Democrats split on whether Harris can build a Southern ‘blue wall’
By
Christian Datoc
,
Mabinty Quarshie
and
Samantha-Jo Roth
August 21, 2024 4:21 pm
.
CHICAGO — Attendees at the 2024 Democratic National Convention are predicting that Vice President Kamala Harris can turn the South’s electoral map on its head, but not all Democrats agree.
Georgia and North Carolina, two traditionally Republican states, are all but guaranteed to be close battlegrounds this cycle, and the jury is still out on whether Harris, buoyed by renewed enthusiasm from black voters and the abortion debate, can complete Democrats’ dream of establishing a “blue wall” in the fastest growing region of the country.
Some Democrats in Chicago this week, including Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA), told the Washington Examiner that Florida, Tennessee, and even Texas will be within Harris‘s reach come November.
Bishop said in an interview that he has not seen enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate in the South this high “since Obama.”
“There were African American men who were, for some strange reason, leaning toward Trump, who are now saying, ‘Well, maybe I’ll take another look,’ because she has demonstrated the energy, the dynamism, that I guess they were not feeling with President Biden,” Bishop said Monday. “She just brings that excitement and that energy and that community that, you know, that the country needs.”
Bishop, whose district includes Columbus, Georgia’s second-largest city, plus significant swathes of farmland, approved of Harris’s decision to tap Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to be her running mate based on his connections to both urban and rural areas.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/presidential/3129766/democrats-split-harris-build-southern-blue-wall/
