Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Thursday Night, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the presidential nomination
Speaker 2: from her party.
Speaker 3: On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written
Speaker 3: in the greatest nation on Earth.
Speaker 4: I accept your nomination to.
Speaker 1: Be president to re United States of America.
Speaker 2: Her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago captain
Speaker 2: astounding month in American politics. With Harris at the top
Speaker 2: of the ticket, the Democrats hope to re energize their party.
Speaker 2: Poles still show a neck and neck race, so both
Speaker 2: parties are pulling hard for each and every vote, and
Speaker 2: one group that's critical for either party's path to victory
Speaker 2: is block voters. For decades, Democrats have counted on this
Speaker 2: voting block, but according to recent polling and Bloomberg reporting,
Speaker 2: many feel taken for granted by the party, and that's
Speaker 2: something that the Trump campaign has been trying to leverage.
Speaker 2: For a while, it seemed to be working. Polling showed
Speaker 2: Trump chipping away at the Democratic hold on that key constituency,
Speaker 2: but with Harris as their presidential nominee, Democrats might be
Speaker 2: mounting a comeback. Today on the show, I'm joined by
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Politics, reporters a Kayla Gardner and Hadrianna Lohenkron who
Speaker 2: have been on the campaign trail tracking how each candidate
Speaker 2: has tried to appeal to black communities around the country,
Speaker 2: and we hear the voices of black voters about how
Speaker 2: it's all landing. From Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the
Speaker 2: Big Take DC podcast. I'm Salaiah Mosen.
Speaker 5: Over the less few cycles. Really since Obama, Trump, who
Speaker 5: of course has been on the ticket for the last
Speaker 5: three cycles, has incrementally bitten into Democrat's edge with black voters.
Speaker 2: Akayla Gardner covers politics for Bloomberg News.
Speaker 5: It's not a huge swing, but it is a couple
Speaker 5: percentage points, and I think even those margins still worry
Speaker 5: Democrats because this is just a block that has known
Speaker 5: to be loyal that they rely on, particularly in metropolitan
Speaker 5: cities like Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, like Detroit, and Michigan, like Atlanta,
Speaker 5: and Georgia.
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia all important swing states. A Washington Post
Speaker 2: analysis found that low turnout among black voters in places
Speaker 2: like Michigan and Wisconsin had an impact on twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: That higher turnout in those key states could have helped
Speaker 2: Clinton win the electoral college. That's a big contrast to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, when black voters in Georgia were keda Biden's victory.
Speaker 2: They made up a third of eligible voters in the state,
Speaker 2: and eighty eight percent of them voted for Biden, making
Speaker 2: him the first Democrat in decades to flip Georgia. Biden
Speaker 2: won there by less than one percent of the overall vote.
Speaker 5: Such small margins and those percentages do matter.
Speaker 2: Historically, the Democratic Party's reliance on black voters has been
Speaker 2: a pretty safe bet. Republican presidential candidates usually only attract
Speaker 2: a small percentage of black voters. The last time a
Speaker 2: Republican broke into the double digits was two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: with George W. Bush winning eleven percent of the block.
Speaker 2: But that's starting to change. Akaila says. Black voters around
Speaker 2: the country have told her that part of this shift
Speaker 2: seems to be stemming from disappointment in the Biden presidency,
Speaker 2: the feeling that he let them down.
Speaker 5: That he hadn't really delivered on promises that he ran
Speaker 5: on in twenty twenty, Those include forgiving student debt. Of course,
Speaker 5: his plan was overthrown by the Supreme Court last year.
Speaker 5: That also includes criminal justice reform. After we saw those
Speaker 5: widespread national protests after the death of George Floyd.
Speaker 2: We heard from one man in Georgia, Azada Madi, who
Speaker 2: was once a Democratic voter but now serves as a
Speaker 2: state delegate in the local Republican party. He feels the
Speaker 2: difficult economic reality under Democrats actually started before Biden. After
Speaker 2: voting Blue in two thousand and eight, Azad found himself
Speaker 2: moving towards the Republican Party by the end of Obama's
Speaker 2: second term.
Speaker 1: In the moment you actually start looking at policy and
Speaker 1: the outcomes of the socio economic policies of the Democrat Party,
Speaker 1: that you find in general that the outcomes have not
Speaker 1: been beneficial to our communities.
Speaker 2: Economic disillusionment has provided an opening for the Trump campaign.
Speaker 2: They told Bloomberg back in December that this election they'd
Speaker 2: be making their strongest effort yet to target this block.
