Kamala’s campaign for equality would penalize supporters who are white males

This week, Kamala Harris boosters rushed to plug a gaping hole in the candidate’s support: men.

Their “White Dudes for Harris” virtual rally drew widespread mockery but raised an impressive $4 million.

Yet former President Donald Trump leads Harris by 8 percentage points, 47% to 39%, among male voters nationwide, in the latest Economist/You Gov poll.

He commands an even larger lead among men in two key swing states, according to an Emerson College poll: 16 points ahead with male voters in Michigan, and 15 points ahead with male voters in Pennsylvania.

And Zoom calls notwithstanding, a Harris presidency will be a hard sell to the “white dudes” who have been in the crosshairs of her signature demands for “equity” — which Democrats are pressing her to expand, by presidential fiat if necessary, should she win a promotion to the Oval Office.

One of the first speakers in Monday night’s Zoom call, Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, bashed the “sexist” and “racist” attacks on Harris as a person and urged voters to consider her policies.

Amen. Harris’ effusively friendly persona and her immutable race and gender characteristics should not be targets.

No, the focus should be on Harris’ crusade for equity — which sounds like equality but is just the opposite.

It means giving preferences to women and to certain minorities while disadvantaging others, primarily white men.

It means a government attempt to impose equal outcomes — rather than a government guarantee of equal opportunity.

The Washington Post and Time recently published reviews of Harris’ stances on a long list of issues.

Equity was conspicuously omitted. No wonder: Her views are toxic.

Harris made equity a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris campaign of 2020.

An election ad on her Facebook page — still posted to this day — depicted a black man who needs a physical boost to climb a mountain alongside a white man.

“Equality means we should all be treated the same,” Harris explained in a voiceover. “The problem with that, not everybody’s starting in the same place.” Equity, she said, means “we all end up in the same place.”

On Day 1 of the Biden-Harris administration, January 20, 2021, the new president announced a government-wide push for equity.

It was seen in the administration’s first piece of legislation, the American Rescue Act, which among other things provided debt relief for farmers.

But white farmers could not apply.

The act limited the grants to “socially disadvantaged” farmers, a term defined elsewhere in federal law as based solely on race and ethnicity, not on an individual’s specific economic circumstances.

Similarly, the act granted restaurant owners affected by COVID-19 up to $5 million per facility — but only women, veterans and “socially disadvantaged” minorities could apply during the program’s first three weeks.

White male restaurant owners were sent to the back of the line, hoping the program’s money wouldn’t run out.

Federal judges struck down these provisions — but the administration’s discriminatory approach was clear.

On Monday’s Zoom call, labor union honcho James A. Williams Jr. tried to praise the Biden-Harris administration for championing “some of the most important bills for white dudes.”

Very misleading: The administration’s proposed Build Back Better bill actually would have punished them.

The bill prioritized contractor and subcontractor firms owned by minorities or women, and its energy-efficiency provisions awarded a $200 bonus to contractors for each customer served in a minority neighborhood.

That’s unfair. Why should your skin color or gender matter when you’re buying or selling solar panels?

In 2023, Harris bashed the US Supreme Court when it ruled that colleges must base admissions on merit, not skin color.

The ideal of a color-blind society, she said, means being blind to “the strength that diversity brings to classrooms and boardrooms.”

Far-left members of Congress are already anticipating that a Harris presidency will expand the equity agenda.

In April, 400 lawmakers and activists signed a letter to the White House urging more action to advance racial equity — by “urgent executive action” if necessary — calling it Biden’s “unfinished work.”

Harris is poised to carry this mission forward.

But progressive policies disadvantaging white men threaten all men.

So it’s hardly a surprise that Gen Z men, ages 19 to 30, now favor Republican control of Congress and a second Trump term, after backing Biden and Democrats in 2020.

Many feel diversity initiatives have come at their expense, according to The Wall Street Journal — and not one word spoken on Monday’s zoom addressed those concerns.

Harris shouldn’t expect the victims of her equity policies to vote for her in November.

Discrimination doesn’t cure past discrimination, nor does it bring Americans together.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.