Vice President Kamala Harris repurposed her “Agenda for Black Men” on Wednesday. It will no longer exclusively target the black community.
The Harris campaign announced on Monday more taxpayer-funded proposals for the black community. Polling showed Harris has about 12-15 percent less black voter support than President Joe Biden won in 2020.
Two days later, however, the Harris campaign’s “Agenda for Black Men” will actually be for everyone on a “race-neutral basis.”
The Wall Street Journal reported the flip-flop, noting the question of the policy’s former legality:
While Harris’s rhetoric suggests she will provide such benefits specifically to Black men and women, it turns out that the words “and others” are doing a ton of work: The campaign says that the programs listed under the Black men agenda will be open to all Americans on a race-neutral basis.
The vice president is “clear-eyed about how Black men have long been denied the tools that would allow them to grow their wealth, get a good-paying job and support their loved ones—she is championing solutions that will benefit all Americans and address these specific barriers to economic opportunity,” a campaign aide said.
Harris, a lawyer and former state attorney general, knows that under Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has little patience for racial preferences. In 2023, the court found it unconstitutional to consider race in college admissions, overturning precedents that since 1978 had found the goal of student diversity sufficient to justify affirmative action policies. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote for the court, including well-intentioned programs administered in good faith.
The Harris campaign’s proposals included legalizing marijuana, a new loan program, preferred banking options for entrepreneurs, preferred apprenticeship and mentorship programs, and preferred expanded health screenings, the New York Times reported:
The campaign is facing pressure to shore up support among Black men, as polls show that Ms. Harris is receiving significantly lower support from the voting bloc than President Biden did in 2020. The slip from Mr. Biden’s 2020 numbers among Black men is striking: 70 percent said they would vote for Ms. Harris in November, down from Mr. Biden’s 85 percent in 2020.
This softening support has so alarmed Democrats that former President Barack Obama issued an urgent call this week for Black men to drop “excuses” and rethink sitting out the election.
Black men, particularly younger ones, have been steadily slipping from the Democratic Party, frustrated that their experiences are not reflected in policy as much as other groups’. Ms. Harris’s proposals appear to confront those concerns head-on.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.