On the evening of November 8, 2016, this columnist realized that Hillary Clinton had lost. She hadn’t yet conceded, the polls were still open on the west coast, but she lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Donald Trump. When he turned these formerly democratic states republican, he secured a victory in the electoral college and became the 45th president of the United States.
Late that night and in the early morning hours I wrote, “Dump the Democrats for Good” and pointed out what is still true eight years later.
Black people are now in fear and in shock when we ought to be spoiling for a fight. All is not lost. Even the victory of the openly bigoted Trump poses an opportunity to right our political ship. Not the electoral ship, the political one. For decades black Americans have been voting for people who have done them wrong.
Trump is a political figure unlike any other in U.S. political history. He is a failed businessman who excelled only at self-promotion, who had never held public office, who differed only from masses of white people in that he was wealthier. It was often said that he “spoke his mind” but that really meant that his every racist and ignorant utterance was on the minds of white middle Americans who felt validated by him.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the choice of the political establishment and corporate media. He seemingly went down to permanent defeat in 2020, although he never admitted he had lost, and on January 6, 2021 his followers vandalized the capitol while attempting to stop the electoral college certification.
Since that time he lost a civil trial that found him guilty of rape and he was assessed a judgement of $350 million for defaming his accuser. He was convicted of falsifying business records in New York, which is a felony. He has been indicted in Georgia for attempting to overturn election results in that state, and he may face more charges regarding the mishandling of classified documents.
Yet he is poised to become the 47th president of the United States. His own determination not to give up is largely responsible for this political comeback but the democrats share a large part of the blame in allowing their nemesis to once again occupy the white house.
In 2020 democrats rigged the primary process in favor of former vice president Joe Biden. Biden was not popular with voters but he was with his party’s oligarchs. The other candidates left the race when they were told to and Bernie Sanders took a dive instead of fighting for his supporters. Many observers noted Biden’s frailty even then but he still had some political advantages. Trump was seen as being responsible for all the upheavals caused by the covid-19 crisis. He won in 2016 but only in the electoral college. He lost the popular vote and his approval rating never hit the 50% mark. Covid and the months-long Russiagate story proved too much in the 2020 campaign.
Biden’s victory was greeted with celebrations but he was still the old right winger and his team falsely claimed he was “the most progressive president since FDR” even though he was nothing of the sort.They said he would “cut child poverty in half” but he allowed covid era support programs to lapse. He had no desire to fight against the oligarchs who insisted on continuing austerity. Millions of people who had Medicaid and SNAP benefits were suddenly kicked off of these life saving programs. Stimulus payments were gone and eviction protection and extensions of unemployment insurance payments were too. While working people continued to struggle economically, the Biden administration told them that economic indicators that have nothing to do with their lives were humming along and they were just too stupid to know they were doing well. Build Back Better legislation was supposed to provide some of the missing support but the oligarchy wasn’t having it. Build Back Better died and so did Biden’s chances of being re-elected.
Instead of easing him out in 2022 or 2023 as one would expect, the democrats instead reordered the primary process to help their president who suffered from low approval ratings. Then came Biden’s very public collapse during his June debate with Trump. Anyone paying attention could see that Biden was not a well man, and his stumbling effort was an opportunity to get rid of him. Wealthy democratic donors took the lead in getting Biden to end his campaign.
Democrats were then stuck with Kamala Harris. It would have been awkward to pass over the vice president and such a move would offend Black voters and thus Harris was anointed. They even dispensed with proposals to have an open convention which might have given some appearance of a process which had some veneer of democracy.
Harris’ weaknesses were clear. Despite years in public office including as a senator who had her own presidential campaign, she was still unable to overcome personal deficiencies such as struggling to express herself whenever she was unscripted. Her lack of self-confidence was evident with her famous nervous laughter. She was also heartily disliked, as any prosecutor should be, and earned the nickname Copmala, because of her strict allegiance to the mass incarceration system. She dropped out of the 2020 presidential election without having won a single delegate.
Her campaign website, usually a repository of pandering and sloganeering, had no content at all, except requests for money, for 50 days. Her campaign spoke of joy but nothing substantive that might inspire low motivation voters to make any effort. Even after a respectable debate performance against Trump, she resorted to being the Kamala Harris of old with her bad instincts intact such as in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, and bragged about being a gun owner who would shoot anyone who broke into her home. She continued her foolish appeal to the non-existent “never Trump republicans,” fanciful creatures akin to unicorns, because they don’t actually exist. Harris pledged to include a republican in her cabinet and form a bipartisan commission to guide her in office. None of the unrequited republican love got her any votes.
It must be pointed out that her biggest campaign obstacle was handed to her by her boss. The ongoing genocide in Israel has engendered revulsion among millions of people. Israel has now killed at least 200,000 people in Gaza alone and recently invaded Lebanon where it continues to commit war crimes of collective punishment and starvation and torture and rape, all with the help of the United States.
The notoriously clumsy politician tried to talk out of both sides of her mouth, simultaneously claiming to work for a ceasefire while also promising to give Israel whatever it wants. She fooled no one, although she tried to by presenting a pro-Israel message in Pennsylvania while also showing pretend concern for Palestine in Michigan, a state with a large Arab population. Voters consistently showed bipartisan support for a ceasefire but support for genocide in congress was also bipartisan. The atrocities continued and democrats gave Trump an opening, allowing the candidate preferred by the Israeli government to claim he would be the peacemaker.
While Kamala struggled to connect with democrats, Trump’s people don’t care about his criminal or civil cases. They don’t care if the corporate media don’t like him or if finance capitalists prefer the democrats. Mocking them makes liberals feel superior, but Trump supporters love their guy and don’t care about the opinions of those who don’t. This realization should have kept the Harris camp from calling him Hitler or a fascist when she should have been giving voters affirmative reasons to vote for her.
As in 2016, a Trump victory should be the beginning of new Black politics. It should mean the end of Democratic Party as the focus of Black voters. Even though the Republican Party has been the “white people’s party” for 60 years, it is clear that seeing ourselves solely as electoral opposition is a losing proposition.
So is believing that we must vote for democrats at all. Their party is lost, existing only as a money laundering operation, which is why Kamala Harris raised nearly $1 billion, more than twice as much as Donald Trump did. It is the party of the Israel lobby, weapons manufacturers, Wall Street, and big pharma, and as such offers nothing to Black people.
Even their campaign promises are more meager over time. Biden campaigned in 2020 saying he would raise the federal minimum wage, but he didn’t and that made it impossible for Harris to raise the issue, assuming she thought about it at all. That issue is but one reason that we must let the Democratic Party die.
Aside from a vague Opportunity Economy offering tax credits to small businesses and maybe giving up to $25,000 for a home down payment, she offered Black people nothing. She didn’t even mention bringing back the Voting Rights Act enforcement provisions. If a candidate has nothing to offer except repeating that they aren’t their opposition, then they are headed for defeat.
Black people don’t have to be defeated because the democrats are. We still have agency. We can still organize instead of hitching our wagons to failure and betrayal. When they blame the Green party, Palestinian voters, Latino men, white women, or anyone else, we must hold up a mirror to their faces and point out that the fault is their own. If we hold on to traitors and losers, the fault will also be ours.
Trump again enters office with majorities in both houses of congress and this time he won the popular vote as well. Beginning on January 20, 2025 he will have a free hand to do whatever he wants. Between now and then we need clear headed thought, and any laments about the return of segregation or the end of elections or other nonsense are unhelpful. I stand by and repeat what I wrote in 2016, “The destruction of the Democratic Party and the creation of a truly progressive political movement is the only hope for black America.” It is also the only hope for the world.