Thursday, April 30, 2020

Will African-American Voters Help Reform The Democratic Party?

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Tuesday night, progressive reformer Morgan Harper lost her congressional primary to a corrupt, middle of the road Democratic incumbent, Joyce Beatty in Columbus, Ohio. The final result was a two-to-one rout-- 43,727 (68.29%) to 20,301 (31.71%). As of the April 8th FEC reporting deadline, Beatty had spent a massive $2,149,875 to Harper's $696,001.

The third district is entirely in Franklin County and was created to concentrate Democratic voters, allowing Republicans to protect the 12th and 15th districts. OH-03, almost the whole city if Columbus, has a PVI of D+19, while OH-12 and OH-15 each has a relatively safe R+7 PVI. The Democratic primary is dominated by African-American voters and they've been electing and reelecting Beatty, despite her utter worthlessness as a Representative, since 2012. A shill for shady financial interests, Beatty has been a darling of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).



It isn't just the CBC, of course, protecting their incumbents, regardless of how bad the incumbent is or how good the challenger is. After all, Morgan Harper, also an African American woman, has been considered one of the brightest stars running for Congress this cycle. At 36, the former Obama administration official at the CFPB, has no ties to the incompetent and fully corrupt Ohio Democratic Party. She ran a campaign based on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, Jobs Guarantee, tuition-free public college, universal child care, racial justice, affordable housing and a living wage-- all things that separate old line liberals, like Pelosi, Hoyer and their clique from today's progressives. The Ohio Democratic establishment has all but destroyed the Democratic Party in the state. Many people say it is the worst state party in America with one corrupt idiot following another, each losing more and more of the state to the Republicans. But they would much rather fight progressives-- who they routinely trash-- than Republicans.

There wasn't a crooked Democratic pol in the state who didn't back her, even if, during Rick Neal's campaign against Republican hot-shot Steve Stivers in the next district over, Beatty helped Stivers, making joint appearances with him, pushing "civility." Beatty has been heavily supported by the Columbus Partnership, the corporate powers-that-be in central Ohio, and she was the only Democrat who Victoria's Secret billionaire Les Wexner-- another character in the Jeffrey Epstein saga-- donated to since she was elected. Wexner and his wife have hosted fundraisers for Beatty at their home and contributed large sums of money to her. Their L Brands PAC is one of Beatty's largest donors along with Nationwide Insurance, JP Morgan Chase and other banks, American Bankers Assoc. etc.

Beatty is probably best known for having been a steadfast ally of payday lenders-- which Morgan has fought so hard to to rein in. (Beatty's husband was a payday lenders lobbyist-- a step up from his father who just flat out ran numbers.) While minority leader in the state legislature, Beatty held up a bill that would have regulated payday lenders. Her net worth an estimated $6 million. The district, though, ranks among the poorest congressional districts in the country (#378 out of 435)-- 60,000 children living in poverty. She uses her perch on the House Financial Services Committee to protect predatory banksters and further kick her own working class constituents to the curb.

And there was Beatty's picture at the top of a Politico story on Tuesday, Black Caucus seeks to squash liberal insurgents. Reporters Ally Mutnick, Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris wrote that "Senior black Democrats are mounting an aggressive defense of Rep. Joyce Beatty in Tuesday's delayed Ohio primary, hoping to quash not only her left-wing primary challenger but the liberal insurgents gunning for a number of their colleagues. Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus have framed the fight as greater than just defeating Beatty’s opponent, Morgan Harper, a well-funded attorney backed by the progressive group Justice Democrats. They are eager to show they can smack down any primary challengers nationwide who conspire against senior members of color who have spent decades fighting to the top."
“What is that all about? Is it attacking us?” Beatty said in an interview. “Well, let me make the message strong and clear: When you attack a hard-working member of the Congressional Black Caucus, we fight back. We are the conscience of the caucus, and we represent people.”

The CBC is stepping up to protect Beatty in an unpredictable race that some Democrats privately fear could be close, with turnout expected to be far lower amid the coronavirus outbreak that has shut down much of Ohio since mid-March.

Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a former CBC chairman, is among several top Democrats who has helped marshal support for Beatty from both Washington and Ohio in recent months, frustrated by liberal outsiders with lengthy progressive wish lists seeking to oust party elders.

