Talk Elections

California Sen. Kamala Harris is married to a white man, Douglas Emhoff. Will that be an issue with some black voters, especially the South, etc.? Is she "authentic"?

http://www.brides.com/story/kamala-harris-husband-douglas-emhoff

If anything, their marriage could show the beauty in America's multiculturalism. It perfectly embodies California, and perhaps she could have a stronger  connection with White voters than Obama (but not as much as the overly nationalistic Trump).

No.

Barack Obama's mother was white. Was that an issue for black voters?

I think it'll be a bigger issue for female voters that her husband is a man.

Black people are protective of black women. Some may think of her husband as a tool or a interloper.

...what?

As I've said before, de Blasio should try to outflank both Booker and Harris among black voters by noting that he's the only candidate with a black wife.  :P

I seriously think you are just trolling now.

If the world is really as stupid as it looks right now judging by this thread, President Trump's re-election is a sure thing.

No.

That could hurt her in the Midwest.

kamala is not black! do you people have eyes?

No don't be silly.  I think a lot of people can distinguish between their privately held views on society from whether or not they agree politically with someone.  If someone doesn't vote for Kamala Harris because her husband is white then frankly they're probably a voter she's better off not having.

I think her not having children is a bigger problem.

LOL. Won't be an issue.

Maybe that she has no children and that she married him at the age of 50.

Obama allegedly dumped his mixed, Asian-American girlfriend because it thought it would hurt him with Black voters in Chicago, but I doubt it'll matter to Kamala, since she's already half-Black, half-Asan.

He has a point, though it's completely flipped. It's more frowned upon for black MEN to date/marry white women than the other way around. Many black women take issue with it, as if white women are robbing them of "good black men."

No it won't. After all Barack Obama's father was black and her mother was white.

She's not even black, so...

A+

$10 to the first conservative pundit to destroy their own career by calling him tom willis

Lol what? This is her dad.
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She may be black in terms of how she thinks about herself, due to part of her ancestry.  But in terms of how she is perceived by many Americans, I think you are right.  I don't ever think of her as a black woman.  Whether blacks would tend to think of her as one of their own is a different question, and I really don't know the answer to that.

She's as black as Obama.

Well people policied his blackness too in the beginning. Biracial people seem to confuse some people.

There's an element of the black community that would be against her because of this, but those are generally the type of people who don't vote.

She would absolutely be thought of as Black by most people, as the One-drop rule still is the standard for many.

No, because rational people look at the ISSUES she stood for in the past and who funded her campaigns.

Lol at the implication that the American voter is, in any way, rational.

Hillary had a white husband too.

What kind of a question is this?

A stupid question.

1. This isn't an issue
2. Kamala Harris is biracial, Indian and Black, and that isn't an issue for anyone, so why would her husband being white be one?
3. This is a stupid thread.

Obviously this thread is stupid but I think it's pretty obvious Kamala Harris is not the candidate the Democrats need in 2020 and I can't understand why anyone would. I guess a lot think "female Obama" but she is really not like Obama at all. Obama gained fame for his conciliatory tone and talking about uniting the country, plus during the campaign he actually talked about economic issues in the Rust Belt and even ran against NAFTA a bit, Harris isn't like that at all. She meanwhile had a pretty awful showing while badgering the CIA Director nominee about gay marriage and doesn't strike me as someone who could possibly appeal to WWC at all, I suspect her platform if she runs will be just boilerplate liberalism with no focus on the sort of things Obama had or wants. This isn't even because of race, if she were a white woman named Kimberly Harris she wouldn't be any better.

I doubt she gets far if she runs though, unless she has some political skills she hasn't shown yet, and kind of suspect she's likely to have a Rubio-esque moment in a debate.

Actually I would say the main thing Harris has going for her right now is the it factor. 
She's charismatic and personable I could see her do very well on the talk show circuit for instance.

The idea that she's non conciliatory is probably based on the senate hearings when she slipped into prosecutor mode. Seen enough to know that's not all there is.Actually think she sometimes needs to be bolder, more Bernie or warren than Obama, because the political climate in the trump era is different from what it was when Obama emerged.  But you also have to acknowledge that black politicians have a  trickier job in terms of walking the fine line between being seen as outspoken and "angry black male/female".
Out of the two black contenders.Booker strikes me as someone who is always in serious speech mode (which he's admittedly quite good at) Harris seems a lot more relaxed in public speeches and gets bonus points for being quite funny. He just doesn't seem as quick witted and sharp as her so I think she'd probably do better in debates. 

