Month: July 2024

Despite the gleeful chatter in some quarters, Donald Trump’s ugly, misogynoir-soaked performance today at the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference is not a laughing matter,

Trump didn’t fall on his face as some seem to think. He accomplished exactly what he went in there to do: draw the spotlight away from Vice President Kamala Harris and back to himself by attacking, insulting, and demeaning Black Americans, in general, and Black women in particular.

He did not do this “interview” to gain any Black votes. He’s not interested in our votes.

His purpose was to show white people that he’s not afraid of us and that he is willing to come into our spaces – in this case, by invitation – and disrespect us … and do it unashamedly.

In other words, he was just showing off. And, inexplicably, NABJ gave him the stage.

NABJ should never have invited him. Period.

But once they did, they should have ensured that their members, the Black community, the public at large and the three Black women on stage with him were not subjected to his vitriolic racism and sexism, lies and gish galloping.

And as soon as he began hurling insults – which unsurprisingly, occurred the second he opened his mouth – they should have shut him down on the spot, declared the interview over, and shown him to the exit.

I don’t care how bad he looked, I don’t care how many votes he lost, I don’t care how many votes Vice President Harris may have gained as a result of this debacle. There was nothing good or funny about any of this.

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster ride for many of us. But right now, we are on the rise.

Make no mistake. It is not an accident that in the last 24 hours, virtually every major Democratic figure, including Nancy Pelosi, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and such purported potential rivals as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, West Moore, Josh Shapiro, and Roy Cooper have coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris.

The first impetus, of course, was President Biden’s prompt, full-throated, and skillfully-executed endorsement of Harris as the nominee.

The second, without question, was the overwhelming, powerful, and inspirational show of support for Harris from Black women across the country.

Black women had the most invested in Joe Biden and fought the hardest for him. So his withdrawal from the race was probably more devastating to us than any other demographic.

And we felt it. Profoundly. I certainly did. It literally knocked me to my knees and every sister I’ve talked to had a similarly visceral reaction.

And we grieved … deeply … for about 10 minutes.

And then we got up ourselves up, brushed ourselves off, and got back to work. No whining. No handwringing. No what coulda shoulda beens.

And then, a few hours later, 44,000 of Black women – not a typo – gathered on a historic call strategizing, mobilizing, organizing.

And we put our money where our mouths are. In just an hour, Black women in the call had raised $1.5 million, providing a foundation for the nearly record-breaking $60 million the Harris campaign raised immediately after the announcement.

It is obvious that the impenetrable wall of support Black women built immediately built is, second only to Biden’s endorsement, the reason that today Kamala Harris has the wind at her back. She stepped up onto that wall, took a giant leap, and is now soaring into history. And we are going to continue to embrace, surround, protect and propel her every inch of the way. Because our vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is not only tan, but she is tested and ready for this challenge.

I am so proud of what we have done and are going to do. And I urge all of my fellow Democrats, whatever your race, to look at what Black women did yesterday, and then follow our lead.

Because when Black women lead, we ALL win.

I wrote this piece in August 2020, after Joe Biden put Democrats on notice that he has Kamala Harris’ back and he expected all of us to, as well.

Now is a good time to think about this again.

HE’S GOT HER BACK

When I was a young lawyer in a large law firm, the first African-American to work there, I was assigned to handle a workers compensation case for a corporate client. The employee had a strong case but the company president was adamant about fighting it, so I represented the company in its hearing before the Bureau of Workers Compensation.

After the Bureau ruled (correctly) for the employee, I returned to the office to call the client, give him the news and discuss a possible appeal.

When I told him of the decision, the company president (who had never laid eyes on me) blew up and yelled into my ear, “That guy is a dirty lying NIGGER!” I was stunned. “Excuse me?” I stammered. “He’s a dirty lying NIGGER! And everybody at the Bureau is a bunch of NIGGERR lovers. I hope they all end up with NIGGER grandchildren!”

I felt like I had been punched in the chest and I didn’t know what to do. So I put him on hold and just sat there for a minute, heart pounding, as I tried to swallow and catch my breath.

