Black women are cautiously optimistic about how quickly white women appear to be coalescing behind the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris.
President Joe Biden rattled the Republican Party and the nation when he declined to complete his second bid for the presidency and endorsed his VP Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination. The Democratic Party has not officially announced whether it will open the bidding process to contenders at its August convention. Possible challengers could include Senate gadfly Joe Manchin, who said he may re-classify himself as a Democrat and enter the field after using a razor-thin Senate majority to side with Republicans and undermine Democrats’ political agenda for years.
Harris pulled in record donations from both big and small donors overnight after Biden’s announcement, and top Democratic figures immediately fell in behind the endorsement. This included House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and more than 200 congressional Democrats and Democratic governors by early Monday.
Politicos argue much of the party is leery of an open convention with multiple candidates sapping energy and fomenting divisiveness with roughly 100 days until the November election. Ugly rifts in the party in 2016 between liberal presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and establishment Democrat Hillary Clinton in primaries likely aggravated Democrat turnout in the November election, which helped usher former President Donald Trump into the White House.
Black party leaders also argue that stepping over a sitting vice president such as Harris would ignore her formidable talent and experience, and it would also be interpreted as a slap in the face of African American and Asian Americans and women who historically back the Democratic Party and fill its ranks.
Longtime Mississippi Democratic campaign operative Pam Johnson told BGX that Black and white Democratic Party women are lining up behind Harris at a record pace, much faster than the combative Party typically comes together.
Within 24 hours of Biden’s endorsement, Johnson pointed out that big financiers like “Nikki Haley Voters PAC” had already pledged support to Harris. Progressive donation platform ActBlue announced a $50 million haul within a day of the endorsement and described the amount from small donors as “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle."
Some of these sudden donors could be routine contributors who were loath to waste money on what they feared was a faltering Democratic campaign under the vulnerable Biden.
Despite the appearance of enthusiasm, some Black women doubt the stated commitment of white women to the Harris platform, particularly in light of U.S. white women supporting Trump despite creating the Supreme Court that now allows state legislators and religious fundamentalists to claim rights over pregnant women’s bodies. Fifty-three percent of white women voted for Trump in 2016, and they voted for him again by an even larger margin in 2020 at 55%. Additionally, a recent poll by Change Research a few days after Biden's announced showed a slim majority of white women still supporting Trump. Forty-two percent of 716 white women polled by the company said they were considering Harris, but 45% were still voting Trump.
“Hey, white women? It’s time to step up and talk to your kinfolk about Kamala Harris. We can do this, but you need to help,” said Rewire Newsgroup journalist Imani Gandy on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Chantay Berry, co-host of the Unapologetically She podcast, meanwhile, said “Black Women, Brown Women, Indigenous Women and some White Women will not let 2016 happen to Vice President Harris. Period.”
Few polling companies could reliably gauge last week where the nation--much less white women--stood on a Trump/Harris contest so soon after Biden’s announcement. One Reuters/Ipsos poll had Harris leading Trump 44 – 42%, but polls have proven unreliable in elections since Trump’s supreme court overturned Roe. Individual special election polls in Roe's aftermath have skewed to the GOP, but with voters showing unexpected enthusiasm for Democrats in final tallies. The predicted “red tsunami” in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms tapered off to a trickle with Democrats maintaining the Senate and Republicans earning a slim, almost unworkable majority in the U.S. House.
Change Research did record an uptick in enthusiasm within a day of Biden’s endorsement, however. The company followed up with respondents who had contributed opinions after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate against Trump. Pollsters asked registered voters “how are you feeling about the election now that Joe Biden has announced he won't be seeking reelection,” and respondents’ reactions were upbeat compared to post-debate responses in June.
Voter #1:
June 27: "yes, i'm considering voting for someone else"
Yesterday: "double flame emojis"
Voter #2:
June 27: "I wasn't thinking about voting at all, but I may begrudgingly vote for Biden."
Yesterday: "Honestly it's what the democrats needed in light of the resurgence trump gained from surviving his assassination. I'm not sure if this will be enough though..."
Voter #3:
June 27: "Our job is to pick the lesser of two evils...It's been this way for generations and generations."
Yesterday: "Feeling very uncertain and scared about the outcome to be honest. Sure we've had trump as a president already but I'd love to see what a new candidate would do for our country"
Voter #4:
June 27: "It's making me not want to vote at all, this country is cooked"
Yesterday: "Relieved. The Democratic Party is SO back"
The company also noted a strong uptick in enthusiasm from Black voters and Democrats and renewed interest from the demographic known as "Double Haters," people who are apathetic or hostile to both Biden and Trump.
“I think where we’re seeing the biggest changes in motivation is with young voters and voters of color who have been on the fence about voting in the presidential election,” said Change Research Senior Pollster Betsy App. “They were initially dissatisfied with both Trump and Biden, and now they see new motivation to vote.”
App said a majority of Trump voters were voting in the presidential election because they supported Trump, not because they disliked Biden. Democrats, however, only supported Biden to oppose Trump. Early polls suggest Harris' entry flipped this.
Change Research political survey analyst Sumati Thomas said Trump’s pick of VP running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D Vance, D-Ohio, could potentially hurt some white women’s favor for the GOP ticket in upcoming months as they learn more about him.
“I’m tabulating from what I’ve seen on social media and I’ve seen a few articles expressing buyer’s remorse on Vance,” Thomas said. “Vance is extreme to the right, which won’t help the GOP get suburban white women. He’s also said some unpopular things in the past about abortion and women. With no data to back it up (this early), I think Trump’s team was planning on just needing to get MAGA riled up, but now they have to try to woo over some more moderate voters, and that’s more difficult now.”
She hastened to add, however, there was no guarantee a majority of white women would migrate from the GOP, despite Vance's anti-charisma or the GOP's successful war on Roe.
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