The Rolling Stones of the Wrightsville Vote: A Political Strategist’s Perspective for a Reforming of the American Democratic Party

WRIGHTSVILLE, Ga. — The race for a critical Senate seat was in full motion by midsummer, but there were just a few Herschel Walker campaign signs sprinkled around his hometown.

They were planted in front of homes with big yards in the center of the city. There were two on the corner by the Johnson County Courthouse, near a Confederate memorial.

The support appeared randomly scattered. But people in Wrightsville saw a dot-to-dot drawing of a racial divide that has shaped Wrightsville for generations — and is now shaping a critical political race with national implications.

“All those campaign materials were in the white community,” said Curtis Dixon, who is Black and who taught and coached Mr. Walker, a Republican, in the late 1970s when he was a high school football prodigy. The only other house that has a Herschel Walker poster is his family.

You might think that Mr. Obama was just saying that he had just come from a meeting with the Democrats. He brought an appreciation for class politics with deep roots on the left in the next phase of his career despite being a Marxist in the past.

All the pieces of Mr. Obama’s plan fit together: an electoral strategy designed to make Democrats the party of working people; a policy agenda oriented around comprehensive economic reform; and a faith that American democracy could deliver real change. Democrats can revive the March on Washington coalition by mixing political calculation with moral vision.

Editor’s Note: Fredrick Hicks is a political strategist and campaign expert. He was a debate preparation partner for Raphael in 2020. Hicks did not work for the campaign in 2022. He is the owner of his own consulting firm, HEG. His views are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

Warnock is also well poised to be the leader of the Democratic renaissance in the southeast and to help maintain a Democratic majority in the Senate beyond 2024. Should he choose to seek higher office, he could become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter.

The likes of Hakeem Jeffries, Tammy Duckworth, and the newly elected governor of Michigan are among a new generation of Democratic leaders that are more diverse than their predecessors.

Politics and context are not the same. Democrats did better than expected. The red wave that hit the southeast washed away many Democrats in the area from Virginia to Florida.

In the 2021-2022 cycle, Warnock emerged as the most prominent statewide Democrat to win across the entire region. His name was on the ballot five times in two years, and he was the leader in vote after vote, including the two elections against the most famous football player in the state’s history.

As of the day before the second debate, he had raised more than $284 million since becoming a candidate and would likely approach $300 million after the counting is done, making him one of the most prolific non presidential fundraisers in recent memory. In a game where votes and money are the barometers of success and viability, Warnock has more of both than anyone – something his ancestors never could have imagined.

A Conversation with Peniel E. Joseph on Walker’s Campaign for the Voting of a New U.S. Senate Candidate

This could be a huge opportunity for the center- left agenda to move forward for the country. With large states like California, Illinois and New York safely in the Democratic ledger, if the nominee can compete and win in southern states, then it will be nearly impossible for any Republican to win the presidency for the foreseeable future.

The Center for the Study of Race and Democracy was started by Peniel E. Joseph, who is also the founding director of the Barbara Jordan Chair in ethics and political values at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.” The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Walker was a former athlete who was friendly with Trump and had no credentials to be the Republican Party’s Senate nominee.

The GOP embrace of Walker represents an American tragedy. Walker’s behavior on the campaign trail included incoherent ramblings about movies and farm animals, nonsensical asides that went nowhere and dancing in front of overwhelmingly White audiences in bizarre scenes that recalled the minstrel shows of the Jim Crow era. The whiff of the Jim Crow era’s objectification of Black men as intellectually feeble but physically powerful grew stronger as Walker’s humiliating campaign continued to showcase the GOP’s failure to understand or connect with Black voters.

It is reason enough to fully acknowledge the pain caused by Walker’s candidacy, and it is also reason to celebrate the win of the Democrats as more than a partisan victory. It’s a crucial step toward realizing the dream of multiracial democracy.

Editor’s Note: Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City and a former New York state senator. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can read more about it at CNN.

But this move must be more than symbolic. It must be the beginning of a new push to address the concerns of all people of color and working class people who feel that the party has misled them. This is an important opportunity to reprioritize our party’s policies.

The Democratic National Committee recently voted to approve their plan to change their presidential nominating calendar. The proposal needs to be approved at a full DNC meeting, set for early next year.

Black Voters in the U.S.: How Democrats Can Fix Their Left-Right Symmetric Tortuations and What Their Core Values Really Mean

This bold move feels like faith being rewarded in a party that many of us from lower income levels feel is taking our communities for granted. And as the leader of the largest city in the United States, with a Black population of about 2 million people, I am thrilled that we are making this statement.

Much of the anger from working-class and lower-income Americans over the last decade is a product of these failures. Many have left the Democratic Party because they felt betrayed, and White working class voters have begun to desert the party.

Republicans have been ruthless in exploiting cultural differences because of the discontent among working class people of color. The share of Black voters backing Republicans increased by 4 percentage points from the 2018 midterms to the 2022 midterms, according to network exit polling. Latino and Asian voters support the same party, but over a period of time.