Then I told myself, “Just get him off the phone, tell the firm and let them handle it.” So I picked up the phone, told him I needed to call him back and clicked off. I went upstairs to the office of the senior partner responsible for the client where, shaking and nearly in tears, I told him what happened.

He looked at me for a few seconds, then leaned back in his chair and burst out laughing.

“That guy! He’s such an old curmudgeon. Just last week, he had Bob (another partner) all worked up by giving him the business about being an Ivy Leaguer! That’s just what he does.”

Stunned, I tried to explain to him that the client hadn’t made fun of where I attended college. That this was much different.

“Don’t let it get to you kid. It’s not a big deal. You need grow a thicker skin.”

I left his office and returned to my desk, where I sat not knowing what to do next. A few minutes later, the partner came to my office.

“Oh, good, I thought. He’s figured out he needs to do something ….”

But no. He was there to get the client’s file to give to another associate to handle. “It will probably be uncomfortable for you to work with him now,” he said sympathetically, as if he was doing me a big favor by taking me off of the case.

I asked him if he was going to tell the client why a different lawyer would be working with him, hoping that he planned to stand up for me and tell the client he had insulted one of the firm’s associates.

“No. He’s old and stuck in his ways. There’s no point in embarrassing him …” And he walked out, leaving me feeling alone, unprotected and unvalued.

Most people of color, women, and, especially women of color have surely and on more than one occasion, felt exactly as I did in that moment. It’s a common experience to find ourselves attacked by outsiders and then betrayed by the people who should stick up for us but instead just shrug and tell us WE’RE making too big a deal of the whole thing.

That’s why it was such a BFD yesterday when Joe Biden warned Trump and his henchmen that if they come for Kamala Harris, they’ll have to deal with him.

“Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with a strong woman? And we know that more is to come,” he said.”So let’s be clear … Kamala Harris has had your back – and now, we have to have her back. She’s going to stand with me in this campaign, and all of us are going to stand up for her.”

When I heard those words, I nearly cried with joy and relief. So many women and minorities have had to stand alone in the face of all manner of attack without any support from the people who should be standing by our sides.

But that’s not going to happen to Kamala. Yes, she’s going to be attacked, probably worse than any woman in political history, except perhaps Hillary Clinton (who also got little support from people who should have stood up for her). It’s already started. But this time, she won’t be alone. Joe Biden has put everyone on notice that not only does he have Kamala’s back, but he expects the entire party to circle the wagons around her. He essentially said for all to hear, “She’s with US. She IS us. So if you come for her, you’d better be prepared for a fight.” And that’s a fight they do not want to have.

As VP, Joe Biden showed himself to be valued and loyal partner to America’s first black president, a younger man whom he was willing to stand behind and support unwaveringly. As a presidential candidate, he showed himself to be a champion, who learned and grew and reached out to a diverse electorate. In selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate, he showed himself to be a politically savvy, bold and sensitive leader, paying it forward and helping to dismantle yet another barrier.

And yesterday, when he put the world on notice that he has Kamala’s back and expects the rest of us to have her back, as well, Joe Biden proved himself to be an ally in the truest sense of the word, willing to wield his privilege for the greatest good.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote about days gone by when “the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

Dr. King’s perfect distinction can be applied today in our politics.

Too many people in the progressive community are behaving like thermometers, looking at polls, gauging popular opinion, listening to what “they are saying,” etc. and treating this information, not as useful and changeable data points for shaping messaging and strategy (which they surely are), but as static and unalterable immutable facts that will determine all that comes next. And based on that, they are now ready to throw in the towel and kick our staunchest allies to the curb in hopes of finding someone else they believe is more in line with the atmosphere as they assess it to be in this immediate moment.

But true activists know that licking your finger and holding it up to the wind is not activism.

Concluding that people will always think a certain way because they think that way todsy is not activism.

Deciding you can’t win a fight because you’re not winning it now is not activism.

Activism means staying in a battle even when, in this exact time and space, we are not ahead.

Activism means not just looking at what is, but determining what will be.

Activists don’t simply measure the temperature. We change the climate.

