How Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Are Losing North Carolina for Kamala Harris

Trump's Unexpected Edge

Team,

I’m out on the hustings for Trump in the Tarheel State. This is from the front lines.

The article leverages my experience back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I managed a small furniture store in Cambridge while earning my doctoriate in economics from Harvard.

In the course of that work, I traveled frequently to what then was the “Furniture Capital of the World” in High Point, North Carolina to buy inventory for the story.

Of course, with the passage of NAFTA in 1994 and Communist China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, North Carolina lost much of both its furniture and textile industries.

So enjoy the article.  I hope you like the Clinton story especially.

How Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Are Losing North Carolina for Kamala Harris

If Kamala Harris loses North Carolina, she will lose the election.   This will not be because North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes will push her over the 270-vote top.  Rather, a Harris loss in North Carolina will signal the abandonment of two key constituencies -- black men and blue-collar manufacturing workers -- also critical to her victory in other battleground states.

In the early stage of Harris’ Democrat National Convention coup where she ripped the nomination out of Joe Biden’s weakened hands, anxiety rippled through the Trump camp. Suddenly, “Harris the Savior’s” momentum erased a large Trump lead.  Unexpectedly, Trump red North Carolina morphed into Harris blue.

One big reason behind Harris’ North Carolina boost was the black vote.  Among key battleground states, North Carolina has the second highest percentage of black voters at a little over 20%. 

Harris’ black vote boost would quickly disappear, however, as black men in particular moved into the Trump column.  This was for two reasons:

First, as San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General, Harris had a well-deserved reputation for putting young, proud black men behind bars, often for nothing more than marijuana charges.  While a Vice President Harris could have atoned for that sin by fulfilling her 2020 campaign promise of sentence reductions for non-violent offenses like marijuana charges, Cackling Kamala instead left tens of thousands of black men rotting in prison.

Second, inner city black men have borne much of the brunt of Harris’ inflation and illegal immigration.  As their  real wages have plunged, a flood of illegals has also driven black men out of their jobs – never mind the crime and chaos created in many black neighborhoods.

Ironically, it would be a condescending Barack Obama who would do Kamala Harris the most damage.  Out strutting on the stump for Harris, Obama would deliver a stern lecture to black men about their support for Trump that was as welcome as a Mozart string quartet at a rap festival.

Memo to Barack Obama: Many working-class black men from tough urban neighborhoods like Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee, and, in North Carolina, West Charlotte, East Durham, Southeast Raleigh, and East Greensboro see you as an effete metrosexual who would rather wine and dine white folk and Hollywood stars at your Martha’s Vineyard mansion than do the real work of creating opportunities in America’s broke ass cities.

As for Harris’ loss of support among North Carolina’s blue collar manufacturing workers, an equally tone-deaf Bill Clinton unwittingly had a helping hand there.  Let me explain why by telling a tongue-in-cheek apocryphal story I’ve told this week as I traveled for the Trump campaign in North Carolina at the same time Bill Clinton was stumping in the state for Kamala Harris:

So Bill Clinton’s motorcade drives by this old, rusted out factory in Hickory and Clinton asks his driver “what happened to that factory sir?”  And the driver says: “You happened sir.  You destroyed that factory.”

And Clinton is confused and says: “How can I possibly be responsible?  I’ve never even been here before.”

And the driver says: “President Clinton.  My daddy worked at that factory, and you brought it to its knees when you signed NAFTA in 1994 and turned Mexico into a staging area for the dumping of all sorts of furniture and textiles into America from the sweat shops of India and Asia.

And then you drove a stake through that factory’s heart when you succeeded in shoehorning Communist China into the World Trade Organization in 2001.  And my daddy lost his job.

After that, furniture factories like that one there and in places like Highpoint and Thomasville and Lexington and textile mills in communities like Kannapolis and Gastonia and Eden, well, sir, they didn’t stand a chance.  And because of Bill Clinton, NAFTA and China, North Carolina went from the furniture capital of the world and a global textile manufacturing giant to casualties of globalism.”

Of course, Clinton, always being Clinton looking for forgiveness for yet another egregious sin, says to the driver: “I’m so sorry sir, I had forgotten about that.  It was decades ago.”

 “Well, the working people of North Carolina haven’t forgotten about it,” says the driver.  “In fact, my father and I were surprised you dared to even show your face in this state.” 

Finally, now, Clinton gets a little pissed and says: “Well sir, if you feel that way, I’m surprised you agreed to drive my car?”

And the driver says: “Sir, I need the money.  Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have just about broken me and my family with their inflation.  And anyway, I figured that there would be no better way for me to help campaign for Donald Trump here in North Carolina than driving Bill Clinton around.”

 “Why do you say that sir?” Clinton demands.

“Well, Mr. Clinton,” says the driver, “every time folks see you or Hillary parading around here they remember two things.  They remember how Democrats like you and Obama and now Biden and Harris always abandon the working class.  And they remember it was Donald Trump that got rid of NAFTA and stood up to Communist China with his tariffs.” 

And for once in his life, Bill Clinton was speechless.”

Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk.  He is the author of The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign Platform.  Follow peter at www.peternavarro.substack.com