Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and her allies are making a play for white men as the campaign seeks to build a broad coalition ahead of November.
The allied group “White Dudes for Harris” raised over $4 million during a call on Monday evening, which saw over 190,000 participants.
The effort is the latest example of a demographic-based mobilization push for Harris. However, the effort to win over white men will be difficult for Democrats as the voting bloc has moved farther into the Republican column under former President Trump.
“It’s pretty obviously a problem,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “Trump has always done well with white men. He did well with white men in 2020 and he's going to do well with white men this time
“It’s not just a Kamala problem. It’s a Democratic Party problem,” said one longtime Democratic strategist. “But it’s now her problem and it’s particularly pronounced because of who she is and what she stands for.”
A poll conducted by the Economist and YouGov between July 21-23 revealed that 39 percent of men said they would vote for Harris, while 47 percent said they would vote for Trump.
A separate poll by Emerson College indicated that most male voters in key battleground states would select Trump over Harris. In Michigan, for example, Trump was 16 points ahead of Harris – 54 to 38 – among men. In Pennsylvania, 55 percent of male voters supported Trump over Harris in the poll, as he built a 15-point advantage with men.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell noted that the push from Harris’s allies to appeal to white men shows where on the electoral map Democrats are struggling.
“They’re having an issue with rural, white men in the upper Midwest,” O’Connell said. “The Democrats are more enthusiastic about Harris than Biden but that does not mean that the people who are going to decide this election are any more enthusiastic about Harris than they were about Biden.”
Democrats say Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate was a strong signal that Trump is doubling down on white male voters. Democrats have also pointed to the 4th night of the Republican National Convention, which featured the likes of WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan and UFC president Dana White, as another sign.
“It's less about what Democrats are not doing and it’s more about how Republicans are signaling to those men,” said one Democratic strategist who has been involved in recent presidential campaigns.
Monday’s “White Dudes for Harris” is seen as an example of how Democrats are trying to signal to those men. The call, which was described by actor Bradley Whitford as “a rainbow of beige,” raised over $4 million and was joined by 190,000 people.
Famous faces on the call in addition to Whitford included Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg, Illinoi Gov. JB Pritzker and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who are all seen as contenders to be the Democratic vice presidential pick .
“Democrats have to be creative here because Republicans are working from a position of strength with white male audiences,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. “Democrats are going to have to lift up voices and messengers who have the credibility and influence with that population that they don’t.”
Monday’s call started on a more emotional note, linking what organizers label as a loneliness epidemic among men to Trump’s ability to bring them into the conservative, Republican fold.
“There is an epidemic amongst men in this country,” Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist who helped organize the call, told The Hill.
“That loneliness, that anxiety, that disconnection, it gets filled by something. And what Republicans have done an incredible job of, depressingly so, is creating a permission structure that makes it very easy for white men to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace MAGA culture, to embrace this sort of devolution of our politics into something much more crass,” he continued.
Republicans’ success with white men was evident in the 2016 and 2020 elections, though Biden was able to narrow the gap in 2020. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump won white men by 30 points in 2016 and by 17 points in 2020.
Since Biden withdrew from the race, passing the torch to Harris, Democrats say they have taken note of the differences between Harris’s pitch to voters and Hillary Clinton’s tone in 2016.
“There have clearly been some lessons learned,” said one former aide to Clinton. “She’s not leaning in too heavily into the history piece. Kamala’s pitch isn’t ‘Let’s make history.’ It’s more ‘What kind of country do you want to live in?
“That kind of backfired a little bit,” the former aide said. “But I’m not sure we should overcorrect either.”
Bannon said to beat Trump and overcome his support with white men, Harris is going to have to generate excitement among other demographics, including white women, young voters, and Black voters.
“She's not going to win white men but maybe she can minimize the carnage,” Bannon said.
Nellis, on the other hand, argued that Democrats have been too quick in the past to give up on constituencies that seem out of reach, like rural voters and white male voters.
“We should be fighting for every inch and damn sure know that the Republicans do that. They communicate with every constituency that they can win, lose, or draw,” Nellis said.
“If we could move even a fraction of white men and get them to a place where they feel comfortable with being a part of the multicultural movement that is the Democratic Party, as imperfect as it is a lot of days, that would change our politics dramatically and so much for the better.”
