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Posts tagged ‘Kamala Harris’

Rallying for the Black Vote: Part 1, Or Is It Pandering for the Black Vote

Despite the “one drop,” multiracial, code-switching, garnering barely 1% of the vote, dropping out of a presidential election, freeing criminals, jailing innocents, debacle of a job as denied “border czar,” sleezily creeping up the slippery ladder to success, and the eerie cackling of a goose, what I want to explore with my readers is the so-called “black vote” and what and how it does or does not impact on who gets to be President of the USA.

It’s not like pandering to the African American community is a new thing heading into the 2024 election cycle. Simply put, this type of pandering goes back decades, particularly in areas where African American residents form a majority, and reached a fever pitch during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with certain other candidates sprinkled in especially during the 20th century. What is most interesting to me in these days and times is how presidential candidates of all stripes will select a few high profile events, places and individuals to openly rally for the black vote.

The African American community is barely 15% (some say more) of the populace of the United States. And of course if there was a united voting block of individuals who identify as other than “white” that would indeed have a strong impact on the outcome of any presidential election. But the truth is that this “so-called” melting pot has not been able to merge these groups into a substantial voting block that would make even the slightest dint in the final presidential selection. The issues that swirl around all the other than “white” demographics make them hard pressed to find common ground. In fact, that common ground is hard to determine when you take into account the entire voting populace of the USA. More often than not, the voter votes against their interests rather than for them, as they are summarily divided on what their issues actually are and how any presidential candidate can effectively address them, much less do anything about them once in Office.

African American Suffrage In the USA: A Historical Perspective

The enslaved African American in the USA was denied the right to vote during their captivity for 300 years. After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 (which freed up to 4 million enslaved Africans) was declared, the African American “males” voted in such numbers during the Reconstruction (1865-1877), installing individuals into various political offices in such numbers that have yet to be seen since.

During Reconstruction, the Republican Party in the South represented a coalition of African American people who made up the overwhelming majority of Republican voters in the region. Their vote literally set the Post Bellum South on fire, causing their former slave owner such duress they resorted to various methods to dissuade their former slaves from voting. Many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black codes,” which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These “Jim Crow Laws” remained firmly in place for almost a century, but were finally abolished with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

After passing the Civil Rights Act (over Andrew Johnson’s veto), Republicans in Congress effectively took control of Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment—which granted “equal protection” of the Constitution to former enslaved people—and enact universal male suffrage before they could rejoin the Union.

The 15th Amendment, adopted in 1870, guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” During this period of Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877), Black men won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress.

“In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces—including the Ku Klux Klan—would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.  https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction“

The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and Black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority. Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with Black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for Reconstruction waned….. By the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

Freed African Americans Were Primarily Republican

In today’s world it is truly ironic to see the Democratic Party as the party that gets the most votes from African Americans when the Republican Party initially held and support African American suffrage in the Post Bellum South. After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and organized labor. Members of the KKK went underground with adherents to its dictates taking several positions in various institutions such as the police and public office to name a few. They were/are so secretive due to their attire which included hooded masks and overt denial of their participation that it has become a commonly held secret that you “never know” who’s a Clansman.

Black Americans have a strong preference for the Democratic Party and have among the highest turnout rates in past presidential elections

Needless to say, their acts of terrorism that included lynchings, burning of crosses, bombing of homes of African Americans and their white supporters created a significant deterrent for the freedmen to muster the determination to fight against their oppressive and terrorizing tactics. The power of the so-called Black Vote became less and less significant. It took the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s to move the bar a little closer to inclusion in the voting process in the USA. Today we see more and more African American civil and social organizations rallying and encouraging the African American to get out “the vote” for candidates that appear to be concerned with their interests. From Ward Leaders, to City Councilmen, to State Representatives, to Senators to finally the POTUS as seen in the election of Barack Hussein Obama.

George Edwin Taylor in 1904, Presidential candidate of the National Negro Liberty Party

However, it is still increasingly clear, that the representation of the African American concerns in this country still remain primarily unattended to in a significant way. The collective issues around education, economics, housing, politics, health care and social programs are still highly in need of attention. 13% of voting age African Americans are imprisoned and those with felonies are denied the right to vote either in prison or upon their release.

