Kamala Harris TV Ads Aimed at Black Men ‘Sucked,’ Ex-Obama Adviser Says

The Harris campaign’s television ads aimed at Black men during the presidential election “sucked,” former Barack Obama adviser Van Jones said on Friday.

President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by a wide margin earlier this week. While Harris still won a large majority of the Black vote, Black voters, and Black men in particular, were among several demographic groups that shifted substantially toward Trump this year.

While speaking on CNN with Anderson Cooper, Jones argued that the Democratic ticket had lost a significant amount of the Black male vote because the campaign did not “actually listen more and lecture less when it comes to African American men.”

“The Kamala Harris campaign wound up spending a bunch of money on TV ads, and the TV ads sucked,” Jones said. “They did not appeal to anyone.”

Jones went on to say that Black men “were not handled properly” in comparison to women, immigrants and transgender people.

“What was the agenda for immigrants? Comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “What’s the agenda for women? Abortion. What’s the agenda for transgender people? Dignity and respect. What was the agenda for Black men? You still can’t tell me. And that was a problem on our side.”

Jones also argued that Republicans were able to win over some Black men by adopting a more modern approach to outreach instead of relying on traditional media like television.

“You starting hearing African American men who aren’t even political saying the same exact thing over and over again, because the Republican Party was spending money on ads and outreach on streaming services and stuff I’ve never even heard of before,” Jones said.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the office of Harris and the Harris campaign via email on Friday night.

Harris received 80 percent of the overall Black vote, according to the Associated Press (AP). However, President Joe Biden received 90 percent of the Black vote in 2020, with Trump doubling his share of the vote in the demographic this year.

About 30 percent of Black men under the age of 45 supported Trump over Harris this year, roughly double the amount that backed the former and future president in 2020, according to the AP.

While turnout is typically nowhere near 100 percent for any demographic group in U.S. elections, over 34 million Black Americans are eligible to vote and even a relatively small shift in voting preferences and turnout could easily change an election’s outcome.

Trump was leading Harris by a little less than 4 million votes in the national popular vote as of late Friday night, reported the AP. The president-elect’s margin in the so-called “blue wall” states that decided the winner of the Electoral College—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—was only around 250,000 votes combined with nearly all of the votes counted.

Update 11/08/24, 11:15 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information and further context.