"Being 'anti' is not enough. This is about results and not just rhetoric,” Richmond said. “And just because you run with a bunch of rhetoric doesn't mean you can get results. There are people here that are effective members of Congress.”
Richmond is a bullshit artist and New Dem, the conservative Democrat tasked early on with roping in anti-progressive Democratic House members for Biden. He's tight with K street and tells lobbyists who's for sale and who's not. Other conservative Democrats backing Beatty included Oralndo's Val Demings (who some are touting, besides the fact that she is a severe sufferer from brainlessness, as a VP contender for Biden), the Queens political machine boss Gregory Meeks, and Brooklyn's Hakeem Jeffries, a contender for the post-Pelosi speakership.
Beatty's primary is the first salvo in the primary battle between the CBC and liberal groups trying to oust longtime incumbents. Besides Beatty, at least four other members of the caucus in New York and Missouri will face credible primary challengers throughout the summer.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), chairman of the CBC’s political arm, is a longtime critic of the progressive groups’ approach to primaries and hopes Beatty’s victory on Tuesday will be a shot across the bow to other challengers.

“We worked hard,” Meeks said in an interview. “We’ve done it the old-fashioned way. And so, for people who seem to come out of nowhere, who have done nothing, have nothing to show for, to say, ‘We’re just going to challenge you for the sake of challenging you.’ Does that make sense?”



Meeks added that he has retooled the CBC’s political arm this year to better defend incumbents facing primary challenges. That includes hiring a dedicated political director for the PAC who will help boost digital and on-the-ground operations.

Harper, who said she launched her grassroots campaign last July with “no coordination with the Justice Democrats,” pushed back against the suggestion that her sole purpose was to attack a member of Congress. And Harper has pushed back when pundits have called her out for targeting black lawmakers, at one point, retorting on Twitter: "I am also black."

“I think we need to reframe that, in the idea that this is somehow a targeting of an individual,” Harper said in an interview last week. “Our campaign, we are presenting an alternative policy platform to the people of the 3rd District and that is not a personal exercise.”
Back in early March, Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report looked at why so many African American voters are supporting conservative Democrats over progressives this cycle. Referring to how Biden beat Bernie in conservative South Carolina, he wrote that "Although the craven Black Misleadership Class will no doubt shout hallelujahs that 'hands that picked cotton now pick presidents' and claim Black voters exercised brilliant 'strategic' judgment in making themselves indispensable to the corprate Democratic party establishment, the true motivator of Black Biden supporters is a pervasive and deeply corrosive fear. Not just dread of four more years of Trump, although that is central to Black political behavior, but abject terror at the very thought that the Democratic Party-- 'our' party, in many Black folks’ minds-- might fracture under the challenge of the Sandernistas."
Voluminous data over many years has shown that African Americans are to the left of Hispanics on issues of bread and butter and, especially, war and peace, and far to the left of white Democrats. But, unlike Hispanics, Blacks cannot be depended on to uphold their own historical political consensus in Democratic Party primary elections for fear of weakening the chances of defeating The White Man’s Party. Hyper-conscious of their minority and despised status-- and surrounded by hostile, race-obsessed white Republicans in the southern states-- older Blacks cling to Democratic Party structures as if their lives depend on it. The ascent of Donald Trump has only tightened the duopoly trap, causing Blacks to invest their votes in candidates they perceive as 'good for the party,' as if that is synonymous with Black interests.

...The rot is deep, a product of generations of capital-subordinate Black politics that followed the violent suppression of Black self-determinationist movements and the imposition of a counterinsurgency, mass incarceration regime at the end of the Sixties. Rather than resist the New Jim Crow/Same Old Rich White Man’s Rule, the Black Misleaderhip Class eagerly offered themselves as co-managers of oppression-- for a small cut of the spoils, and the privileges of racial "leadership."

It has always been clear to Black Agenda Report that the post-Sixties betrayals of the Black Misleadership Class necessitated that a future Black liberation movement must be largely an internal Black struggle to uproot the corrupted elements in our polity. False unity has become Black folks’ Achilles Heel, allowing Black charlatans free rein in our communities and reserving most elected positions for servants of Capital. The Democratic Party is a predatory edifice of Black disempowerment, from which our people must either free themselves, or become agents of their own perpetual oppression and accomplices in the degradation of humanity, worldwide.