Speaker 2: Just eight percent of black voters went for Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Accounting for a margin of error and discrepancies
Speaker 2: among exit polls, Trump may have gained as many as
Speaker 2: four percentage points among black voters and t twenty twenty
Speaker 2: to land at twelve percent. As of December, his campaign
Speaker 2: was hoping to get a quarter of the vote twenty
Speaker 2: five percent. Trump promoted his efforts to secure more funding
Speaker 2: for historically black colleges, and he leaned into his economic
Speaker 2: message hard, like in his address at the Republican National
Speaker 2: Convention last month, we.
Speaker 5: Had no inflation, soaring incomes. We're going No's.
Speaker 4: Nobody can believe it. You can't believe what.
Speaker 5: Happened if you look at black voters as a whole.
Speaker 5: I think most of the ship that we're seeing is
Speaker 5: happening amongst black men, and they think that is specifically
Speaker 5: because of economic issues.
Speaker 6: A lot of the messaging that had been working in
Speaker 6: terms of Trump and other Republican leaders is this idea
Speaker 6: that the Democratic Party has taken black voters for granted.
Speaker 2: That's Hadrianna Lowencron, who's been covering Trump on the campaign trail.
Speaker 6: At the events I've been at. From my conversations with
Speaker 6: the audience, they're tired with the state of the economy,
Speaker 6: for instance, they're worried about crime and policing.
Speaker 2: After Trump's criminal indictments. He also tried to connect to
Speaker 2: black Americans who felt disillusioned with the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2: Here he is at the Black Conservative Federation's gala in February.
Speaker 4: The black people are so much on my side now
Speaker 4: because they see what's happening to me happens to them.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's reporting found that Trump's economic message is resonating.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of people who are saying it's
Speaker 6: not Trump himself. There are things that he says, There
Speaker 6: are issues with his personality that I am not fully behind.
Speaker 6: But I want a difference in terms of my four
Speaker 6: oh one K and I want to be able to
Speaker 6: afford my groceries.
Speaker 2: One of those people is Bishop Everett Spencer, who preaches
Speaker 2: at a church outside Atlanta. He attended an event called
Speaker 2: Congress Cigars and KGNAC back in June, where two of
Speaker 2: Trump's allies addressed a crowd of mostly black men at
Speaker 2: an Atlanta cigar lounge. Here's what he told Blue Mberg
Speaker 2: reporter Stephanie Laie at the event.
Speaker 7: For the Democrats to say that they are the already
Speaker 7: of the poor and additional franchise these policies that form
Speaker 7: these kind of economic situations that hurt those communities the.
Speaker 2: Worst, he said. He doesn't agree with everything Trump says
Speaker 2: or does, but on the key issues that matter, Trump
Speaker 2: is his guy.
Speaker 7: We thought his policies were good or America, good for
Speaker 7: his black community and helped America flourish, and we would
Speaker 7: like to get back to that.
Speaker 2: The Trump campaign and at surrogates have hosted events like
Speaker 2: this in different parts of the country trying to appeal
Speaker 2: to black voters.
Speaker 6: He's been relying on black representatives such as Representative Baron
Speaker 6: Donald of Florida, Senator Tim Scott.
Speaker 7: The GOP we can bring hope to the place where
Speaker 7: there used to be a desert.
Speaker 6: These are people who have been kind of trapesing the
Speaker 6: country with him when he's going to different rallies, and
Speaker 6: they're kind of hosting their own events, sometimes at barber shops.
Speaker 6: I was at the RNC and Milwaukee. They had a
Speaker 6: specific event for black Republican mayors and the goal was also,
Speaker 6: I think, just to serve as a welcoming space for
Speaker 6: black conservatives, which is a smaller demographic.
Speaker 2: And their narrative seemed to stick.
Speaker 6: In earlier polling of this election cycle, Trump was attracting
Speaker 6: more black voters than he had in his previous runs.
Speaker 2: In an ABC News Washington Post IPSOS poll released in July,
Speaker 2: seventeen percent of Block voters said they'd vote for Trump
Speaker 2: in November. Again. That's up from eight percent in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen and somewhere between eight and twelve percent and twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Azad Amadi again, I.
Speaker 1: Remember a time when it would be confrontational to grab
Speaker 1: a brother that was sitting outside of a local liquor
Speaker 1: store and say, I'm a Republican and I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk to you about voting for a Republican. And today
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that it will turn into an hour
Speaker 1: long conversation outside of my local convenience door. There is
Speaker 1: a very large degree of dissatisfaction with the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal.
Speaker 2: But then the entire race was turned on its head.