Her problems re 2020 is imo her lack of experience and being too left on things like gun control and immigration for a GE. I think 2020 is too soon for her. I'd imagine she will be on every white male candidate short list as VP though.

That won't be necessary.

Agreed. I think Gillibrand is positioning herself well. Klobuchar is also a reasonable candidates for the moderate wing. Booker is worse than Harris. He retweets cringe worthy praises & replies to dozens of ridiculous fan queries & hate tweets. He also seems fake & flustered easily.

Harris is probably better than Booker & is smarter & more composed but looks dull/uninspiring. If she is smart she will wait for 2024. She is not ready. Her inexperience showed during the CIA Director questioning. Al Franken would have been a terrific candidate (maybe not a good president but would be a good campaigner).

WWC are not the base of the Democratic Party. Chuck Schumer and Tom Perez have made a giant blunder in trying to reach out to racist, misogynist Trump supporters. With Kamala Harris she is going to excite the Obama coalition and have those coattails be helpful in defeating Trump. We should be targeting voter suppression and get the vote out in communities that have been threatened by Republican tactics, not a group of white people who have voted in a white supremacist.

White working class voters were a part of the Obama coalition.

Totally agree she's not ready but klobuchar and gillibrand better positioned?
Are we talking primary or GE here? Only if Harris and booker split the black vote would they be better positioned.
Harris is simultaneously overhyped and underestimated on atlas, she's easily the most viable of the "younger" females despite lack of experience. Klobuchar is a solid politician and more well rounded on policy right now but she's extremely bland and won't energise people on the campaign trail.Gillibrand is much better at this but just from what I see on social media Harris seems to excite people more, especially females and POC. I think she would have a much bigger tent. In a primary perhaps Gillibrand would play better to a certain type of white voter. But I can also see Trump crush her in debates.

The one-drop rule dies when people who have thought themselves 100% white get a fgenetic test that disproves such.

Nope. They voted for McCain and Romney.

?

31 counties in Iowa flipped from Obama to Trump.

Macomb County, MI?

Erie County, PA?

Luzerne County, PA went from 52-47 (D) to 58-39 (R)

Those aren't the only "WWC" counties.

I get what the OP is saying, but probably not.

I agree with you in the narrow sense that she's more likely to flop than not, but that's true of pretty much everyone in the field.  No one person is more than 50% likely to be the nominee at this point.  But I'd certainly give Harris a decent chance of being the nominee.  I'd surely put her in the top five.  I mean, serious question: If Harris isn't one of the top five most likely people to be the 2020 Dem. nominee, then who is?

Especially in the event that Biden and Sanders both decide not to run because of age/health, then who are the talented pols in the Democratic field who have actually shown an interest in a presidential run, who you think would outshine Harris?  Would Warren just run away with the nomination in that case, or do you have someone else in mind?

Nope. Didn't matter that Obama was half white or both Clintons WERE white. But we'll see if Harris runs, if she even wins the black vote.

What was wrong with Obama's connection with white voters? I don't think he was to blame for his 39% showing among whites in 2012... and at least he was able to hold the Rust Belt voters who flipped to Trump in 2016. His whole party lost white voters badly that year (and even worse in both subsequent election years), not just him.

How many Black people have you met?

My theory is that Bronz met one black guy back in like 1996 and hasn't left the house since.

Sure it'll be an issue with some black voters.

But overall it'll help her. A lot of the resentment against Democratic women is that they are seen as not being under the ownership of white men; particularly if those women are white. It is seen that these women should be the cheerleading brigade for white men, but aren't as they've joined the party of minorities. As a woman of color, white men have less of an ownership feeling towards Harris to begin with; being married to a white man only makes her even less threatening. In some ways she's the perfect Democratic woman to assuage white men's anxieties.

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Among other things, Obama has also developed a speaking style that identifies him with a black oratory tradition. And in the literal sense of pigmentation, I would say Obama is closer to Harris' dad's skin tone than to hers.

