Alexandria Osario-Cortez (AOC) had warned her fellow Democrats not to be too hasty on kicking President Biden to the curb because she had not seen an alternative scenario that wouldn’t “set us up for enormous peril.”  She let us in on the internal goings on to push Ole Joe out, the pressure mainly coming from the high donors of the Dems. Her Instagram video validated what I’ve been saying all along. The Democratic Party has no strategy and is desperate. Desperate to hold on to their fiefdoms.

Most outsiders don’t know that one year into the Biden Administration, a critical mass of Party elites didn’t think he should run again. They saw the handwriting on the wall that early yet sat on their hands for two more years,3 letting the Republicans run circles around them and building unstoppable momentum. In 2016, the Dems could not defeat a known psychopathic liar, sex offender, racist, bully, people divider, unethical businessman and abuser of power. And they almost let trump get back in the White House in 2020.

No vision and no strategy is what has characterized the Democratic Party for the last thirty years, and Black folks have been the collateral damage. (Obama was an anomaly.) That’s why Black voters, especially Black women, started questioning their loyalty to the Party since Obama’s reign. A poll by the Pew Research Center indicated that 95% of Black female voters supported Biden in 2020. Fast forward to 2024 where polls show our support took a steep dip to 70% in the race between Biden and trump.

This is why radicals and the social justice movements must stop tailing the Dems. We need to start seriously talking about an independent Black political party or at least a progressive labor party. I regress, that’s a topic for another column. I want to focus on Kamala Harris.

The Desperate Dems are thinking that with Harris, they can check off two major constituencies – Black voters and women voters. The Democratic Party may have misjudged the political climate for a Harris victory. The Third Reconstruction has unleashed a brutal whitelash. The party is also ignoring the ugly history of discrimination against Black people and women. Race and gender will be on trial in 2024. Harris embodies both of these identities and should expect both overt and stealth opposition to her candidacy, including from within her own party. She’s already being labeled the DEI hire; birther talk is emerging; and the Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against her.

Harris is inheriting baggage from the Biden Administration that have not been adequately addressed – issues like mass incarceration, police accountability, immigration and of course, Palestine. She also brings her own political luggage from her prosecuting days when she was locking up Black and Brown people in California.

I’m not saying Kamala Harris can’t win the presidency. What I am saying is that Harris as a potential presidential nominee can only expect success if the Democrats launch a serious, vibrant grassroots campaign that informs and galvanizes all the constituents that trump has marginalized and criminalized. It has not done such an undertaking in years, hence their repeated losses.

Since the Dems humiliated Biden out of the race, the high rollers returned to buy their shares in the Party, raising over $100 million since Harris took center stage. How will it spend this money in the next three months? It has refused to invest resources in ongoing campaigns that keep voters empowered and energized. The GOP is masterful at doing exactly this. They keep racking up victories on the local and state levels, never looking back.

The Republicans know their candidate is flawed, that trump is a racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic wanna-be dictator. But that’s not the point. They are pushing a game plan that is superior to the character of the candidate. It’s a game plan that could elect Mickey Mouse if it would open the doors to power and money.

This presidential race is on track for many firsts. None of them are particularly flattering, starting with a convicted felon running for U.S. President. We got three months to get fired up. From where I’m sitting, Black folks are doing a call-and-response with the Dems. There has been no response to the call:  What Have You Done for Me Lately? From where I’m sitting, political strategists are waiting for the winning playbook. No playbook has surfaced.

James Baldwin once said, “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” Democrats, it’s time to stop talking and start doing – big time.