So please, stop listening to the polls and pundits and “insiders” and what someone told you “people are saying,” and then trying to convince us we’ve lost a fight that hasn’t even really begun.

We don’t need any more thermometers – there are far too many folks giving us minute-by-minute and (and more often than not, inaccurate) weather reports. We need thermostats working for change. And it will be the thermostats – the true activists – who will make the difference this November and beyond.

Which one will you be?

Basking in the afterglow of President Joe Biden’s stellar press conference last night, I clicked on Morning Joe at dawn to check out what they were saying about President Biden’s press conference.

It seemed to start off ok.

In the lead-in, co-host Willie Geist noted that “He did have some gaffes, but he also showed a command of key issues, particularly on foreign policy.”

Kind of a half-assed, obviously begrudging admission that Biden did well – even though we could have done without it being couched in a gratuitous observation that, like every other human being on earth, Biden isn’t perfect. But alright.

Then, in the next breath, Geist said:

“But behind the scenes, though, advisors and close allies are said to be making the case for why he should step aside”

As he spoke, a graphic of a New York Times headline blaring “Biden advisors weigh how to convince him to end his campaign” floated on the screen.

Click.

“Behind the scenes advisors are said to be” is Mean Girl Telephone Game speak for “We heard that someone who isn’t behind the scenes told somebody what they claim is happening in rooms they aren’t in, but we’re not telling you who said it or who they said it about.”

In other words, once again, we’re being played.

Remember when the press defended their non-stop Biden Doom Loop as completely beyond their control, because it was all Biden’s fault, generated solely by a bad debate performance, but all the president needed to do was to show them he’s up to the job and they’d back off?

Remember “He needs to give a speech”?

He gave a speech. Meh

Then, “He needs to speak off the cuff without a teleprompter.”

He spoke off the cuff without a teleprompter, repeatedly, nearly every day, including a beautiful, heartfelt remarks at a meeting of national union leaders that you probably never even saw if you even heard about it. Because it earned nothing but crickets from the chattering class, who simply ignored it.

And then: “He needs to give a press conference.”

And boy, did he give a press conference, delivering a performance that even his most fervent media detractors had to reluctantly admit was a master class in “showing a command of key issues.”

But, of course, that wasn’t good enough for the “just prove to us you’re up to the job and we’ll leave you alone” crowd, either.

Because they were lying. Again.

Let’s be real. The media are NEVER going to let up on President Biden, no matter what he says or what does.

Biden could have recited Shakespeare’s sonnets from memory while doing one-handed push-ups last night, and the media would have disqualified him for using the wrong arm.

And even if Biden were to step down today, as the media elite are not just demanding, but irrresponsibly trying to force him to do (not your job, guys), they would simply shift their focus to his replacement, expertly sniff out the softest spot on their underbelly, and plunge their fangs into it …

And without even coming up for air, they would breathlessly proclaim:

DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY!

BUYER’S REGRET IN THE DEMOCRATIC CAMP!

INSIDERS TURN ON MAGICAL SPARKLE PONY: SOURCES LAMENT THAT MSP “IS NO JOE BIDEN!”

I am so proud of President Biden and Vice President Harris and the Democrats who will actually decide who are nominees are, for refusing to play Charlie Brown to the political Lucys trying to lure us to the party’s and country’s demise with promises to play fair this time.

Nope. We’re not going to try to kick that football only to have it snatched away and find ourselves flat on our backs while the Republicans climb over us and stumble through the goalposts their media blockers and tacklers are dragging around the field.

Because this isn’t a cartoon and it isn’t a game. This is a battle for our country’s life and soul. And we’re not going to let up just because certain shameless “journalists” tell us some nameless, spineless “advisors” want us to.

Keep fighting, y’all. Joe and Kamala have got this … and we’ve got them.

I’m going to speak honestly to my white Democratic sisters, even though I know it may ruffle some feathers:

An awful lot of white women have lately been demanding that our party erase the votes of tens of millions of people and kick President Biden to the curb. These erased votes include the votes of millions of Black Americans who are solidly behind Joe Biden and will not allow our voices to be silenced to satisfy the wishes of a small, overwhelmingly white sliver of unreliable Independents and shaky Democrats not guaranteed to vote Democratic, regardless what we do.

