Harris scrambles to court black men with new outreach plan while battling anemic polling

Vice President Kamala Harris is desperately rolling out a new spate of policy proposals aimed at courting black men as she battles lackluster polling involving the key demographic.The Democratic presidential candidate’s proposal, dubbed the Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, features five main initiatives, and its unveiling is coinciding with her swing through urban locales seeking to engage the crucial bloc of voters that top Dems feel may be slipping away.“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Dem former President Barack Obama admitted during a stop at a Pittsburgh campaign office last week.“Now, I also want to say that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”Harris’ five main proposals are: granting $1 million loans to small-business black entrepreneurs that “are fully forgivable of up to $20,000”; investing in training and mentorship programs, laying out regulations to protect black men with cryptocurrency scams, establishing a National Health Equity Initiative to tackle issues such as sickle-cell disease and legalizing marijuana.

For some, the new initiative is seen as coming too late in the game, with Election Day just three weeks away.“Wow, it’s the last three weeks.… Ballots are in mailboxes,” said Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin who is backing Harris, to Politico.

“We shouldn’t be here having to break the glass because we’ve reached the emergency point.”Before Harris took over the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket, President Biden had a long-chronicled struggle in the 2024 season to excite black voters, a group widely credited with helping him survive the 2020 Democratic primary.Now that Harris is the standard bearer, she has generally garnered decent polling numbers with black women but lagged with black men specifically, amid a widening gender gap among voters broadly.The vice presiden...