This thread lol



Obama and Harris look like siblings imo.
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As for "developing a black speaking style" (whatever that means) I am gonna guess she will be fine.
" the family lived in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and where the girls sang in a Baptist choir" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris

No, she was married to the first black President.

Guys, the last Democratic president was married to a black woman. I think we all know what this means.


De Blasio 2020.

I think De Blasio is less popular than Bloomberg. He is too left wing for most non-Sanders voters, and too tied to Hillary for most Sanders voters, and generally is unpopular considering his constant fights with everyone.

It was obviously a joke.

OK.... but it was enough to give the election to Trump....

LOL.

Yes, but in spite of what I say, De Blasio may well run.

Nowhere outside of Tumblr and a few insane black separatist groups. Don't be ridiculous.

Why would that matter? The spouse isn't the candidate.

You could just as well ask if Harris having an Indian mother would be an issue with black voters.  I doubt either issue would be a problem for her should she choose to run.

So now while this unsurprisingly appears to not actually be an issue with black voters, it definitely has pissed off a pretty solid contingent of woke Twitter.

Thank God they do not matter.

It's amazing how little daylight sometimes exists between the stances of very significant numerical minorities on woke Twitter, and extreme-right extremists.
Comes to show those are not the places where you usually find good, practical policy.

What is woke twitter pissed of about?

They have the same position as the KKK on interracial marriage, but "from the left" (supposedly.)

Yes she is

In America, anyone with African ancestry is considered black. The legacy of the one drop rule is strong. That is why mixed race children are called either mixed or black, but never white. Kamala's father is from Jamaica, whose ancestry is from Africa.

Does the black community in the United States claim her as one of their own? For the most part. She isn't any different from Obama (whose father was from Kenya) but for some reason Obama was "one of them".

The black community consider Harris one of them, but not that much

To answer the OP question

Literally no one cares she is married to a white man. There is not a single voter in this country who was going to vote for Harris but won't because she is married to a white man.

People dislike her. There are valid reasons and not valid reasons. This is not a valid reason. This is a BS reason that people will say to mask their ignorant reasons. Its #butheremails all over again

*Anyone with significant or noticeable African ancestry, that is. The interesting thing about Kamala is that her racial background (half Black/half Indian) is common in Jamaica and the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Jamaica (and other Anglophone Caribbean countries like Trinidad, Guyana, etc) has a sizable population of people of Indian descent (whether full or partial). They are the descendants of Indian indentured servants who were brought to the Caribbean by the British during the 1800s and early 1900s. They were brought to the Caribbean to do the work in the plantation fields after slavery ended in the 1830s in the British-controlled Caribbean.

Indo-Jamaicans (whether full or partial) are culturally different from Indians directly from current day India though. Most Indo-Jamaicans are culturally and socially the same as Afro-Jamaicans. Also, Indo-Jamaicans will almost always identify as "Jamaican" first and foremost and not as "Indian". There is the legendary dancehall artist Super Cat and he is half Afro-Jamaican and Indo-Jamaican. Miss World 2019 Toni-Ann Singh is also half Afro-Jamaican and Indo-Jamaican.

The most common term for a person who is half Indian/half Black in the Caribbean is "Dougla". However, in Jamaica, the term "coolie" (which can also refer to someone who is fully of Indian descent) is more common. Some consider the term "coolie" to be offensive but in Jamaica it isn't considered to be offensive (for the most part).

Thank you. As a history teacher, this was fascinating to read!

How would someone of Obama's ancestry be viewed in Kenya? Here in the United States he was grouped as "African-American" (which is more accurate for him) or just "black". It did help he married a black women and made his career out of Chicago.

I have heard that mixed people in Africa tend to have more money, power, and influence just because they are usually the children of powerful men who bought white women from Central Asia like Isabel dos Santos who is the richest women in Africa (before going on the run)

Well, both of my parents are Jamaican so that's why I was able to tell you all of that lol. Both of my parents are Afro-Jamaican though.

Based on the info that I gathered: In Kenya, they classify people by their ethnic group/tribe. Obama's father was ethnically Luo and so Obama would be considered as Luo or a mixed Luo. Many will also consider him to be just another biracial/black American. Many Luo people in Kenya are apparently very proud of Obama.