I’ll bet you think that blog title is asking whether the Harris/Walz campaign used racism against Trump/Vance. If so, I certainly don’t blame you for thinking as much…
…but you would be wrong.
I’m talking about the Harris/Walz campaign operating in a racist way to its own Black participants.
And who is telling us this happened? Let me show you, via these excerpts from Nicholas Nehamas, Maya King and Zolan Kanno-Youngs’ article for the (avidly Harris/Walz-supporting) New York Times:
On election night, Ms. Harris drastically underperformed in Philadelphia.
Although she picked up support in white precincts near downtown, she lost votes in some Latino and Black neighborhoods elsewhere in the city.
In interviews, many Democrats expressed little surprise, saying that the Harris campaign had devoted much of its energy to winning over moderate white voters in wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, both in Philadelphia and around the nation. In an October memo, her campaign wrote that the “path to win Pennsylvania capitalizes on Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs.”
As a result, many staff members felt that Philadelphia’s racially diverse neighborhoods were ignored.
Even though the campaign raised $1.5 billion, many of its field offices in the city were filthy and lacked basic supplies like tables, chairs, cleaning products and printers, staff members said. Several recounted being forced to raid the campaign’s better-stocked suburban offices or to raise money independently. One office received more than 20 boxes of campaign T-shirts, only to discover an embarrassing misspelling: “Harriz-Walz.”
The offices were sometimes far from the communities they were supposed to serve. One office meant to get out the vote in West Philadelphia, a predominantly Black area, was so far west that it sat on the border with Montgomery County, a wealthy white suburb.
The problems went beyond Philadelphia. Mayor Dwan B. Walker of Aliquippa, a small city outside Pittsburgh, said the campaign had agreed to fund a get-out-the-vote bus tour for the state’s Black mayors, many of whom represent rural areas. But he said the money was pulled with little explanation.
After Ms. Harris’s loss, Black campaign employees set up a call to talk about career opportunities with Angela Rye, a political strategist and podcast host. The discussion quickly shifted as they shared their anger at how the campaign had treated them, and how underfunded and haphazard their field operations had been in several battleground states, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Times.
An internal survey commissioned by the Harris campaign also found that Black staff members were frustrated with campaign leaders and felt that their ideas were ignored at a rate far higher than their peers’. Some complained of outright racial discrimination. The campaign’s leadership was made aware of the survey’s results.
Hmmmmmmm.
My compliments to the New York Times for daring to publish this racial indictment of the just-defeated Democrat presidential campaign.
Now, will there be some kind of response from either Vice President Harris (who identifies herself as Black, Indian, or both, apparently depending on which audience she is speaking to) or Governor Walz? Maybe…though I’m not holding my breath.
But I guarantee you that it will be used by Republicans in the future, if they are accused – correctly or incorrectly – of racism. Think of the word “hypocrisy”…and expect it to be used copiously.
What a mess.