“In the 15 years between 1865 and 1880, at least 13 states — more than a third of the country’s 38 states — enacted broad felony disenfranchisement laws. The theory was simple — convict them of crimes, strip away the right to vote, imprison them, and lease them out as convict labor and Blacks would be returned to a condition as close to slavery as possible.

What is the result of this history? Black Americans of voting age are more than four times as likely to lose their voting rights than the rest of the adult population. One of every 13 Black adults is disenfranchised. In some states like Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and, until recently, Florida, one in five Blacks have been disenfranchised. In total, 2.2 million Black citizens are banned from voting. Thirty-eight percent of the disenfranchised population in America is Black.  https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/racist-roots-denying-incarcerated-people-their-right-vote“

The topic of using prisoners for slave labor is something that this article will not be addressing. But I am sure that the Democratic Presumptive Candidate for 2024 Presidential Election, Ms. Harris is fully aware of how that works. Anyone interested in looking into it a bit further can read an intriguing book called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander.

Get the African American Voter to Vote

What I do wish to continue with is how the African American vote became something for candidates in the political sphere of influence to rally for. Considering the many hurdles the African American had to overcome to get the right to vote which was enshrined in the 15th Amendment of 1870, and the terrorism that ensued following the Radical Reconstruction Era; we can see that voting rights for African Americans post Civil war had to be fought for and some even died for, in order for their voices to be heard. We often here in the African American community the rallying cry of “You should vote because our ancestors fought and died for the right to vote.”

Let My People Vote

I have to admit here, that I have my own opinion about this rallying cry however this article is not the context in which I wish to convey my opinion on it. I simply want to discuss the why, what and how the African American vote impacts on the electoral process of electing a President in the USA. I want to explore the numerical value of their vote, the power that these numbers have and if these numbers really make a difference in the overall scheme of things. I want to look at the population of the African Americans in this country, the number of them that are of voting age, and how those numbers tip the scale to the right or to the left of the voting machine paradigm as it relates to electing a president. I want to examine the motives, however perceived or contrived, as to why Presidential candidates find it important to pander to the African American voter when in essence they know full well that the African American voting block does not bring the sizable amount of revenue to substantially promote or support a Presidential candidate.

This is reflective of the forerunners to Obama, like Jessie Jackson, and post Obama, Cornell West. With all the African American eligible voters, why were they not able to seal their election that would place them into the white house. My question is then, why do the other Presidential Candidates pander for the African American vote when individuals from the African American demographic were not able to do so, solely on their vote.

List of African-American United States presidential and vice presidential candidates   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_United_States_presidential_and_vice_presidential_candidates

Does the African American voter vote “color” instead of issues? Is the African American vote based on personality, style, smooth talking, promissory notes made by a candidate, notwithstanding their ethnicity? Is the African American voter an informed voter, or are they simply lemmings who vote for the candidate who is pushed in front of them as a viable means to get their interest and concerns attended to? Or is the African American so happy to be allied with those who proport their vote really matters when in fact they know that they are more dependent on donor dollars, more than the African American voting block can ensure? How many African Americans who are eligible to vote, actually vote in numbers that make a difference in outcomes as it relates to determining who will be the next POTUS?

The number of Black Americans eligible to vote for president has reached a record 30 million in 2020, with more than one-third living in nine of the nation’s most competitive states – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – a higher share than the 29% of all U.S. eligible voters who live in these states. Nationwide, Black eligible voters now make up 12.5% of the U.S. electorate, up from 11.5% in 2000.  https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/.

These are some of the questions I wish to explore in this article. At risk of making this too long, I will break it down into several parts as I move through the topic of “Rallying the Black Vote.”

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Bernie Sanders vs Kamala the Jailer and Her Corporate Backers | Black Agenda Report

Source: Bernie Sanders vs Kamala the Jailer and Her Corporate Backers | Black Agenda Report

The best thing that can happen in 2020 is for Bernie Sanders to do fantastically in the primaries and be cheated out of the nomination, once again, thus giving millions of leftish Democrats a chance to do something useful with their lives: leave the party.

