Opinion: Harris panders to Black male voters in yet another sign of her desperation

In a desperate bid for votes that Kamala Harris should already have secured, the vice president is pandering to a surprising audience: Black men.

Less than three weeks before the election, Harris now claims that if she's elected president, she'll throw the nation's purse wide open for this select group. How kind, and not at all manipulative and indulgent.

On Monday, Harris launched her "Opportunity Agenda for Black Men." The plan includes handing out 1 million "fully forgivable" loans of up to $20,000 for Black entrepreneurs and "others." The proposal also promises to protect cryptocurrency investments and to legalize recreational marijuana.

Harris' initiative is the epitome of identity politics. It also demonstrates that her campaign is weak among a voting bloc that for decades has overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates. That's a bad sign this close to the election.

On top of that, her Opportunity Agenda for Black Men is a set of poor ideas that doesn't provide real hope for people in need.

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All politicians pander to voting blocs to a degree. In 2016, for example, Donald Trump mangled a Bible verse while speaking at Liberty University as he wooed evangelical voters.

But unveiling an initiative that would cost tens of billions of dollars for a specific audience just weeks before the election takes pandering to a new level. It's a warning sign, one of many, that her campaign is starting to sink.

She's also targeting a voting bloc that she should carry by an enormous margin. In 2020, Joe Biden won 87% of the votes cast by Black men. But a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday showed Harris with only 70% support from Black men.

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Her campaign is showing major cracks as Election Day draws near. In six of the seven battleground states, former President Donald Trump now shows a slight lead in the polls. An NBC News poll, also released Sunday, shows Harris and Trump tied in the national vote.

In a last-minute bid for votes, the Democratic presidential nominee has tossed out a plan that could have been announced weeks ago. This isn't the messaging that a winning campaign puts out three weeks before an election.

Harris' proposal is a bevy of bad and costly ideas

Harris' opportunity agenda is another example of her awful policy ideas directed toward a specific audience. Like her economic plans, this set of proposals seems rooted in socialist ideas with an affirmative action hook: taxpayer-funded programs that benefit one group over others.

Bear in mind, she did not propose these ideas as vice president.

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She also skims past the cost to implement her plan. Her proposal for "forgivable" loans to business owners could alone cost as much as $20 billion.

Because the loans would favor one set of business owners over others, this proposal sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Expensive and litigious: a double whammy for taxpayers.

Obama shames Black men into voting for Harris

Harris' agenda also demonstrates just how much she's depending on identity politics to help push her to the White House.

In the introduction to her proposal, the Harris campaign says, "She knows that Black men have long felt that too often their voice in our political process has gone unheard and that there is so much untapped ambition andleadership within the Black male community. Black men and boys deserve a president who will provide the opportunity to unleash this talent and potential by removing historic barriers to wealth creation, education, employment, earnings, health, and improving the criminal justice system."

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a Black male, has long condemned the mindset that certain people need extra aid because they are marginalized.

In his concurring opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, a 2023 case testing the constitutional merits of affirmative action, Thomas scolded fellow Black Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for labeling all Black people as victims, calling it an "insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood."

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The Harris camp isn't just trying to entice Black men to vote for the vice president. There's also shaming involved.

At a campaign stop in Pittsburgh last week, former President Barack Obama scolded Black men for failing to support Harris as much as Democrats had hoped.

“My understanding, based on reports I'm getting from campaigns and communities, is that 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," Obama said.

The idea that demographic groups have an obligation to vote for a particular candidate is a dangerous view of politics that should not exist in America. It's disappointing to see Obama presume that because a person is Black and male, he should vote for the Democratic candidate.

Harris' agenda for Black men reeks of pandering. That's not a good look for any candidate.

And it's not a good idea for America.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Harris panders to Black male voters. It's a sign she's losing