Obama: Black men supporting Trump over Harris is 'not acceptable'
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00:00Barack Obama is back on the campaign trail and he's making the case against
00:04Donald Trump. But before his guest feature in Pennsylvania, Obama made a
00:08surprise visit to Kamala Harris's campaign headquarters in Pittsburgh.
00:13It was there that he got candid, maybe a little too candid if you are in the
00:18vice president's inner circle tonight. He warned that Harris is underperforming
00:21him with black voters and he had a message specifically for black men.
00:28Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a
00:33woman as president. And you're coming up with other alternatives and other
00:38reasons for it. So now you're thinking about sitting out or even supporting
00:44somebody who has a history of denigrating you because you think that's a sign of strength?
00:59Because that's what being a man is? Putting women down? That's not accepting.
01:12CNN political commentator Errol Lewis is in our fifth seat for this conversation.
01:16Errol, I guess he knew the cameras were there. It was an unscheduled stop but
01:22that message was so pointed. In addition to him making it very clear, Kamala
01:27Harris is not doing what she needs to do with this core Democratic constituency.
01:32That's right. Although he is asking her, let's be clear, to go over a very
01:37high hurdle. Barack Obama got historic levels of black voter registration and
01:43turnout and support and he did it twice. It was almost inevitable that it was
01:47going to swing more toward the long-term average of a handful of black voters.
01:54Can I interrupt you for just a moment just to show you something here?
01:57Because we went back, looked at 2020 exit polls. Biden got 92% of the black vote.
02:04Right now, according to Quinnipiac, Harris is at 78. It's a big gap in the state right now.
02:13That can be closed because Biden is not Barack Obama.
02:17Biden is not, well, he was Barack Obama's running mate. Certainly some spillover there.
02:23But you cannot ask of every black candidate in the post-Obama era,
02:29you've got to come up with 92% of the black vote every time.
02:32That is just not a reasonable assumption. If the margins are as tight as they're likely to
02:37be in this race, that's going to cause you problems in Pittsburgh and in Philadelphia
02:41and in Detroit and in Milwaukee and in Atlanta and in all of the swing states.
02:46So they're going to have to come up with a strategy. Now, Barack Obama is trying one strategy,
02:51trying to sort of connect with some of the black male voters who they think
02:55have been drifting away and are likely to drift away in these last 26 days.
02:59I'm not sure that's the right message, but they have to try something.
03:02It's a lot of pressure. I mean, this is not a nice message. This is a very stern message.
03:08Let me ask you a question, Abby and Nina. Let me say, I find it very interesting that we're
03:12trying to reach out to white men. We're trying to reach out to black men. The people whose rights
03:17are really on the ballot right now are women. And we're begging all these men to pay attention to us
03:21and to care enough about this election to vote, to come out, to support us. I feel like Barack
03:27going on the campaign trail right now makes perfect sense. Of course, right? He's a top
03:30surrogate for Democrats. He should be out there doing the work right now. I think it's just,
03:34it's so amazing to me that with women's rights on the line, we're spending so much time focusing
03:39on making sure men care. Because men, I don't know, it's because men are the problem right now.
03:46And by the way, Governor Walz, according to Politico, is going to be going out on a
03:52mentor, literally a tour of media to appeal to men.
03:57They need to appeal to the needs of the voters. And so when I was a delegate for President Obama
04:03in both of his elections in Ohio, right now the vice president is down 11 points in Ohio,
04:09even though I fully expect President Trump to take Ohio, as he did twice. But to be down 11
04:14points compared to President Biden, that is a problem. But this other issue I want to bring
04:20up is a problem, too. Why are black men being lectured to? Why are black men being belittled
04:26in ways that no other voting group? Now, a lot of love for former President Obama,
04:32but for him to single out black men is wrong. And some of the black men that I have talked to
04:38have their reasons why they want to vote a different way. And even if some of us may not
04:44like that, we have to respect it. So unless President Barack Obama is going to go out
04:49and lecture every other group of men from other identity groups, my message for Democrats is don't
04:55bring it here to black men who, by and large, don't vote much differently from black women.