“Kamala Harris is by far the most dangerous corporate threat to a revival of the Sandernistas.”

Early this century, the oligarchy of filthy-rich white men that rule the United States reached a consensus among themselves on the necessity of maintaining a regime of endless war and austerity. In truth, there was no other policy choice available to the Lords of Capital. The financial oligarchy’s success in consolidating virtually all political and economic power in an ever-shrinking cabal of the super-wealthy has all but eliminated the last refuges and hideaways of democracy in the U.S., while condemning most of the population to eternal insecurity amidst falling living standards. Late stage western capitalism has nothing to offer its own citizens but austerity, and no way to compete with the dynamic societies of Asia except through war. Yet, the rulers must maintain the charade of domestic social progress and mass upward mobility, although no such possibilities exist under this system.

“The provocateur in the White House shattered the façade of racial harmony that had been carefully cultivated over decades by corporate media.”

It is a ruling class political dilemma made far more complex by the disruption wreaked on the two-capitalist party system by Donald Trump, the orange-tinted huckster and mega-opportunist. Trump captured the Republican Party apparatus by throwing red racist meat to the hordes of white supremacists that are still the most decisive force in the U.S. electorate. The polite White Man’s Party of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes was suddenly stripped to the waist and showing its Aryan tattoos. The provocateur in the White House shattered the façade of racial harmony that had been carefully cultivated over decades by corporate media, while at the same time calling into question the corporate consensus on so-called “free trade,” “humanitarian” military intervention (regime change) and increasing hostility to capitalist Russia.

The bulk of the ruling class and their operatives in the national security services and media sprang into (often hysterical) action to neutralize and expunge Trump, the disruptive element. In the mad process, however, they have done incalculable damage to the very national institutions that give legitimacy to the bourgeois political order — that is, the institutions that justify the rule of the rich in a supposedly democratic state. When the CIA, the FBI, the corporate media and most of the Democratic Party are howling that the occupant of the White House is illegitimate, they strip the office, itself, and the electoral process for achieving that office, of its legitimacy. And when they claim that a few Russians with a hundred thousand dollars were able to set Americans at each others’ throats and decisively swing a national election, they paint a picture of extreme instability and political fragility — not a superpower, but a weak society on the brink of disaster and dissolution.

“Sanders’ proposals on health care, livable wages and free college education awakened expectations and thirst for a better life among masses of Americans.”

The legitimacy of the corporate regime was simultaneously challenged from leftish quarters, by Bernie Sanders, whose 2016 primary campaign failed to stop the warmongering corporatist Hillary Clinton, but succeeded in proving that super-majorities of Americans (including Republicans) want Medicare for All. Sanders’ proposals on health care, livable wages and free college education awakened expectations and thirst for a better life among masses of Americans. Sanders’ proposals are not transformative, revolutionary or “socialist.” However, the mere raising of expectations among the masses of people is dangerously destabilizing in a society where the corporate rulers have decreed endless austerity and war.

The oligarchy cannot tolerate or accommodate a New Deal, Green or otherwise. Their model of development is embodied in Jeff Bezos’ demand that New York City fork over billions for the pleasure of his corporate presence. Austerity is not really a policy at all, but a recognition that late stage capitalism is incapable of investing in productive enterprises that create good jobs for masses of people, or to provide security and adequate social services for the rearing of healthy, happy families. Instead, capital exports jobs to the Global South, where workers can be super-exploited; feasts on the bones of the public sector in the home country, privatizing every public good that holds the prospect of private profit; gorges on war production and diverts trillions to the virtual casinos of the derivatives markets.

“Austerity is not really a policy at all, but a recognition that late stage capitalism is incapable of investing in productive enterprises that create good jobs for masses of people.”

Similarly, endless war is less a policy than an acknowledgement that the U.S. cannot compete with China in fostering infrastructure development in Africa, Latin America and Asia — for the same reason that the U.S. cannot connect its own cities with high-speed rail: the system is moribund and cannibalistic, and has already stripped the home country of productive capacity. War is the only game the oligarchy thinks it can win.