In key states like New York, California, and Florida, as well as the Congressional districts, the foundation of our base broke due to lower turnout by Black and Latino voters.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/opinions/democrats-2024-primary-calendar-black-voters-adams/index.html

Why Working Americans aren’t Helping: Why They Don’t Care about Their Jobs, Education, Child Care, Health Care or Housing

First, in my experience, they don’t want “help.” They want what they have earned. They work and should not have to worry about crime, schools, child care, health care or housing. This isn’t a socialist dream. The jobs that keep our country running are the basics that they paid for.

Our platform must include practical approaches to complex challenges. The federal government has fallen out of favor in funding affordable housing.

As the cost to build and subsidize new homes skyrockets, federal investment in housing could free millions of Americans from poverty. A further expansion of funding for child care would not only lower the household cost but would also give children a stronger Start in life and freeing up mothers to work and advance in their careers.

Other measures that put extra money in the pockets of working people – such as a more robust earned income tax credit and child care credit – help to stabilize their finances, protecting them from debt and reliance on social services.

These are not handouts. These are prudent investments. The policies in the platform are not our main message, because they are not our brand.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/opinions/democrats-2024-primary-calendar-black-voters-adams/index.html

Why Working Families Shouldn’t Be Attacked. The Case for a Realist, Inclusive, and Racist-Electron America

I have found that working people don’t have time for a culture war. They are not on the popular social networking website, but they are working. This or that group should not be attacked. We should acknowledge the injustices they’re suffering and then show – don’t tell – working people how we’re going to correct them. Outrage is not a plan.

I’ve never been to a community meeting in a neighborhood where the residents asked for less police. Immigrants and first- generation Americans are the most entrepreneurial people I know. I cringe when I hear people in my party vote against practical public safety and opportunity for economic growth.

The next presidential election will be a big moment for Democrats. After years of fighting for the soul of our country against an existential threat led by former President Donald Trump, we may finally be able to win by being who we are, not who we are not.

There isn’t any more effective way to make the practical agenda of working people our primary platform in order to make historically Black South Carolina our first primary state.

The Conversation with John Avton on the Iowa Listening Tour: Towards a Possible 2016 Presidential Campaign from Des Moines, South Carolina

John Avton is a senior political analyst for CNN. He is the author of “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” The views he expresses are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

This week, the South Carolina Republican Senator embarked on the obligatory Iowa listening tour that precedes a possible presidential campaign. He gave a well-scripted speech in DesMoines and then led the Polk County Lincoln Day dinner, testing out the themes that could define a candidacy.

If you glanced at the headlines, you might think that he was selling a warmed over form of Trump’s “combative vision,” served with a side order of DeSantis’ bitter culture war assaults.

That wouldn’t be a good idea. If you actually listened to Scott’s speeches, you could hear a different pitch to voters. Scott said that America needed to work together to be at its best. “We must come together on a common ground, built on common sense.”

But trying to slap a cynical Trump-derivative bumper sticker on Tim Scott does him a disservice. Scott believes there is a lane outside of Trump, Trump lite and Never Trump when it comes to a possible presidential campaign. It is evidence of evolution from an obsession with identity politics and the grievance industrial complex. That will be good for the Republican Party and good for the republic.

He does not want the public to fear American carnage. He is not trying to get people to like him by using the American flag as a weapon. Amid a wave of strategically induced CRT panic, he is also not trying to whitewash American history to pretend it is an unadulterated story of perfection.

At the Lincoln Day dinner, he told the story of how his beloved grandfather, born in 1921, was taught to step aside on the sidewalk to let a white man pass and never make eye contact. This was deep in the Jim Crow South. “So when I talk about our history, I’m not whitewashing it,” Scott said. He said his grandfather told him he could be bitter or better. I chose better.

As the only Black Republican Senator, Scott sees his remarkable rise as evidence of American exceptionalism and our success in forming a more perfect union. And as inherently unique as it is, Scott’s story is not one that can simply be dismissed out of hand. He is ready to have his patriotism attacked.

“For those of you on the left, you can call me a prop, you can call me a token, you can call me the N-word, you can question my Blackness, you can even call me ‘Uncle Tim.’ Your words are not in line with my evidence. The truth of my life disproves your lies.”

That’s a good line. It’s also a hard truth rooted in his personal experience. And he is unsparing in his belief that activists try to use our nation’s historic mistakes as a wedge to “bring more power and more resources to their progressive agenda.”

To be sure, he is still trying to appeal to a party that fell under Trump’s spell – and Scott does go too far with the play-to-the-base red meat for my taste at times.

His talk of how Democrats are trying to destroy America fundamentally undermines his argument that America needs to be united. He is part of a group that is dancing around the denunciation of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn an election on the basis of a lie, something that will look as cowardice in the future as it may look pragmatic now.