Before delivering remarks commemorating Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, and the continued fight to preserve voting rights for Black Americans, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and notably called for an “immediate ceasefire.”
“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” said the vice president, escalating the Biden-Harris administration’s criticisms of its ally Israel after the death toll of Palestinians surpassed 30,000. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” she added.
The venue, timing, and audience of Harris’ remarks were significant. For months, polls and several protests have shown that Black voters, particularly young Black voters, share growing concern with the White House’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war, threatening President Joe Biden’s reelection chances in November.
The fact that the vice president used her time and space in front of thousands of mostly Black Americans on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights leaders like the late John R. Lewis were bloodied and nearly lost their lives in the fight for voting rights, was meaningful.
Most public polling shows a decline in support for Biden and Harris among Black voters. While the war in Gaza is not the only concern Black voters have with the administration, it is undoubtedly a critical one. Harris’ sharper tone toward Israel – seen by some as the most damning from a senior administration official – could be seen as a deliberate effort to help salvage the administration’s most loyal voting base.
“It wasn’t an accident, for sure,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who noted the Biden-Harris campaign “went out of its way to lift up the vice president’s comments.”
“Drawing a relationship and symmetry between what many Black Americans faced for generations in Selma versus what…
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