In the years following 9/11, both corporate parties began to speak of the “War on Terror” as a “twilight” struggle that would last “generations.” The message to U.S. society was: this is wartime forever; lower your expectations; don’t demand upward mobility under these perpetual martial circumstances — it’s unpatriotic.

Trump’s racialist coup in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders’ breakout among the Democrats threatened to disrupt the “twilight” predations of the Lords of Capital. Trump told white workers the lie, that he would claw back the jobs that were exported to China and elsewhere, while Bernie evoked a revived New Deal. The ruling class blitzkrieg against Trump is now entering its third year, and has spawned a New Cold War that is methodically targeting dissent on the internet. The Democratic half of the rich man’s duopoly has moved frantically to pre-empt a second Sanders bid for the party’s presidential nomination, deploying reliable corporate chameleons like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris to nail down the all-important Black vote and subvert ”New Deal” sentiment from the inside by pretending to be Medicare for All supporters.

“The system is moribund and cannibalistic, and has already stripped the home country of productive capacity.”

The corporate media — the same folks that buttressed Trump’s campaign with billions in free air time, in expectation that Hillary would knock him flat like a straw man on Election Day – are busy constructing a whole roster of corporate alternatives to Sanders, hoping to head off the kind of popular movement-style politics that Bernie thrived on in 2016. Kamala Harris is by far the most dangerous corporate threat to a revival of the Sandernistas, for obvious reasons of race and gender. However, as a career prosecutor, Harris is a lifelong operative in the mass incarceration machine. She is so wedded to the beast, she opposed compliance with a court order to dramatically reduce California prison overcrowding, because it would shrink the number of inmates available for work in the prison system. Harris can be effectively neutralized from the Left, as being even more pro-mass Black incarceration than Hillary Clinton, who never personally put anyone in prison.

It is critical that mass incarceration loom large in the unfolding campaign season. Austerity means freezing unequal and oppressive social relationships in place, and policing the resultant misery, anger and frustration. Therefore, an austerity regime requires the revving up of the state coercive and carceral machinery. In the Age of Austerity, the Lords of Capital need a Jailer in the White House. A Black female jailer like Harris is ideal for the ruling class.

“As a career prosecutor, Harris is a lifelong operative in the mass incarceration machine.”

Most importantly, the rulers need to give people something to feel good about — the illusion that progress is being made, despite their own frozen or worsening economic realities. The trick is to promote racial and gender “firsts” and market them as socially transformative, in the midst of actual social and economic decay. Kamala Harris fits the bill, perfectly – which is why she is the most dangerous to a Sanders project, and why Sanders should jump into the race right away, before the corporate media declare a “front-runner” and otherwise make him appear irrelevant.

You don’t have to be a Democrat to root for Sanders in the primaries. What there is of a mass Left – and virtually all Black political activity — is locked up in the Democratic half of the corporate duopoly. The tens of millions of social democrats that are effectively neutered within the Democratic Party must leave, if there is to be a mass resistance to late capitalist austerity, war and mass incarceration. Although Bernie Sanders is probably the most popular politician in the nation, with the most favored political program, the billionaires that control the Democratic Party will move heaven and earth to prevent him from getting the nomination — as was done in 2016. The best scenario for the Left is for Sanders to do so well in the primaries that corporate party leadership is forced to resort to dirty tricks and transparently undemocratic means to steal the nomination from him in the clear light of day. At that point, progressives would have yet another chance to escape their subordination, humiliation and ultimate irrelevance in a corporate-owned party, and to create or join a social democratic formation.

“The tens of millions of social democrats that are effectively neutered within the Democratic Party must leave, if there is to be a mass resistance to late capitalist austerity, war and mass incarceration.”

People of the Left like me, who are not social democrats, would cheer an exodus from the Democratic Party as a huge historical development in itself, freeing millions from the corporate political machine — a kind of emancipation.

So, start running again, Bernie — and force the Party’s corporate operatives to rig the game, like last time. In righteous defeat, you could change the course of history.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 

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