Speaker 2: Biden dropped out, and Trump's goal to sway black voters
Speaker 2: came up against a historic development, Kamala Harris becoming the
Speaker 2: Democratic presidential nominee, the first black woman to ever get
Speaker 2: a major party presidential nomination. How Harris flipped the script.
Speaker 2: That's after the break back in July, when Joe Biden
Speaker 2: passed the torch to his vice president Kamala Harris. Some
Speaker 2: in the Democratic party worried that she'd be vulnerable to
Speaker 2: the same criticisms that Biden faced, particularly when it comes
Speaker 2: to the economy. But even before Harris took over the ticket,
Speaker 2: Akila Gardner told me she was trying to make inroads
Speaker 2: with the black voters who were turning away from Biden.
Speaker 5: This was a huge part of her role really on
Speaker 5: Biden's campaign was speaking to this constituency. She is, of
Speaker 5: course a black woman. She also attended an HBCU Howard University,
Speaker 5: so we saw her consistently speaking two crowds of HBCUs.
Speaker 3: Our nation, as it always has is counting on you
Speaker 3: to energize, to organize, and to mobilize.
Speaker 2: Harris went on what she called an economic Opportunity tour
Speaker 2: around the swing States. She addressed crowds of mostly black
Speaker 2: voters talking about the economy in discussions moderated by people
Speaker 2: like Steve Harvey.
Speaker 1: This administration needs to get the word out of what
Speaker 1: they've actually doing and what they're actually accomplishing, so we.
Speaker 3: Can stop all this foolishness about what you're doing for
Speaker 3: black people.
Speaker 2: And when Biden stepped down and Harris announced her intend
Speaker 2: to seek the Democratic nomination, many black voters sprung into action.
Speaker 5: We saw this zoom with an organization called Win with
Speaker 5: Black Women that had over forty thousand participants who got on,
Speaker 5: raised more than a million dollars and really spurred many
Speaker 5: different iterations of copycats.
Speaker 2: In the latest NPR PBS News Maris poll from early August,
Speaker 2: Harris has pulled ahead of Trump, largely thanks to a
Speaker 2: surge among black voters. When she first announced her candidacy,
Speaker 2: she had a twenty three point lead with them. Now
Speaker 2: she's ahead by fifty four points.
Speaker 5: They seem to be open to giving her a chance,
Speaker 5: And something that I'm hearing frankly from a lot of
Speaker 5: folks is her campaign feels a lot like President Barack
Speaker 5: Obama's in two thousand and eight. That the sort of
Speaker 5: momentum and energy and hopefulness that people have sort of
Speaker 5: mirrors that, particularly because she is a historic candidate. She
Speaker 5: is the first black woman Asian woman to be a
Speaker 5: nominee for a major party.
Speaker 2: Stephanie Bethea owns a wine shop and tasting room called
Speaker 2: The Purple Corkscrew outside Atlanta. She was a Democratic dell
Speaker 2: get for Obama in twenty eight and twenty twelve, but
Speaker 2: she didn't run this year.
Speaker 3: Because I thought, I it's gonna be boring. I didn't
Speaker 3: realize how down I was and how down everyone was.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if people were going to vote or not.
Speaker 3: And so I think with the ballot change and everyone's excited,
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure that people keep that
Speaker 3: energy up.
Speaker 2: When Harris took over the ticket, Stephanie said that she
Speaker 2: hosted a mobilization event at her shop. She was expecting
Speaker 2: about seventeen women to come.
Speaker 3: It was just a raw rock session that we literally
Speaker 3: put together in twenty four hours and got fifty women here,
Speaker 3: mainly women. At that time. There was no swag, no
Speaker 3: buttons or anything. And one lady came in she had
Speaker 3: literally printed out on a piece of paper Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: for President and safety pinned to her back.
Speaker 2: That energy and excitement is palpable at Harris's rallies and appearances. Akila,
Speaker 2: what does it feel like to be at a Harris rally?
Speaker 5: It feels a lot different than a Biden rally. I
Speaker 5: will say that for sure. She's playing Beyonce songs, pop songs,
Speaker 5: eighty songs, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston. Her crowds are typically
Speaker 5: dancing before she comes out and singing.
Speaker 2: Even the DNC roll call turned into a little John
Speaker 2: rap concert.
Speaker 4: Where is it, gentlemen?
Speaker 1: We are here tonight tonight.
Speaker 6: On the Trump side, when I'm talking to people, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of focus on Okay, we want to return
Speaker 6: to twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, we want to return
Speaker 6: to how the economy was, etcetera, etcetera. And here it's
Speaker 6: like we're doing something new. We're bringing the country forward.
