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The
Democrats have won the presidency but have not yet won the political
power they need to carry out a center-left agenda. Although
departing President Trump is throwing an outsized temper tantrum, the
Democrats and President-Elect Biden must recognize that he maintains
strong support among the Republican political base and leadership.
Having
received over 71 million votes while losing the second largest number
in the history of presidential elections, Trump will remain
politically formidable for some time. As a result, Republican
elected officials cower in fear, hoping to avoid his political wrath,
and allowing him to pursue his unfounded allegation of voting fraud.
Democrats,
however, have more urgent actions that they need to pursue. After
projecting that they would pick up at least ten House seats to
further expand their majority, so far they have unexpectedly lost
five. Congressional Representative Cheri Bustos, Chair of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), dropped the ball
in defending vulnerable Democrats and recruiting strong candidates.
But her most flagrant error was her attempt to turn out a diverse
Democratic base with a predominantly White staff.
First,
Bustos should voluntarily leave her post so that the angry dispute
between Democratic centrists and liberals that erupted on a November
5th call does not split the caucus. Congressional Representative
Tony Cardenas, who has demonstrated the ability to raise money and
reach out to the fast-growing Latinx community which voted for Trump
in South Florida (costing two Democratic House seats and the Florida
electoral votes) and for Republican candidates on the Texas-Mexico
border, should replace her.
Cardenas,
who has led three
record-breaking fundraising cycles as head of the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus’s (CHC) campaign arm,
has announced a run to become the Assistant Speaker in the Democratic
majority. But his expertise is more urgently needed as DCCC Chair if
the Democrats are to maintain their majority in 2022. At present,
they are on track to fall back into the House minority status after
that election.
Second,
the Democratic leadership team of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority
Leader Steny Hoyer, and Majority Whip James Clyburn should remain in
place. Without Clyburn’s backing of Joe Biden in the February
South Carolina primary, in part on the recommendation of his late
wife, Ms. Emily Clyburn, there would be no President-Elect Biden and
Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. He alone created the 2020
Democratic presidential ticket, relieving us of Trump’s tyranny.
The rumblings to replace the Pelosi team should end as there is no
better option.
Third,
the Party’s progressives, centrists, liberals, and others need to
unite behind a centrist agenda for now to educate the nation to
embrace a more egalitarian agenda: racial and income equality,
climate change, health care availability, criminal justice, and
police reform. They also need to dispense with hyperbolic terms,
which Republicans exploited for political gain in the last election,
such as defund the police, socialism, the green new deal, and
Medicare for all. Slogans do matter.
Fourth,
they should place the campaigns for the two Georgia Senate seats
under the leadership of Stacey Abrams, founder of the New Georgia
Voter Registration Project and Chair of Fair Fight Action; Lauren
Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action; Latosha Brown, co-founder of
the Black Voters Matter Fund; and other get-out-the-vote (GOTV)
activists.
These
campaigns must not be masterminded from Washington, D.C. Without
Abrams’s long-term political organizing efforts, Georgia would not
have turned blue, nor would Democrats have a shot at picking up the
two U.S. Senate seats that would give Biden the political clout to
implement his agenda. As of now, the Republicans have him stymied.
Fifth,
as MSNBC
analyst
and Morgan State University professor, Dr. Jason Johnson, has noted,
even though Trump is being removed from office, Trumpism is not dead
yet. Biden’s past friendship with Mitch McConnell is irrelevant
because McConnell is only interested in maintaining his power. He
plans to use the same playbook he used with Barack Obama: obstruct
Biden at every turn and limit him to one-term.
Biden
needs to realize that like Hendrik
Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid
in South
Africa,
the
Republican leadership is fearful of the changing demographics and
committed to keeping America’s minority groups, who
will make up a collective American majority by 2040,
in their place -
ill housed, ill fed, redistricted out of political power, and
consigned to a permanent American underclass as defined in Isabel
Wilkerson’s recent bestseller, Caste:
The Origins of Our Discontents.
Even
as he attempts to unite the country, President-Elect Biden must
contest McConnell, Sens. Lindsey Graham (D-SC), Ron Johnson (R-WI),
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who circulated racist Obama memes while
serving in the House, and other right-wing Republicans at every turn.
Coupled
with their archconservative transformation of the American judicial
system and the current decline of the White majority caused by low
population growth, the Republicans plan to cement racial inequality
for generations.
In
a fashion similar to South Africa apartheid from 1948 through the
1990s when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first Black
President, their objective is to replicate that odious system in
order to institutionalize White supremacy. The residue of South
Africa’s political scheme has continued to hamper that nation’s
development.
This
is the legacy that Mitch McConnell and his disciples desire to leave
to their progeny. If successful, they will have achieved their dream
world and brought back Jim Crow under the label of democracy. In
this scenario, there will be overseers of color who will serve as
fronts and exemplars of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native American
progress.
Without
major Democratic pushback, this is where America is headed. Do
President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris
recognize this reality?
There
are models of minority Americans who have changed the direction of
the country from the streets: Martin Luther King, Jr., Diane Nash,
John Lewis, Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta. More recently in the
judicial arena, Fourth Circuit Appeals Court Judge James Wynn’s
concurring opinion upholding Obamacare in 2012 served as a baseline
for Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote the majority opinion when
the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
This
week’s Supreme Court arguments, the attempt to overrule Obamacare,
a law which has been a signal achievement for broader health care
access, have generated indications from five Justices that it might
be sustained. Chief Justice Roberts, who is once more leading
support for Obamacare, appears to be joined in his efforts by Trump
appointee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Meanwhile,
President Trump is threatening to run for President in 2024. In a
backup plan, he has cut a deal with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to support
him for President if he agrees to choose his favorite child, Ivanka,
as his running mate. So it goes.
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