|
SPLINTERS
ON 2020 ELECTION ISSUES
Dr.
Donald John Trump, holder of a Ph.D. in public health and a M.D.
from the renowned, now defunct Trump University, sidelined the real
doctors from his Rose Garden coronavirus update last Monday and
continued to spout untrue statements about testing as he gloried in
his masquerade as a medical scientist last Monday.
Asian
Americans (especially Chinese Americans) continue to be
disproportionately victimized in positive tests for and deaths from
COVID-19, along with blacks, indigenous peoples, Hispanics, and
immigrants, and are being repeatedly and publicly blamed for the
current pandemic.
Trump
in response to a question about “… why
he sees coronavirus testing as a global competition when more
than 80,000 Americans have died,”
from Weijia Chang, a Chinese immigrant and CBS White House Reporter,
told her to “…ask China that question OK?” This
is another example of his racism toward Asian Americans.
In
the aftermath of the U.S. Justice Department’s motion to
dismiss federal charges against former Trump National Security
Advisor General Michael Flynn, the Trump campaign is using him to
energize the Trump base as they seek to discredit Joe Biden as it
blames the Obama-Biden administration for his indictment.
The
black masses to which Trump posed the question in 2016, “What
do you have to lose?” now have the answer - their jobs, their
lives, and their health care during the coronavirus.
The
Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) need to
get their unorganized operation together. At present, there seems to
be no specific strategy for winning in November. So far, Biden has
been able to live off the fruits of the land - Congressman Jim
Clyburn’s South Carolina endorsement, the Super Tuesday
anti-Bernie vote, and the general goodwill of the Democratic
electorate toward him.
To
be successful this time around, Biden and the Democrats need to
reflect upon their shortcomings in the 2016 election. As difficult as
it may be for them to accept that their plan to use Hillary as a
surrogate in 2020 because of her supposed ongoing, strong base of
support, this prospect is fraught with political peril; it appears
they are pursuing déjà vu ‘all over again.’
Additionally,
the Democrats have not come up with a get-out-the-vote (GOTV)
initiative that will turn out the 7 million African American voters
who sat out the 2016 election. Despite the heroic campaign efforts of
President Barack and Michelle Obama, who went repeatedly into key
states that Hillary lost (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and
Obama won in 2008 and 2012, there was no impact on overall black
turnout.
She
refused to campaign in Wisconsin and mainly relied on celebrities to
make her case in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and
other states in which Obama prevailed during his two elections, which
lead to her defeat. Biden and the DNC have not yet advanced a
strategy to ensure that he wins these states this time around.
While
Trump has mismanaged the COVID-19 contagion and national polls
reflect the overall dissatisfaction of the general public with his
performance, Democrats cannot rely on this pattern to hold through
November 3rd. Hillary made a similar error when she depended on
Trump’s history of misogyny and his alleged sexual harassment
and assault to doom his candidacy. It never happened because Hillary
never defined herself in a positive light.
Biden
is on track to commit the same mistake by not defining who he is
before Trump does in his distribution of a phalanx of negative ads in
his political hopper.
Voter
suppression and the facilitation of voter indifference among
minorities in key battleground states will again be the centerpiece
of Trump’s electoral scheme. Neither the DNC nor Biden has
gained the necessary financial and human resources to counter the
massive political assault developed by Trump’s minions. Trump
operatives have also enlisted the aid of Republican governors and
Vladimir Putin and his Russian trolls.
Other
tactics utilized in voter suppression are: voter ID laws, purging
voters from the rolls who have not voted in several years, the
deployment of defective voting machines into minority communities,
failure to send absentee ballots to minority voters who have
requested them, and exact match requirements for new voter
registrations forms (a requirement
that citizens’ names on their government-issued IDs must
precisely match their names as listed on the voter rolls).
Although
a federal judge ruled against the Georgia law a few days before the
November 6, 2018 election for governor, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s
Secretary of State and the Republican candidate for the office, had
already stalled 50,000 voter registrations of mostly black voters and
cancelled 670,000,
mostly African American and Hispanic registrations in 2017 alone.
This
voter suppression tactic enabled the Republican, Brian Kemp, to
defeat the Democrat, Stacey Abrams, by a very narrow margin. It is
now on the political agenda in states where Republicans control the
legislature as is opposition to voting by mail in the fall 2020
election.
Democratic
messaging is also lackluster at present. Biden and the DNC have yet
to develop a communications package that appeals to a cross section
of the Democratic base. With a group that seems to be omnidirectional
in its political beliefs, it is tearing itself apart internally.
Among the Squad (Congresswomen Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar,
Ayana Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib), the Bernie Sanders’
leftists, and the centrists, there is no unifying ideology.
In
the meantime, Trump has unified and galvanized Republicans using
xenophobic hysteria and their fear of being defeated in their bids
for election and/or reelection. The Democrats have demonstrated no
comparable approaches to bringing the disparate elements of their
Party together.
Biden’s
selection of a vice presidential running mate, therefore, is even
more critical at this time. Of the four most prominently mentioned,
Elizabeth Warren would bring no excitement to the ticket based on her
performance during the primary. Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar have
their checkered performances with minority groups as city attorney
and district attorney, respectively, as political albatrosses around
their necks. This leaves Stacey Abrams as the most viable for
campaign energy and GOTV.
More
importantly, it is way past the time for an African American woman to
have a place on the national Democratic ticket. Black women have been
the primary contributors to every Democratic presidential victory
from JFK to LBJ to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.
As
the progressive, John Nichols, has written in the Nation,
“It
is not so much to ask, in the year 2020, that the Democratic nominee
for president make an intersectional choice that breaks with
political orthodoxy and seeks to inspire the turnout necessary for a
transformational victory.”
On
Thursday, May14th, Lawrence O’Donnell will interview Joe Biden
and Stacey Abrams in a Town Hall Special on MSNBC’s Last
Word at 10:00 pm (EST) with call-in questions.
Biden will address his campaign methods, and Abrams will discuss her
Fair Fight proposals to protect the rights of voters. Perhaps at that
time, Biden will address the intersectionality that Nichols has
urged.
|
