Keith Boykin and Word In Black collaborated to create Black Vote, Black Power, which explores the topics, candidates, and stakes for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
The quarterbacks who talked on Monday morning have done so. Five negative predictions for the 2024 election are listed here.
1. Kamala Harris Ran a Bad Campaign
No. According to our most recent calculations, Harris is expected to receive roughly 76 million votes. Obama received less votes in both of his elections than that. greater number of votes than Hillary Clinton received in 2016. as well as more votes than Trump received in 2020 or 2016. Since it was a referendum on Trump’s failing presidency following four years of crisis, controversy, COVID-19, and economic collapse, it is understandable that we are evaluating her based on Joe Biden’s historic turnout of 81 million votes in 2020. However, those figures broke all previous records.
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Trump is expected to receive 312 electoral votes this year, which is almost equal to Biden’s 306 in 2020.
However, we must remember what Harris achieved here. In just 107 days, she organized her own campaign, secured the nomination delegates, selected a running mate, organized a successful convention, defeated Trump in the debate, raised $1 billion, unveiled her policy stances, traveled the nation, secured significant endorsements, sparked more excitement than any other Democratic candidate since Barack Obama in 2008, and will ultimately receive two million more votes than Trump did during his 2008 run as an incumbent president.
Harris actually received more votes than Biden did four years ago in the swing states of North Carolina and Wisconsin. Additionally, she received more votes in Georgia and Michigan in 2020 than Trump did. In a regular election, her numbers ought to have been sufficient to win. The fact that a racist, twice impeached, convicted felon would receive more votes in 2024 than when he lost in 2020 is something she might not have predicted, but probably should have in America.
Was Harris’ campaign flawless? No. However, it is just amazing that she accomplished what she did in just over three months, all the while bearing the weight of the Biden administration’s policies regarding inflation and Gaza.
2. Democrats Should Have Held an Open Primary
There was no closed primary, to start. Any Democrat could have entered the race when Biden withdrew in July, as pundit Reecie Colbert pointed out, but no one wanted to do so since they understood it would be a difficult political climate for the incumbent party.
Who is this hypothetical Democratic candidate who would have entered the race in July, outperformed the incumbent vice president without causing division, brought the party together, handled the Gaza issue, distanced himself from Biden’s inflation policies, vanquished Trump’s advantage through racism and bigotry, and guided us all to victory? I’ll wait.
3. Identity Politics Failed
Again, incorrect. Kamala Harris chose not to draw attention to her gender or race and hardly mentioned either. Two weeks prior to the election, Trump staged a racial hate rally at Madison Square Garden, lied about Haitian immigrants killing dogs and animals, and discussed her becoming black.
Trumpism is identity politics, as Eddie Glaude pointed out, and it worked for him. He was able to mobilize millions of irate Americans to vote with the aid of white identity politics. However, they do not refer to it as identity politics when white people vote exclusively for Republican presidential candidates, as they have done for the previous 60 years. They simply refer to it as politics.
4. It Was All About the Economy
Not precisely. Kamala Harris’s policies were more popular than Trump’s, as I have noted. Trump did not have a plan to address inflation. His suggested tariffs would worsen inflation. Instead of addressing the economy, his rambling speeches and frightening campaign advertisements aimed to frighten Americans about transgender issues and illegal immigration. Additionally, Harris was elected by Black voters, who are disproportionately affected by the economy.Every voter’s top priority was democracy, not the economics.
Indeed, the economy was listed as the top issue by one-third of voters, but it just serves to emphasize my point. It is racist in and of itself to be willing to put your trust in a white failing businessman and convicted criminal who has no plan to deal with inflation and just has ideas for a health care plan rather than a capable Black lady who has precise plans.
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White supremacy is demonstrated by the fact that it takes twice as much effort to persuade Americans to listen to a successful Black woman rather than a mediocre white man. White supremacists punished Harris for his imperfections while ignoring Trump’s $3 million job losses during his presidency. And because of hundreds of years of racist, white supremacist propaganda that has trained us to believe white men and disregard Black voices, we are even vulnerable to Trump’s false information.
There’s a reason why white men make up 98% of US presidents despite making up only 30% of the population. It’s not because they are the only ones who meet the requirements. We’ve been conditioned to think that the white man’s ice is colder, which is why.
5. Democrats Ignored Working-Class Voters
False. We strongly supported Kamala Harris, and the majority of Black voters are working class. Harris proposed a minimum wage rise, fines for corporate price gougers, support for labor unions, an Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, $6,000 tax credits for new parents, $25,000 for new homeowners, and $50,000 to launch a business. None of that was done by Trump.
In contrast to Harris and the Democrats, he and the Republicans opposed universal childcare, universal pre-K, paid sick leave, paid family and medical leave, an enlarged child tax credit, and student loan debt relief.
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Determining which party and which candidate supports the working class doesn’t require a genius. Is it the wealthy white man who grew up being driven around in his father’s Cadillac, had Elon Musk fund his campaign, and put on a McDonald’s apron to act like he worked for an hour but wouldn’t respond to a simple question about the minimum wage, or the middle-class Black woman who worked at McDonald’s to pay for her way through an HBCU?
Why did Harris win over voters making less than $30,000 annually if Democrats had abandoned the working class? They voted for her despite being the group most impacted by the cost of goods.
The five awful takes are as follows. For 2028, are there any lessons to be learned? Of course. Could the Democratic Party be doomed? No. Democrats lost to Trump in 2016 and came back four years later and beat him decisively. Does Trump have a mandate to do whatever he wants for the next four years? Absolutely not. Not any more than Joe Biden did, and Republicans tried to block him every step of the way.
While we analyze the data, Trump is busy trying to ram through recess appointments for his cabinet, intimidate federal civil service workers, and implement Project 2025. We ve only got two months until Inauguration Day. Let s use this time not to fight each other but to fight the threat that looms ahead.
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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