As Kamala Harris campaigns hard to make sure Black men vote for her, she’s bringing in a secret weapon: Bill Clinton.
This week, the man who author Toni Morrison famously labeled America’s “first Black president” is barnstorming the southern swing states where Black voters could decide who wins the presidency. His arrival on the campaign trail follows actual first Black president Barack Obama’s campaign stop in Pittsburgh last week, when he accused Black men of making “excuses” to avoid voting for Harris.
Clinton did not explicitly mention race, but appeared to be appealing to the same demographic. For instance, he mentioned new Peach State election laws that disproportionately affect Black voters.
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“They tried to rig the rules so it hurt us, and there’ve been some new innovative efforts in that regard,” Clinton said at a rally in Columbus, Georgia, on Monday. “But you did well. We won in 2020.”
He then put the responsibility on his audience to turn out again this year. He emphasized the stakes of that decision with the same sort of dire language he used during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.
“If you decide you got something better to do for the next few days, you’ll regret it the rest of your life,” Clinton warned.
Clinton made his appearance on the same day Harris released an agenda aimed at Black men, which includes economic investments in Black communities, a focus on health conditions that disproportionately impact them, and a plan to legalize recreational marijuana. The candidate herself is scheduled for a Tuesday taping with Charlamagne tha God and a visit with Black entrepreneurs in Detroit.
Over the weekend, her campaign also called attention to polling that showed her with a 70-point lead over Trump among Black voters and disputed the narrative that young Black men are growing more Republican.
But there’s a reason that narrative exists. Other recent surveys, like the New York Times/Siena College poll, show that Harris is underperforming previous Democratic nominees among Black men, even if she is still winning the vast majority of them.
Clinton, who grew up in Arkansas and is focusing his get-out-the-votes efforts on rural areas, emphasized in Columbus, which sits on the Chattahoochee River, that Democratic victories over the past few years have come from the party’s ability to tighten the margins outside of Atlanta.
The plurality of Columbus residents are Black, according to Census data. Georgia is the swing state with the largest share of Black voters, followed by North Carolina, where Clinton will hit the campaign trail later this week.
He had already stopped by numerous venues in the Peach State, including a fish fry, a Black church, and a local McDonalds, where the awed staff snapped photos.
“All we got to do is show up,” Clinton said. “If we show up, we'll win, and it's in your hands.”
