Did Kamala Harris' campaign focus on the wrong voters?
When the results in Georgia were declared on election night, Lenaé Lewis could barely speak. The swing state where she was born and raised had voted for Donald Trump, making his path towards a national victory almost complete.
“I cried," she admits. "I think it was a feeling of defeat. I’m seeing someone like me run for president, being beaten down.”
Lenaé is a Black woman, a trainee teacher. We find her in a smart food market in Atlanta where she’s taken her young cousins for ice cream - a treat to lift their gloomy mood.
“I’m scared for the kids, especially men trying to put restrictions on women's bodies," she tells me. "This election was really eye-opening for me.
“Kamala is a woman of colour and she would have been the first female president, yet they chose a convicted felon instead…. The American public has shown what they think of us.”
David Axelrod, the former Obama advisor, says sexism and racism played a part in Harris’s defeat.
As a candidate, Harris, the daughter of an Indian woman and Jamaican man, chose to downplay her identity during the campaign, stung by allegations by opponents that she was a ‘diversity hire’, and by Hillary Clinton’s unfulfilled promise to ‘break the glass ceiling’ when running against Trump in 2016.
On a table close to Lenaé’s at the food market, we meet Anumita, who backed Harris and found the Vice President’s perceived “silence” about her identity “agonising”.
“I get it, I don’t blame her, she just didn’t want to scare people” says the commercial lawyer who, like Harris, has Indian and Caribbean heritage.
“It’s simpler for all of us to shut up about race, it makes everyone else feel weird - that’s what it’s like in America today.
“But it was different for Obama. He could be all ‘race this, race that’, but women of colour are at the bottom of the pile. And I’m hearing all about Black men not coming out for Kamala, but what about everyone else? What about white women, Hispanic voters, all the other women?”
Before the election, Democrats panicked that it was the collapsing support of Black men they needed to worry about.
Former President Barack Obama was despatched to the campaign trail to issue warnings to Africa American men telling one gathering: “…part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
Perhaps the Democrats were pointing fingers in the wrong direction. In the end, it was white women who should have worried Harris’ campaign team more.
Strategists thought this section of society would be drawn away from Trump because of his approach to reproductive rights.
They weren’t.
Exit polls indicated that 45% of white women backed Harris compared to 93% of Black women and 60% of Latino women.
Democrats have been here before. In 2016, it was assumed that white women would show solidarity with Hillary Clinton in the way Black men had with Barack Obama - in fact, more backed her opponent, contributing to Donald Trump's first victory. Few within the party appeared to answer the question: why?
But the hand-wringing about African American men ‘letting down’ Harris continued on Democrat-leaning TV shows.
“A lot of Hispanic voters have problems with Black candidates,” said Joe Scarborough, an exasperated MSNBC presenter, dipping his toe into a debate about intersectionality within hours of the election result.
His guest, Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil rights campaigner and one of the most respected Black men in America, went further: “…some of the most misogynist things I’ve heard going on this Get Out The Vote tour came from Black men.”
Exit polls indicated that 78% of Black men voted for Harris, one point less than those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but a significant majority nonetheless.
It’s rush hour in the middle of Atlanta, and only one issue concerns Duawn and Steve - it’s not the election result.
They’re in a hurry, on a mission to get across town before the charge for their electric bike rental increases. Time’s money, and the two young men have little of either.
“I already knew that Trump was going to win,” says Steve, explaining his decision not to vote, despite his interest in the drama of the campaign.
He believes the election was decided by the cost of living crisis under the Biden-Harris administration
As we speak, a motorist spots our camera crew and shouts “Trump’s a racist” as he whizzes past.
The man in the car is African American, just like Duawn and Steve, who is unmoved: “(The motorist) said, ‘Trump’s a racist’. But if he’s a racist, dude, at least he did it to our face, so I don’t give a f***.”
This is language I’ve never heard in my conversations with older Black Americans. These young men resent being ‘blamed’ for not backing anyone, and their affinity is with Trump.
“This has nothing to do with colour,” says Duawn. “The United States is funded on commerce. It’s a place of transaction and business. This man (Trump) is a great businessman.”
But Steve is franker: “I just know for a fact, the United States wouldn’t be run by women. That’s just for a fact.”
They’re not alone. Payton emerges from the escalators of the downtown subway station nearby. No wonder he looks weary - he has just finished a long shift as a security worker, a job he took to supplement his work as an artist.
He has warmed to Trump over the years. I ask what it is that he finds so appealing. He takes a moment.
“Power.”
Payton is honest about the appeal of Trump’s machismo, unbothered by his history of racist language. In fact, the characteristics so many have found offensive are, to him, appealing.
Young men of all ethnic backgrounds swung towards Donald Trump significantly - a candidate who embraced the ‘manosphere’ through podcast appearances and proximity to personalities with a large appeal among young male voters.
“If I was a Caucasian man I would think the same, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to win,” says Payton.
Why did he not feel an affinity with a woman of colour? I ask whether Harris’ gender dissuaded him from voting for her.
“It’s nothing to do with her race or even her gender," he answers. "Maybe that’s just me, though. My mum worked for the school board, my step dad was top notch in the army, so maybe that’s the way I see things. That stuff doesn’t matter.”
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Trump’s coalition is broad. It includes men of all backgrounds, and women of some. And he may hand to a new generation of politically-aligned leaders a section of America’s young men.
Back at the food market, Anumita says the surprise size of Trump’s victory has caused her to doubt her friends, neighbours and even her family. She’s calling around to “double check” who they voted for, and why.
“You can tell me a hundred things about problems with the economy, but all I’m seeing from this election result is racism and sexism.”
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