Black youth see the truth, and will act on it, we are certain.

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8 Comments:

At 6:33 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The title asks the question. The article answers, resoundingly, "NO".

A possible rationalization follows. Then truth:

"The Democratic Party is a predatory edifice of Black disempowerment, from which our people must either free themselves, or become agents of their own perpetual oppression and accomplices in the degradation of humanity, worldwide."

Then a fantasy:

"Black youth see the truth, and will act on it, we are certain."

The anecdotal proof of both the truth and the fantasy wrt OH and Beatty has been expanded nationwide with the unconscionable support biden has received, courtesy of the obamanation cajoled moves of warren and Clyburn's endorsement.

With the black Jesus' making the "predatory edifice of Black disempowerment" even bigger, and the black electorate so enthusiastically accepting it, they become the instrument of their own destruction.

It's the same with progressives who vote for biden, $hillbillary and support the likes of Pelosi, biden and the rest of the corrupt neoliberal fascist party.

Not only will black voters NOT help reform their shit party, they will stand in the way of any and all attempts to reform it from the bottom up or the inside out... just the same as the potted plants of other races who keep supporting the status quo.

the party must be euthanized and ALL those idiot voters must be handed a different movement/party to support. But they will always refuse to be the driving force behind it. this much is clear now.

 
At 6:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous, we do not all vote in a way that meets up with your offensive stereotyping. That is YOUR fantasy. Our voting preferences within our community have much more diversity. Take your commenting to a white supremacy blog. I'm sure you are familiar with them.

 
At 8:03 AM, Anonymous Johanna said...

We now know more about exactly what kind of new party the "obamanation,democraps" guy has been dreaming of.

 
At 8:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

6:59 and 8:03, the black vote is no different than the potted plant white vote. Both will keep the democraps relevant enough until the final crash or climate consumes all races.

The new party I have envisioned for 3 decades is one that ACTS like Bernie and AOC talk. Because I'm sure you got it wrong.

But with you two and your cohorts' voting, it won't ever materialize, will it?

So we're all left to await the final crash ($25 trillion in debt and over 20% U-4 are a good start) or climate (probably at least 50 years from doing real damage to the herd size). But one will happen because americans can't make themselves wake up. right?

 
At 8:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It depends.

The elder Black Democratic voters who backed Joe Biden despite Biden's record of active racism all through his career - yes, you can say that they represent the Democratic Party, but their vote for "nothing significantly changing" is not reform.

The younger Black voters -upon whom this society has landed upon like the Chicxulub asteroid- are not likely to go with the Democratic Party after they saw what Sanders went through. A society which sees you only as slave labor to incarcerate into private for-profit prisons for decades, which practically eliminates any other possible option to make something of yourself (unless you want to go into the military to oppress people less brown than you are), doesn't inspire any confidence that following them will improve your life. Reform is something they would gladly support.

Many things their elder Panther ancestors told them are now blatant examples of current-day behaviors. Many things Malcolm X orated no longer seem so radical. And with the economy crashed, who else do the cops have to abuse with impunity?

The Democrats have blown this opportunity in their servility to big money. They turned a ten touchdown advantage into a tie with the ball 10 inches away from a Safety for the other team and with less than a minute on the clock. They will lose the election - assuming Trump allows them to have it. They still lose if he doesn't, for no one will make him.

No one with any sense expects the Party to rise to the need of the nation and put in someone else as the candidate - because it's Joe's turn to give it to Hillary to squander. Far better for a younger voter of any race, creed, or orientation to prepare for the hell soon to follow as best one can, and walk away with no intention to return.

 
At 12:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Democraps- "But with you two and your cohorts." Congratulations. You found a clever way to say "you people." Pat yourself on the back and go wash your sheet.

 
At 1:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

12:57, did you read the article? the replies?

do you SPEAK English?

 
At 1:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good point 12:57. You beat me to it and I'm always amused with people who do the condescension thing and throw in references to the Black Panthers and Malcom and think they're off the hook some how. He'll be quoting Eldridge Cleaver in his next comment. I bet he practices his soul brother handshakes too. Look how he asks if we speak English.

Hey asshole, don't you know we only speak ebonics and jive?

 

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