“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
It’s time for Democrats to stop whining and start fighting.
It’s been two weeks since the presidential debate, and Democrats need to move on, get off defense, and get on offense.
Next week, Republicans will hold their convention in Milwaukee, and Democrats should be talking about two things: Trump’s criminal record and Project 2025. But instead they’ve been in a public doom spiral about Biden’s debate performance and scrutinizing every innocently misspoken word.
Now that Biden has finished his post-NATO news conference, Democrats need to snap out of it.
Impeachments, indictments, and convictions are all good reasons to demand a presidential candidate withdraw from the race.
Trump got impeached, and Republicans stuck by him. He got impeached again, and they still stuck by him. He got indicted four times, and they stuck by him each time. He incited an insurrection and stole classified documents, and they stuck by him. He even got convicted of 34 felonies, and the alleged party of “law and order” continues to stick by their convicted criminal nominee.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden had a bad debate, and Democrats lost their minds. Impeachments, indictments, and convictions are all good reasons to demand a presidential candidate withdraw from the race. But a bad debate performance is not enough to jettison a presidential nominee four months before an election.
We don’t have to lie and pretend like Joe Biden is the perfect candidate or the paragon of good health, as Republicans do about Trump. He’s not. He’s an 81-year-old man who speaks softly and walks slowly. He’s not as sharp as he was four years ago, and he was never my choice for president. But Biden has one huge advantage going into the fall election that should not be discounted: he’s the incumbent president.
In the 124 years since 1900, only one Democratic president has ever lost re-election. That happened in 1980, when Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, in part because Democrats were divided after fellow Democrat Ted Kennedy waged a convention battle against President Carter. We paid the price with 12 years of right-wing Reagan-Bush policies and a Supreme Court that remains under Republican control 40 years later. We can’t make that mistake again.
If nominated, Harris will carry all of Biden’s baggage but receive none of the privilege of being a white man.
Biden already has the delegates to win the nomination, and he will be the nominee unless he decides otherwise. Despite what the pundits and the big donors say, the alternatives are just as risky.
Some are promoting Vice President Kamala Harris. She was my top candidate in the 2020 primary, and I would love for her to be president, but we’re deceiving ourselves if we think she’s going to sail into the White House because of strong July poll numbers without considering the withering barrage of racist, sexist attacks she will be subjected to in the coming months. If nominated, Harris will carry all of Biden’s baggage but receive none of the privilege of being a white man. And then they’ll blame Black people if she loses.
Democrats only win when the party is united.
Or perhaps Democrats might skip over Harris and pick Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer, or some other inspiring young candidate. That, too, is problematic because it will alienate Black voters, and particularly Black women, who are the most loyal constituency of the party.
Let me be clear. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, and I will support any Democratic candidate the party nominates to defeat him. But all this infighting isn’t helpful.
Republicans are about to nominate a convicted criminal for President of the United States. In 48 of the 50 states, a convicted felon cannot vote in a presidential election while serving their sentence. And 60 countries, including Canada and Mexico, don’t even allow convicted felons to visit.
Democrats should be warning America about Trump the convicted felon and Project 2025. Republicans are planning to end abortion rights nationwide, label public librarians as “sex offenders,” dismantle federal government agencies, abolish the Department of Education, remove career civil servants and replace them with Trump cronies, criminalize pornography, expel transgender service members from the military, implement mass deportations of millions of immigrants, eliminate all pro-Black policies, and ban even the mention of the words diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.
And people are still talking about Joe Biden’s debate performance. Are you kidding? Wake up. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. The country is on their side. But Democrats only win when the party is united.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
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