Black voters in Detroit slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for “trying to pander to black people,” calling the Democratic presidential nominee’s outreach “disingenuous” as her support among the demographic slips.
“I feel like her message is disingenuous,” a Michigan native named Bryan told Fox News, adding that Harris seems to be “trying to pander to Black people.”
“She has a lot of issues underneath her administration. Just be honest about it,” Bryan continued. “Black men aren’t a monolith. We vote based on policies, too. We don’t [vote] based on identity. And when she starts to realize that and not trying to play our identity up so much, she might do better.”
Ricky, another Michigan resident who attended Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s Friday rally in Detroit, said many of Harris’s policies, particularly regarding immigration, “don’t make sense.”
“I think they assume that we’re all stupid because they don’t even really come out and campaign in Detroit because they feel like they have our vote already,” Ricky said.
Another black rally attendee wearing a MAGA hat shared that a lot of black men can relate to Trump, but not to Harris.
“I don’t think black men can relate to Kamala in any way. Trump’s a businessman. A lot of black men want to be entrepreneurs. They can relate to Trump and Trump is really supporting business owners and just the everyday American,” the voter said.
The backlash comes as recent polls show Harris losing support among black voters, a historically reliable base for the Democratic Party. Harris now holds 78 percent of the black vote, down from President Joe Biden’s 90 percent in 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s 92 percent in 2016, according to a New York Times poll released on Oct. 13.
The polling showed a steep drop among black men, with 70 percent indicating they would vote for Harris in November, down from Biden’s 85 percent. An NAACP poll, meanwhile, found last month that over a quarter of black men under age 50 said they would support Trump in November’s presidential election.
Harris dismissed the unfavorable polls during an interview last week with the black-focused entertainment outlet The Shade Room. “One, that’s not my experience. Two, Election Day has not arrived yet,” Harris said.
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