is for you,’” LaPage Drake, 63, of Cedar Hill, Texas, said.
“And we clap like trained seals,” he said.
Drake said he hears the name-calling against former President Donald Trump, but is turning it aside.
“Regardless of how people call him racist and stuff, he is for the country of America,” Drake said.
The poll noted that Trump’s support among black voters is at about 15 percent, up from an estimated 9 percent in 2020. Other polls show different numbers. For example, an NAACP poll showed Trump with 25 percent support among black voters under 50, NPR noted.
In an Op-Ed in the New York Post, Adam B. Coleman said he would not vote for Harris just because former President Barack Obama framed supporting her as some form of black solidarity.
“Kamala is a chameleon who will do or say anything at any given moment to gain more power. She stands for everything, which means she has no standards,” he wrote.
“Americans deserve a president who possesses leadership qualities, whereas Kamala appears as a social climber who rubs elbows with the right people to get what she wants,” he wrote.
Coleman said Democrats demand support but do not deserve it.
“Democrats talk about equality for black people, but they don’t give us equal treatment of explanation or persuasion to continue to vote for their candidates,” he wrote.
“I refuse to vote for a candidate I don’t believe in, who refuses to give clear answers to reasonable questions asked and who employs racial guilt tactics to get me on their side,” he wrote.
