For you baseball fans out there, the managerial strategy is, get ‘em on, get ‘em over, and get ‘em home. Last evening, despite a billionaire throwing spitballs, Joe Biden hit a triple. With a short supply of money, zero campaigning in Minnesota and counted out in California and Texas, Joe Biden raised the hopes of voters like me. Column after column, pundit after pundit has started their commentary or paragraphs with the pensive words, no offense to Bernie voters, but… maybe in fear of Bernie Bro's retaliation.
I am a black voter, I registered as a Democrat in Washington, D.C. in 1974. I have lived in 13 cities and three countries and have either re-registered when necessary or voted in every election, local and national, either in person or by absentee ballot, without fail, since. Republicans successfully turned the word liberal into a pseudo-invective and now Sanders supporters are doing the same thing with the words establishment, corporatists and anti-revolutionists. Let me assure you, coming from a group of people who for hundreds of years lacked a legal invite into the “establishment” that charge rings hollow with me. According to a 2017 article written for CNN: Business only 5.6% of Fortune 500 board members are black men and even less (2.2%) are black women; the word corporatist hardly fits.
As far as being a revolutionary, remember Nat Turner, James Meredith, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X—left a bloody or bullet-riddled legacy as a testament to a real revolution. Over and over since 1992 Black women have proven to be the loyal backbone of the Democratic party. For their trouble, an esteemed accomplished black woman, director Ava Duvernay, got invited to a meeting with guillotine 101 from a self-described Sanders’ supporter for daring to send a lukewarm tweet mildly disagreeing with the senator. Ms. Duvernay researched and directed the award-winning film ‘Selma” chronicling the three-month struggle to march peacefully across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to protest in the state capital of Montgomery, so she came to her opinion, not from a place of ignorance. Having said all that, I will not have to hold my nose or swallow hard, as many Sanders supporters publicly claimed they had to do in 2016 to vote for Hillary Clinton. I will cast my vote willingly for Senator Bernie Sanders, should he win the primary. No offense to Bernie voters, but… stop trying to convince me with inane twitter terror or boycotting the election if Bernie is not the choice. Black voters already know that in a binary race Mr. Sanders far outweighs Mr. Trump, as do most people who are paying attention.
One of the things I hope Mr. Sanders accomplishes is getting the youth to actually vote and not just carry signs and finger their keyboards. Calls for revolution excite young people; it does not make them vote, as evidenced by the approximate 13% turnout yesterday for voters between 18-29. Black voters consistently vote because we have learned practicality is self-preservation. As much as I might sound as if I am screaming get off my lawn I was a man in my twenties once and wanted it all yesterday. The “establishment” cannot do this without Senator Sanders and at the same time, Mr. Sanders cannot do this without the establishment. Let us agree to disagree because we all want to score by hitting a homerun in November.
Vote in 2020 for Change.