There's no evidence of sexism among black men towards Kamala Harris

Her low polling numbers with them are just the continuation of an ongoing trend.

Barack Obama, speaking last evening to black men in Pittsburgh:

We have not yet seen the same kind of energy and turnout in all corners of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running… You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, and I’ve got a problem with that. Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president…

Periodic reminder that the sinister menace of a sexist electorate that refuses to elect women is demonstrably a myth. Women have long had a quantifiable polling advantage against men in elections and organizations committed to electing women have long been at pains to point this out. The reason the United States does not have more women in office is simply that women are less likely to run. This is in part because of systematic biases in our economy, and in part because party leaders still run our parties like good ol’ boys clubs.

In this specific case there is no plausible polling evidence that Harris is suffering from some scourge of sexism among black American men. Remarkably, the last four elections offer us a perfectly intersectional polling sample of elections: Democrats nominated a black man (Obama 2012), a white woman (Clinton 2016), a white man (Biden 2020), and now a black woman. All along the way, however, their numbers have moved in the same direction: down.

Another point Obama neglected to mention is that Trump’s support among black voters is essentially unchanged since Biden was in the race: it was at 11% in July, and it’s at 11% now. All of these signs point to a pattern of steady attrition among black men in particular that has no apparent correlation to identity.

Why Obama thinks it helpful to hector Trump-curious voters with baseless charges of sexism is beyond me. All this is likely to accomplish will be to validate the message — a message relentlessly pushed by Republicans — that Democrats have been captured by “woke” witchhunts that have no connection to reality. It will discredit Harris, and it will discredit the very egalitarian politics that Obama is supposedly taking a stand for.

The grim irony in all of this is that Obama himself found success in 2008 and 2012 precisely by rejecting this kind of cheap politics in favor of a class warfare message. Instead of listening to Obama the Useless Celebrity, Kamala Harris would be much better off listening to Obama the Wildly Successful Candidate. If Obama really wants to lecture black men about sexism towards Kamala Harris, meanwhile, he can start with himself.