Young Black men could swing the election to Trump

Former President Barack Obama, still enormously popular nearly eight years after he left office, stopped by a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh on Thursday, and — in unscripted remarks with cameras rolling — laid into Black men who are considering voting for former President Donald Trump.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses — I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

On the prospect of voting for Trump? “That’s not acceptable,” he said.

This blunt and shocking verbal scolding rang particularly hollow over the weekend, when the latest New York Times poll revealed that Black voters — and especially Black men between the ages of 18 and 44 — support the Republican candidate in numbers not seen in decades.

Trump is at 20 percent support with Black men overall, and even more with younger Black male voters. The crosstabs are interesting — they show 24 percent Black support for Trump among those who didn’t vote in 2020. The reason? Black voters say they find Trump less offensive than ever before, more fun, and most associated with the issues they care most about: the economy, crime and immigration.

According to CNN’s Harry Enten, Trump is on track to perform the best of any GOP candidate among young Black men since 1960.

This week has become a sort of de facto “Black Men Week” for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. She gave a big interview Tuesday with “Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne tha God. She sat down with “The Shade Room” and Roland Martin, and in all cases largely stuck to her scripted lines about “aspirations and dreams” and “opportunity economy.”

There was also the introduction of a bizarrely clunky “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” which consisted of five bullet points, including “protect cryptocurrency investments” and “legalize recreational marijuana and create opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in this new industry.”

The New York Times has determined that Trump is winning over Black voters by “stoking resentments and pointing to scapegoats” as he “spreads his politics of grievance to nonwhite voters.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said on CNN that “it’s not going to happen” that “large numbers of Black men are going to vote for Donald Trump.” But condescension and denial are not a campaign strategy.

The panic on the left underscores a real element of 2024 — young Black men could be the key constituency to put Trump over the edge.

And it seems Trump knows it. For all the outreach to young men broadly through his podcast and streamer media tour, Trump also has enlisted the Nelk Boys of the Full Send Podcast to pump up voter registration efforts. That includes at a music festival later this month where the rapper Waka Flocka Flame is performing. He has millions of followers and is publicly supporting Trump.

The “celebrification” of this issue is less relevant than the more important reality of the issues. You can see young Black men touting these issues as the reason for supporting Trump in viral videos across social media. But I was particularly intrigued by one conversation earlier this month on the “2WAY” YouTube channel, hosted by Mark Halperin and featuring conversations with everyday voters.

A 37-year-old New York City-based Black voter named Alexander said he’s “not a Trump fan,” but he will likely vote for Trump in 2024. He said many of his friends, particularly those younger than him, are also “starting to lean a lot more Trump, which is surprising in New York.”

“There’s a generational shift that has taken place, that I think the older African American community doesn’t see,” he said. “In the same way that we have the flyover states and we don’t think about middle America, sometimes we don’t think about Black men.”

Alexander said he’s a single-issue voter: “I want to own something.”

Could young Black men determine the election? “It’s certainly a striking concept, and there’s no doubt that in a close race this will be a big deal,” Halperin told me. That said, it’s one of many options for what could be the key to victory: “There are three dozen other groups that are in the same situation,” he said.

Still, there’s something unique about this group. America’s cultural landscape has drifted in recent years toward a set of feminized priorities, alienating many men in the process. At the same time, the marginalization of Black people throughout history is butting up against a political landscape where someone like Obama can become the dominant leader of a generation. If you’re a Gen Z Black voter, you may not remember the time before there had been a Black president.

For young Black men, the confluence of these trends has brought us to a moment when this voting bloc could act on an instinct toward embracing the counter-culture, potentially exerting its most potent power at the ballot box in generations.

Obama may think it’s “not acceptable” — but that’s exactly the reason it may happen.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.