So the die is cast – most of it anyway. As I’ve said before, only President Joe Biden knew if he had four more years in him. He apparently felt he didn’t and bowed out. It takes cojones to fight to the end, but it sometimes takes bigger cojones to know when not to fight.
I’m about 70 percent sure that Vice President Kamala Harris will be the nominee following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, sent in to do battle against the dragons Drogon, Rhagal and Viserion, or Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Peter Theil, as it were.
If she’s confirmed, it’s a foregone conclusion that anyone who doesn’t want to see Trump return should vote for her heavily, but we also know that the Black vote would be again what puts her over the top. However, there is a warning that Democrats should understand clearly: overlook Harris for the nomination and you can forget about any formidable Black voting bloc until possibly 2036.
A process must still take place to officially nominate Harris, and although many Democrats are jumping behind her, one that noticeably hasn’t yet is former president Barack Obama, who so far endorsed an open nominating process.
But it’s safe to say that Obama moves different: In 2020, he waited until the primaries were all but wrapped up before he endorsed Biden.
The reality now, though, is that a very strong candidate is already at the table who can bring home the election with built-in support. But things may not always be this way. Demographics are shifting in this country, as they always are. That’s also true for Black people. Democrats don’t know how they will look in another four or eight years if they lose the Black vote this time.
It’s certainly possible that Black voters stay with liberal or progressive candidates in 2028, but let’s say Trump wins and the GOP sees just how catastrophically far to the right he has driven the party and it decides to flow more to the center. That could attract some Black voters who may want options by that time.
Also, the Baby Boomer generation is aging and some will begin to pass away, while their grandchildren, Gen Z, will come of age. Already cynical about politics, the Democrats may not be able to sway them the way they have in years past.
This is particularly true if there are future issues that no politician is seeing right now like regional war around the globe, runaway inflation, dependent technology fails, climate change-spurred weather disasters, and mass mental illness issues in adults caused by overuse of social media as children.
Black people have been voting reliably for the Democratic party for the past several election cycles with 87 percent in 2020; 89 percent in 2016; 93 percent in 2012; and 95 percent in 2008. Many people have complained that the Democrats take the Black vote for granted. But there’s no question that in local, state, and federal elections, we made the difference for so many politicians.
In a scenario in which the Democrats are not in office and autocratic far right policies are implemented, future young voters could be apathetic. It would be harder for Democrats to make a case to people who at that point would be just trying to survive. Think of a 2030s in which more federal prisons are built because a poor economy causes rampant crime, and women are criminalized for seeking basic healthcare.
If that happens, where will the Dems get their Black votes from? The Republicans would have no worries about major challenges probably until the 2036 cycle.
With all this said, the Democrats still need to show Black folks what’s in it for us. We still need federal law speaking to justice in policing, we still need college loan forgiveness, we still need to deal with gun violence, the homeownership gap, and inflation or find themselves in the same situation they were just days ago.
Right now we can see the forest and the trees. The foreseeable future stretches up to later this decade and we know that keeping the Black vote in one place will mean having a candidate we are willing to get behind. Democrats ignore this at their peril.
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Madison J. Gray is a New York-based journalist. He blogs at starkravingmadison.com.