Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is heading to Arizona this week, and all eyes are on a few potential vice presidential picks, which include Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly.
So now let’s turn to more on the Harris campaign and how it’s being met by some of the most important voting blocs for Democrats: Black voters and Latino voters.
Before President Joe Biden stepped aside just a few weeks ago, he was losing support among these key demographics. But that could be changing now that Harris is at the top of the ticket.
To learn more about both groups and how they’re responding to a Harris ticket, The Show spoke to Elvia Díaz, editorial page editor at the Arizona Republic, and columnist Greg Moore.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Greg, I want to start with you here. You wrote a column about a big moment in the campaign recently from former President Donald Trump, when he appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists conference last week. There was a lot of controversy, first of all, just about whether or not he should even be there, whether or not they should do this interview.
You say it was a good thing that he was there. Tell us why.
GREG MOORE: Oh, absolutely it was a good thing. So first of all, Donald Trump is running for president. So he should be talking to journalists so that we can ask the questions on behalf of the American people to find out whether this is the kind of guy we want to represent us. And if he’s talking to journalists, he needs to be talking to all journalists — and Black journalists, last time I checked, were journalists. So yeah, absolutely. He needed to be there.
GILGER: So, ABC’s Rachel Scott, started this off in a really poignant way. She asked Trump the first thing, basically … why Black voters should trust him, given his history of things he has said about and to people of color. What’s your take on his answer and what happened next?
MOORE: Well, Donald Trump went full Donald Trump. It was amazing. Like if you just look at it as political theater, it was just, it was great. The way that Donald Trump plays the political game, it’s like watching improv. It’s like watching performance art. It’s amazing.
Rachel Scott’s question was the question that anyone wanted to know the answer to. Donald Trump, you’ve said this. You’ve said that. And I could go through it list by list. But it was a very long question because it needed to be.
So what did Trump do? Rather than address what Rachel Scott asked, Donald Trump said, “Wow, I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked such a rude question in such a way. That was horrible. And oh, by the way, where do you work at ABC? That’s a horrible organization. It’s a fake news organization.” Donald Trump went full Donald Trump.
He had an absolute opportunity to tell Black voters, “Hey, guys, I know some of the things might have sounded harsh. That’s just my way. I’m very blunt and very plain spoken. But if you look at my actions and you look at my heart and you see what I’ve been able to do, you’ll understand that my heart is in the right place. And your concerns are my concerns.” That’s not what he did. Donald Trump was Donald Trump.
GILGER: Let me ask you about what you make of the at least chipping away at Black support for the Democratic Party, at least before Kamala Harris took over the ticket. This has been a traditionally Democratic stronghold. And we’ve seen that support sort of disintegrate in the last a little bit of time here. What do you make of that? Why do you think that is?
MOORE: So the Black support is always going to be key in a presidential election for a couple of reasons. The trick is whether the Democrats actually get up, get out and go vote. That means they need someone to be excited about. And nobody was excited about Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris, though? Listen, she comes out. She’s an AKA (Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority). She went to Howard. She knows how to connect with Black people by telling a story of having to overcome, of having to do a little bit more to get people to take her seriously.
As far as I can tell, Black people are overwhelmingly in favor of voting for Harris, but they’re excited to do it. That’s the trick. If you want to get specific on the numbers, Barack Obama was taking like nine and a half out of every 10 Black voters. The support was unreal, off the charts. Hillary Clinton was only taking seven and a half out of every 10 Black voters, and they weren’t excited to vote for her. And that created enough margin to give Trump room to take the election in the first place.
If Kamala Harris pushes closer to where Obama was — and it looks like she’s capable of doing that — I think she’s going to have the upper hand going into November.
GILGER: Super interesting. OK, so then I want to turn to you, Elvia, and talk about Harris and Latino voters. You wrote that you are surprised at the level of enthusiasm that you’re seeing.
ELVIA DÍAZ: Yes. Absolutely. And I wanted to go back to what Greg was saying first about whether Donald Trump should have spoken to the Black journalists at the association. Everyone is now saying, yes, absolutely. Including Greg. Absolutely Donald Trump should have spoken to the journalists. But I’m wondering if it is because of the outcome of that interview. I mean, the journalists were fantastic and getting right at the point, asking the point in questions and then clearly fact checking him right from the beginning.
And then Trump did terrible. He essentially killed the interview himself. So I’m wondering if in retrospect, that’s why people are now saying it was a great thing. But if you had reporters who would just ask questions, I bet the conversation would have been more about why should journalists and certain groups give Donald Trump a platform to begin with, just to lie and attack the candidates? But we’ll see, right?
And talking about the Latino vote, I think Greg got it right. And I think it’s almost the same as with African Americans: That largely Latinos tend to be Democrats, but they were not excited. I will say, just like African Americans, they were not totally excited about Joe Biden. And they needed someone that they could identify with, that they could see a future worth.
There’s a difference between the campaign tone already. Biden was talking about saving democracy. So kind of the old playbook — and “old” meaning three years ago, four years ago. That’s how that’s how quickly things change. To more about “We’re not going back, this is the future, we’re building something new.”
I think that is resonating with minorities as well as Latinos, especially young Latinos. I think Trump has gotten more support from young Latino men, not necessarily from Latinos across the board. But now the excitement on the other side is real, is palpable. It’s there.
I think what I was surprised by is not necessarily the support but the intensity in the enthusiasm of that support of Latinos for Kamala Harris.
GILGER: OK. So let me ask you both here at the end a question about identity politics. Like Kamala Harris’ campaign and the candidate herself, interestingly, are not really making this about her identity — even though she would be the first president who is a woman, she would be the first president who is Black and South Asian and a woman.
This is historic in many ways, but we’re not seeing the kind of language we saw when Hillary Clinton ran. You know, the “I’m with her” T-shirts several years ago. Why do you think that is? You want to start with that one, Greg?
MOORE: Barack Obama was using the same strategy. Barack Obama didn’t come out and say, “I’m the Black president.” He said, “I’m the president for all of America, at least that’s what I’m trying to be.” Look, when you are Black — and I can only imagine what it’s like for Black women from the perspective that I know a whole bunch of them — you can’t deny that. You don’t need to talk about it. It is you.
As soon as you walk into a room, everybody sees the Black guy’s in here or the Black woman is in here, especially when they’re not accustomed to seeing people who look like you in spaces like that. There’s no need for her to talk about it. Everybody else is talking about it.
All she needs to do is lay out her qualifications, which are pretty strong. Last time I checked, she was a vice president. She was a prosecutor. She rose through the ranks in California. This is this is a strong candidate here. And she doesn’t need to play identity politics because everybody else is going to play it or play it for her.
GILGER: Elvia, what’s your take there?
DÍAZ: Yeah, absolutely. She doesn’t need to. Donald Trump, in that interview with the Black journalists, that was one of the headlines out of it: whether she’s really Black. Essentially he questioned the idea that she turned Black when it was convenient for her.
Well, no. Again, she cannot hide the fact. So no, no need to say the obvious in this case, right? They are going to do it for her. And you know what? When people talk about identity politics, I always say, “Yes, it is true. Identity politics does exist.” And we have been seeing that since the beginning of this country, except that it’s always been about white people being in power.
That’s identity politics: when one race, when one sort of group of people had been in power since the beginning of this country. But clearly the rest of the population only sees identity politics when it comes to minorities. I think that’s ridiculous.
