Vice President Kamala Harris has received backlash after offending black male voters with a campaign ad depicting women turning them down for dates due to their voting record.
The online ad, which is being hosted on social media sites including Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook according to the Daily Mail, was produced in the format of the popular genre of dating game videos that feature a line of potential dates who can pop a balloon to reject a male suitor.
In the video, a black man walks into the studio before several women and introduces himself:
“What do you do, and how much do you make?” the presumed “host” of the dating show asks.
He replies, “I work in finance and I make six figures.”
One of the women in line with the balloons then asks him how tall he is, to which he says 6’5″.
The women then say “Ooooh” to each other in response to his enticing answers, before another one asks if he plans to vote in the upcoming November election.
“Uh, I didn’t plan on it,” he replies, prompting all of the women to pop their balloons, signaling an instant rejection.
The ad was created by Harris’s deputy director of creative strategy, Brian McBride, who “hid” many negative comments he got on X after posting the video.
“Goofiness. The outreach is out of touch and senseless,” one user wrote.
“Their audience is mostly women and teenagers,” another commenter said, referring to the primary viewers of dating game videos. “So how will this convince black men to vote if this doesn’t target them and instead shames them which is also not a good persuasion method?”
“Did Trump make these? Because this doesn’t help Kamala,” yet another comment “hidden” by McBride said.
It appears that he gave up on hiding comments after more bad reviews came pouring in, with another person remarking, “As always, black women wanting to keep black men down”:
“‘Vote or no [sex] for you’ is quite the sales pitch. Deeply insulting to black men,” another person said:
“How is this going to convince Black men??? This is insulting,” a black male user wrote:
“And you geniuses wonder why she’s got a black men problem? Or a male voter problem???”:
Conservative personality Graham Allen asserted that “this is what a failing campaign looks like”:
Podcast host Cash Loren said “It’s hard to describe how cringe Kamala is”:
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