Speaker 6: This is a new chapter. And I think that also
Speaker 6: in and of itself, kind of sparks a lot of
Speaker 6: optimism and enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: The Harris campaign is hoping to ride that energy until November,
Speaker 2: but it's still shaping up to be a close race.
Speaker 2: Trump has remained on the offensive when it comes to
Speaker 2: knocking the Biden Harris economic record, and that's still the
Speaker 2: biggest issue driving many voters. But Trump has also started
Speaker 2: to acknowledge some of his vulnerabilities. Here he is at
Speaker 2: mar A Lago speaking to a group of reporters a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago.
Speaker 4: I seem to be doing very well with black males.
Speaker 4: This is according to Paul's as you know, it's possible
Speaker 4: that it won't do as well with black women.
Speaker 2: He's had some gaffes with black voters since Harris took
Speaker 2: over the ticket. Notably, there was his appearance at the
Speaker 2: National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago last month. Hedriana,
Speaker 2: who's a member of NABJ, was in the room.
Speaker 6: This happened pretty last minute in terms of when it
Speaker 6: was officially announced, and so when he finally came out,
Speaker 6: the audience was apprehensive, and almost immediately he kind of
Speaker 6: attacked the ABC reporter who was asking the question, listing
Speaker 6: all of these things he had done. You have told
Speaker 6: four congressmen women of Coller who were American citizens, to
Speaker 6: go back to where they came from.
Speaker 5: You've had dinner with a white supremacist at.
Speaker 3: Your marologue resort.
Speaker 6: Based on that, why should black voters kind of trust you.
Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever been asked a question so
Speaker 4: in such a horrible manner.
Speaker 2: A first question from there, Adrianna says, the interview went
Speaker 2: off the rails. Trump went back and forth with the reporters.
Speaker 4: Coming from the border. Are millions and millions of people
Speaker 4: that happened to be taking black jobs? You had the
Speaker 4: best what exactly is a black job? Sir, a black
Speaker 4: job is anybody that has a job, that's what it is,
Speaker 4: anybody that has a heart.
Speaker 2: And he questioned Harris's racial identity.
Speaker 4: I didn't know she was black until a number of
Speaker 4: years ago when she happened to turn black, and now
Speaker 4: she wants to be known as black. So I don't
Speaker 4: know is she Indian or.
Speaker 6: Is she black. Previously, he has done these types of
Speaker 6: events with more conservative voters who already would have bought
Speaker 6: into his messaging, and so that was a very high
Speaker 6: risk opportunity for him, but it did not end up
Speaker 6: panning out.
Speaker 2: In the time since the NABJ event, Trump hasn't changed
Speaker 2: his attack, despite what he says his advisors have asked.
Speaker 4: Please, sir, don't get personal.
Speaker 2: Talk about policy. Let me ask you about that. At
Speaker 2: a rally in North Carolina this week, he asked the
Speaker 2: crowd whether he should listen to those advisors and stick
Speaker 2: to policy or keep up the personal attacks.
Speaker 5: Should I get personal?
Speaker 4: My advisors are fired.
Speaker 2: It's a strategy that may rile up his base at
Speaker 2: a rally, but Akila says it could be risky when
Speaker 2: it comes to broadening his appeal.
Speaker 5: There was an Axios story about a focus group in Wisconsin,
Speaker 5: and all of the respondents said they did not like
Speaker 5: Trump's attacks on Harris's identity. And it's been interesting because
Speaker 5: the Heroes Came Paign has in some ways responded to it,
Speaker 5: but not Harris herself or even her running mate Tim Waltz.
Speaker 5: And I don't think that they feel like they have to.
Speaker 5: They think that Trump can walk into his own trap
Speaker 5: in some ways when he does things like this.
Speaker 2: In her speech to the DNC Tuesday night, former First
Speaker 2: Lady Michelle Obama gave a direct response to the comment
Speaker 2: that Trump made about quote unquote black jobs. It was
Speaker 2: an example of what a Kayla talked about times when
Speaker 2: Trump's language can backfire.
Speaker 3: Who's gonna tell him that the job he's currently seeking
Speaker 3: might just be one of those black jobs.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salaamosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Robert Williams, edited by Aaron Edwards
Speaker 2: and Laura Davison. It was fact checked by Alex Sugia.
Speaker 2: A special thanks to Stephanie Lai for sharing her reporting.
Speaker 2: Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editor real direction for
Speaker 2: the show. Naomi Shaven and Kim Gidtleson are our senior producers.
Speaker 2: Nicole Beemster Borer is our executive producer. Stage Bauman is
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big
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