05:02And as a politician, we should be trying to get all voters to vote. And hopefully there are a few
05:07good men out there who do care about the stripping away of some of women's bodily autonomy. But this
05:13is wrong for President Obama. It is a wrong course for the Harris-Waltz campaign to lay at the feet
05:19of black men when they have their reasons. In 2020, the vice president was labeled a cop,
05:24as we know. But do you think, sorry to interrupt you, Nina, but do you think he's right,
05:28that some of the reasons, one of the reasons is because they don't like the idea of a woman?
05:31It might be some sickness. And black men are socialized in the same society as any other man.
05:37So yes, is misogyny maybe a part of it? But again, is President Obama and is the Harris-Waltz
05:42campaign going to lecture other male groups in the same way that they're lecturing black men?
05:46This is not just about... I don't think so.
05:48It's not just about Pennsylvania. It's not just about men. It sounds like there's a concern that
05:53there's a broad problem for Vice President Harris with the blue wall. It's basically,
05:57according to the poll of polls, no clear leader, a tied race essentially in all three of these
06:03battleground states. You know, I don't know that this is because Trump has run a great campaign.
06:11But I mean...
06:11I don't think it's that.
06:13I mean, maybe he has, maybe he hasn't. But he has, he has run, he has struggled against Kamala
06:18Harris in this early stage, but he's still kept this race pretty tied and maybe has made some
06:24inroads in the last couple of weeks. Absolutely, he has. Vice President
06:30Harris's high watermark was about a week and a half after the convention. It's slowly been
06:34trickling down. That Quinnipiac poll showing the Vice President down in Michigan and Wisconsin
06:40sent alarm bells throughout every Democrat office in the country. But I want to say this,
06:45the blue wall is cracking and black men are just one part of a broader puzzle that she hasn't been
06:51able to reach. Now, to her credit, she hasn't been running for very long. This campaign's new. This
06:56is a new experiment of replacing somebody late in the cycle. So, okay, we'll give her that.
07:01However, she's struggling with union voters. The two of the biggest unions ever didn't endorse her.
07:07She's struggling with Muslim Americans in Michigan, according to CARES' own numbers.
07:13She's struggling with Hispanics in California. She's not expected to remake the Obama coalition.
07:19That's impossible. That's a one in a million, especially given the short time frame.
07:24But she has a lot of bigger problems, and that's why you see Tammy Baldwin panicking about being
07:28down more. Here's Debbie Dingell. People need to see the real Kamala Harris. This is what she
07:33told Axios. They need to let her get in the union halls and just talk to people. Whatever you think
07:38about Trump, he's personable. Well, I think that's one of the things. I mean, he obviously,
07:43from 2016 all the way through 2020, now through 2024, he comes off as a fighter. He comes off as
07:48a fighter for whatever issue matters to you. I think that's one of his big appeals. One of the
07:53challenges, I think, for the vice president's campaign is that I don't think Barack Obama is
07:59the right surrogate to go out there and do it. Now, he's beloved by Democrats. He's beloved
08:03generally by Americans, but he's never had coattails. Aside from 2008 when he first got elected,
08:09Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats in state and federal offices during his eight years.
08:16He was the sitting president when Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin with
08:22Barack Obama campaigning in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, and it didn't change the narrative.
08:28So I just don't know if he has the coattails, he'll fire up the base, but is he going to get
08:32anybody new to come out and vote? You know, the other mistake that they're making is focusing too
08:36much on personality. I mean, Kamala Harris has got an appealing personality and we're all getting to
08:40know her, but this is the incumbent party. She was part of an administration. They have a decent
08:44record to run on. You could say to black men, for example, $7 billion for historically black
08:49colleges and universities. You know, we've done certain things. We've had an economy where we've
08:54had not one, not two, but over 36 record highs in the stock market this year. If you've got a
08:59retirement account, that is helping you. You can go out and explain these things,
09:03or you can sort of say, well, let's try and segment this.