Democrats and Blacks Should Learn From Political History

George Santayana, the eminent Harvard philosopher and scholar of the late 19th and early 20th century, is widely known for his quote, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

The aforementioned assessment is timely for Democrats and Blacks as they approach the 2022 midterms and attempt to hold on to their House and Senate majorities. Both groups would do well to reflect on their political successes from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s and identify the positives and negatives of turning out their diverse political base.

Beginning with Chicago’s Black Congressional representative, the late Harold Washington, narrow victories over the heralded Chicago Democratic machine in the 1983 Democratic mayoral primary and general elections, we can see the utility of ethnic minority and liberal coalitions. Latinx and Black citizens coalesced with White liberals to make history.

It was not by accident that this groundbreaking achievement occurred in the Windy City. Harold Cruse, author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), later concluded that of the major destinations of African American during the great migration from the South in the early twentieth century, Chicago was the political capital, Detroit was the labor capital, and Harlem (New York) was the cultural capital of Black America.

Mayor Washington would use his first term to continue organizing across racial and ethnic lines, and he cruised into a second term in 1987 on automatic pilot in an overwhelmingly Democratic city whose Democratic majority ignored him, largely on racial grounds, when he ran in the 1979 mayoral Democratic primary, only receiving 11,000 votes.

Unfortunately, in 1987, shortly after his reelection to a second term, Washington succumbed to a heart attack. Black male Councilman, Eugene Sawyer, viewed by many as a puppet of the Chicago political machine, succeeded him and served for two years, 1987-1989, and lost in a special election. Sawyer’s appointment as interim mayor for two years irretrievably fractured the Black political community for a generation, and it did not heal until 2019 when Lori Lightfoot became the third African American and the first Black female elected Mayor.

Next up in seminal political races was the election of Carol Moseley Braun. After serving in the Illinois House of Representatives and as Cook County Recorder of Deeds, she was the first Black female elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 after a watershed Democratic primary in which she defeated the incumbent, Alan Dixon after he voted to confirm Clarence Thomas for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. He cast this vote despite the credible sexual harassment allegations of Atty. Anita Hill, Thomas’s former Black staffer.

The massive primary campaign expenditures of the third-place finisher, billionaire Albert Hofeld, who spent millions from his personal fortune in an attempt to win the nomination, substantially aided Braun. Ethnic minority and White women, across political lines, spurred by what they perceived as the disrespect of Atty. Hill, came out in droves to send her to Washington.

She became a shining example of what women could accomplish in this pivotal year when more women got elected to national office than at any other period in political history. Women across the country were energized by the Anita Hill controversy. Then, via a series of questionable decisions, Sen. Moseley Braun would squander their trust.

After one term, because of several political and personal failures, she lost support across racial and gender lines. At the behest of her former Nigerian fiancé, Kgosie Matthews, she developed a political alliance with the rogue Nigerian dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, who was reviled by much of the world and the U.S. government. Matthews also served as Braun’s campaign manager, constant companion, and was also an agent for the despotic Nigerian government.

She was defeated by a conservative Republican nobody, Peter Fitzgerald after Braun was deserted by her political base. He served a single term and retired from politics. Barack Obama won the open Senate seat in 2004, paving the way for his presidential run. He began building an interracial voter alliance while serving in the Illinois State Senate, a seat he won in 1996 in his first run for office by disqualifying all of his opponents from the ballot and running unopposed.

When it was time for political redistricting, Obama voluntarily redesigned his district’s racial makeup to include more White voters which would prove beneficial as he ran for higher office. He successfully employed this strategy in his runs for the U.S. Senate and President. This has been adopted and expanded by Stacey Abrams as she organizes Georgia’s New American Majority of racially diverse voting groups.

The foregoing examples are important guideposts as Democrats, African Americans, and their multi-cultural base of activists ready themselves for a midterm battle royal. They offer useful models of what to do and what not to do as they prepare to organize their voters while fighting off the nearly 400 voter suppression bills in 48 states, and the emerging and biased Republican redistricting schemes currently in development

But most disconcerting about the Democrats is their ill-advised response to their 2020 election autopsy. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY, 18th District), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, concluded that the Democratic losses were the result of: