Congressman Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Cory Booker cosplaying as political opposition. Image - @thegaywhostrayd
Liberals continue to condemn anyone who didn’t support Kamala Harris and the latest iteration of neo-liberal treachery. Black people are told to stand down when there is a fight worth waging.
“We can emotionally understand the Arab/Muslim/Pro-Palestine base not voting for Harris.” - Rev. Graylan Hagler
One can only say that making such a dispensation is very generous of Rev. Graylan Hagler. It isn’t clear what he means by “emotionally understand” but the subtext is troubling. Is he insisting that a group whose people are victims of a genocide ought to support the perpetrators of the war crimes? If that is his stance it is not understandable, emotionally or in any other way. The statement encapsulates what is highly problematic about Hagler’s recent essay The Betrayal of the Black Community. Hagler’s 2,500 word screed is a muddled apologia to the Democratic Party after their ignominious defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, despite raising $1 billion in the effort to elect Kamala Harris.
His verbiage is a sad example of confused thinking. It not only leads to political defeat but ultimately to the betrayal of Black people. The Black liberals’ lament about traitorous allies is nonsense meant to let the party off the hook for their dismal result and their perpetual habit of treating Black voters as desperate people who will turn out in droves regardless of whether their needs and demands are ever addressed. Hagler’s commentary does not contain any critique of the Democratic Party and is therefore bereft of any meaningful analysis.
Such misdirected anger results in misleaders like Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader, and Senator Cory Booker, he of the 25-hours of fakery, sitting on the capitol steps in matching Black outfits, posing as if on the album covers of old. Jeffries wrote, “Just sat down on the Capitol Steps with my good friend @SenBooker to have a real conversation about the dangerous situation we confront in America. And what we can all do to stop it.”
Jeffries and Booker are our betrayers, doing only what their party’s oligarchs will allow, and making careers that depend upon ignoring the people’s needs. That’s why they received $1.635 million and $871,563 from AIPAC respectively. It is because of them and their ilk that too many Black voters have decided to “sit this out,” behaving as if they have no need for politics because electoralism keeps failing them.
If Hagler wanted to argue that Black people are always better off in material ways if the democrats win, he should have at least taken that party and its leadership to task. But apparently he could find no explanation for their defeat other than racism and misogyny. Someone of Hagler’s stature and intellect ought to give some explanation for the loss of six million votes for the democratic presidential candidate from 2020 to 2024 rather than dismissing these non-voters as women hating racists who had no other reason to eschew the Kamala Harris bandwagon.
Hagler is so eager to see Harris’ defeat as a failure of “allies” that he forgets the most basic facts about the U.S. electorate. “... it was a surprise to know that 53% of white women voted for Trump.” How is anyone surprised? The last democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of the white vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Since that time a majority of white women and men have voted for republicans. The fact that the duopoly operates as “Black” and “white” parties is hardly new and denial of that indisputable fact is unworthy of anyone claiming to be serious.
One would think that the process that led to Harris’ anointing as democratic candidate over the sitting president, Joe Biden, should at least get a mention in post-election analysis. Biden was an unpopular president with anemic approval ratings. Hagler might ask why the incumbent president didn’t elicit more excitement. He might have mentioned the failure of Build Back Better and other initiatives that were promised to Democratic Party voters eager for changes to be made on their behalf. Instead they watched as he made entreaties to republican supporters of right winger Nikki Haley.
Biden was also in declining health. The party hoped that if they continued the charade of labeling his obviously failing faculties as a stutter that he could be dragged over the finish line. But his June 2024 debate with Trump was disastrous and finally the party’s wealthy donors ordered Biden to stand down. He endorsed Kamala Harris while Barack Obama and others wanted an open convention that would give the appearance that she was not a top down establishment choice. Now books are being published about this combination of oligarchic influence and political incompetence. But Hagler makes no mention of how his party and their leadership shot themselves in their collective feet and let their voters down.
Hagler’s arguments amount to little more than capitulation to the trope which posits that U.S. voters are without a voice or choice, that “lesser evilism” is the most they can hope for. “The lesser of the worst argument has always been the Black reality and we have understood historically that the system is malicious in character, racially unjust, and unfair.” There is no disagreement with Hagler’s characterization of how Black people have historically been treated. But his conclusion that there is no option other than going along with a corrupt party controlled by people who will only countenance neoliberalism and imperialism, is in fact a call for more Black suffering.
Where has putting democrats in office gotten us? Bill Clinton made the right wing dream of ending the right to public assistance a reality and threw millions of people into poverty. Hagler expresses concern for immigrant rights but it was Clinton’s Illegal 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) which allowed even documented immigrants to be deported for minor infractions of the law. Donald Trump may end up with more deportations but as of now Barack Obama is still the deporter in chief, with more removals than Trump in his first term.
Barack Obama was a dream come true for Wall Street and the bankers who needed a charismatic figure who could get away with doing their bidding. His Justice Department allowed the criminals whose corruption precipitated the 2008 financial crisis to go free without any fear of prosecution. The bank bailouts were estimated to cost more than $1 trillion. While the rich got richer with the help of the first Black president, Black homeowners were not only not bailed out, but the numbers who were “underwater” on their mortgages increased 20-fold between 2007 and 2013.
Obama did not use his office to help Black Americans and he also botched the Harris campaign’s efforts to win over Black men. “We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers. You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that. Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that.”
Obama’s hectoring tone was forgiven when he ran for president but no one wants to hear his amateurish efforts at pop psychology and dismissals of Black men any longer. His insults are no longer acceptable and, if Hagler wanted to explain why Trump won over Harris, he might have mentioned Obama’s comments which went over like the proverbial lead balloon.
It also must be said that any explanation for the Harris defeat must speak to the deficiencies in the candidate herself. Despite having been a United States Senator and a presidential candidate herself, she often comes across as embarrassingly inarticulate, speaking in nonsensical “word salads” that are inexplicable for any politician. She was chosen at the last moment by a president who was no longer wanted. But after her candidacy was announced her website gave no information, aside from how to donate, for 50 days and then appeared as a bad copy and paste of Biden’s site. Harris’s embarrassing showing must also be laid at her feet.
It is wrong headed to speak only about Trump and his supporters while neglecting to mention how the Democratic Party fails its voters. Trump and Israel are carrying out a terrible genocide in Gaza but Joe Biden, rightly called Genocide Joe, prepared the pathway, giving Israel carte blanche to do its worst and play for time for Trump’s victory.
Thousands of voters refused to give their support to the genocide party and they shouldn’t be criticized for taking a firm moral stance. No one should be scolded because they didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris betrayed Black voters and so did all of the democrats who occupied the white house in recent decades.
Any blame for Trump’s victory must be directed at the party whose oligarchs raised $1 billion in a losing effort. This moment calls for principled debate and for introspection and also for condemnation of policies that leave voters cold and unwilling to hold their noses and vote for what they don’t want.
This surrender also sends a terrible message to the masses of Black people. Now there are calls to “sit out” protests because it is said that Black people should just give up, that our activism is pointless. But electoral politics should not be confused with real activism. Supporting Kamala Harris would only cement the Black misleadership class and their bosses in the oligarchy in place. Had she won there would still be 1 million Black people locked up in jails and prisons, police killings would continue their upward trajectory, and hard earned public dollars would be spent on death and destruction. The genocide in Gaza would still be happening.
Hopefully Hagler will comment on how the Democratic Party has been muted in its criticism of Trump. They are the betrayers, going along with mass firings of federal workers, continued genocide, and a deportation regime that began with Bill Clinton and that has been supported by democrats for 30 years. Their lack of opposition reveals the cynical game. While voters beg them to take action, the most they can muster are 25-hour rants and phony rallies from fake “leftists” in the controlled opposition that claim to fight oligarchy.
This moment calls for people like Rev. Graylan Hagler to call for organizing the kind of mass movement that has brought change throughout U.S. history. Trump is not the only threat to our lives. The duopoly that runs this country must be stopped. The democratic wing of that infamous group must also be stopped and exposed as the enemies of the people that they are. Let us condemn them, the cynics and criminals who are most responsible for the Trump presidency.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at [email protected].
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