Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign is putting money into reaching Black men. But she has a bigger problem than that.
Namely, former President Donald Trump is winning a majority of men of all colors. Harris is 11 percentage points behind Trump with support from only 42 percent of American men.
America has never had a female president, not to mention a woman of color as president. Attracting more male voters of all colors is the real challenge for Harris, and the biggest pool of men is white men.
Yes, improving her standing with Black men is important. That is especially true in states that will be decided by thin margins and where turnout can be decisive. The same is true of Harris’s need to gain support from Latino men.
But despite underperforming with Black and Latino men, according to several polls, Harris is still likely to win more than 80 percent of Black men and half of Hispanic men.
That is far from the case with white men, a much bigger chunk of voters in swing states and nationwide. Polls show that more than 60 percent of white men will vote for Trump.
And white men without college degrees are the core of Trump’s support in a Republican party that is more than 80 percent white.
In 2020, white men without a college degree made up 26 percent of Trump voters. Another 18 percent support for him came from white men with a college education.
Currently, whites without four-year college degrees, disproportionately males, are more than half of Republican voters. They comprise “the single largest bloc within [Trump’s party]…when looking at race, ethnicity and education together,” according to a July report by Pew Research.
James Carville, the political strategist who led President Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 by winning over white working-class men, warned this year that Democrats risk being seen as the party of “preachy females.”
Trump’s every rally and rant is aimed to boost turnout among white men, with his alpha male praise of strongarmed dictators and threats to go after critics — “the enemy within.”
At the GOP convention, he gave prime time speaking slots to celebrities with white, male working-class followings, including musician Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan, the famous pro wrestler, who ripped off his shirt.
Harris’s outreach to white men is far less brutish. She let it be known that she owns a gun, and she drank a beer on set with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.
Part of the challenge for Harris in reaching white men is that President Biden, a white man, did not win the majority of white men in his winning 2020 campaign. In fact, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of white voters overall since 1964.
Since 2020, Biden has steadily tried to win over white men by playing up his working-class, white roots as a guy born in a blue-collar town, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Biden made history as the first president to join a picket line of striking workers in September 2023, when he stood with striking members of the United Auto Workers.
But Sean O’Brien, the president of the white male-dominated Teamsters Union, said that 60 percent of his members support Trump. In a recent interview O’Brien chided Democrats: “If 60 percent of our members don’t support you….You need to fix it. Look in the mirror.”
White men looking in the mirror will discover that most of them are set to vote for a candidate convicted of fraud, ruled liable for sexual assault and known to lie about immigrants eating pets.
It could be they have a problem with women. Harris is winning a majority of all women voters – 56 percent, according to a New York Times poll, and about half of white women voters, according to some polls.
That gives her a 16-percentage point advantage with women voters of all colors over Trump, who has the support of only 40 percent of women
To reach men, Harris has recently appeared on shows with large male audiences, from Howard Stern to The Breakfast Club with “Charlamagne tha god.”
On The Breakfast Club, she refuted claims that she went after Black men as a prosecutor by heavily punishing marijuana offenses. She emphasized that public defenders considered her lenient for possession by non-violent people who were not drug dealers.
Later, she demonstrated strength by handling tough questions from my colleague, Bret Baier, a white man, in a tense interview on Fox News. She needs to do more of that, confronting white men along the lines of a recent challenge issued by President Obama.
Obama bluntly confronted men who have unstated fear about having a woman as the nation’s leader. Saying that he was “speaking to men directly,” Obama said he thinks men “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with…other reasons for that.” Obama said low enthusiasm for Harris among men is “more pronounced with the brothers [Black men].”
That may be, but only because so many white men are not even considering voting for Harris.
Harris needs to go on Joe Rogan’s show and other platforms popular with white men. She must dare them, as she has said of Trump, to “say it to my face.”
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