And many of the women making this demand also claim they want Biden to be replaced by Kamala Harris and promise they will wholeheartedly support her if this happens. But while Vice President Harris is the ONLY rational and acceptable choice to step in for Biden should he decide not to run, I am not swayed by this promise at all.

To paraphrase James Baldwin, We don’t believe what you say because we see what you do.

White women voters have proven time and again to be undependable allies and the weakest link in the electoral chain. As a result, I don’t trust many of them any further than I can throw them.

Not only have they been the biggest drag on Democrats, a whole lot of white women have spent a whole lot of time and effort in the last 3 and 1/2 years telling us how much they don’t like Kamala Harris. And their disdain is usually based on the same types of illusory criticisms always lobbed at Black women who enter spaces previously owned exclusively by white people – Not based on our performance, but on abstractions like “She doesn’t exude leadership,” “Her voice is annoying,” “She just rubs me the wrong way” and, of course “People don’t like her.”

And based on their past and current behavior, I don’t trust a critical mass of white women to stand behind Kamala Harris as our nominee any more than they have stood behind her as vice president, no matter what they’re saying now.

Let’s be real. A majority of white women couldn’t even vote for a white woman in 2016. And a majority of white women voted against the Black woman who ran for Georgia governor in 2018. And let’s not forget that a majority of white women have continued to vote for extremist Republican candidates even after the Dobbs decision.

But now we’re supposed to believe that white women will suddenly wake up, wise up, and then lift up and carry Kamala Harris into the White House this time around?

We can’t believe what you say because we see what you do

Black voters have absolutely no good reason to trust white women Democrats to vote en masse for, much less fight for, Kamala Harris should the Democratic Party lose its collective mind and force Joe Biden off the ticket.

So, you’ll have to understand why I and many other Black women are giving the side-eye to white women who demand that Biden be jettisoned and Kamala Harris take his place. Because, we don’t trust them to stand with us and with her any more than they have done up until now – and for good reason.

But this need not be a permanent problem. Trust can be earned.

So I say to my white Democratic sisters, if you want to start earning our trust, we’re gonna need you to do a few things:

First, we need you to stop talking at us and start listening to us.

And we need you to stop trying to eradicate our vote. We voted – along with tens of millions of other Democrats – for Joe Biden to be the Democratic presidential nominee and for Kamala Harris to be his running made. They are our standard bearers. That’s not going to change. So let it go.

Then we’ll need you to work with us – and work at least half as hard as we will – to ensure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get the 270 electoral votes they need to win reelection.

And after Biden and Harris win and enter their second term, we’re going to need you to stop undermining and dismissing the Vice President, and instead, support her, lift her up, and treat her with the respect she has earned and deserves.

Once you do all those things, we can talk about how we can work together in 2028 to continue the progress we have made together.

But, in the meantime, please don’t be surprised or resentful that we don’t believe your promises – because up until now, you have given us no reason to.

But you have plenty of opportunity to change that.

And I believe you can.

Let’s go!

My name is Stephanie Jones and I am a Democratic insider. Not the kind who plays one on teevee, but a real honest-to-goodness one.

As true as it is, it feels strange to say because actual insiders don’t go around calling ourselves insiders. Kind of like how fighter pilots with the right stuff never uttered the words “right stuff, ” we are what we are and there’s no need to talk about it.

But I’m going to make an exception just this time. Because some folks are out here claiming to be insiders and causing a whole lot of trouble.

Some background:

I’m an insider who has sat with presidents and senators and members of Congress and cabinet secretaries in quiet rooms where difficult decisions are made. Sometimes I’ve been there to participate in the decision-making, other times my role was to support the deliberations.

I have been the first person a president has looked for when he walked into a room because he knew I knew exactly where he needed to go and what he was supposed to do.

I’ve been one of the first calls more than one candidate has made when they decided to run for president and needed to be sure they reached out to the right key people before going public.

I’ve participated in several debate preps with a presidential candidate and ridden with them to the debate, so I could give a last-minute brief on how to handle prickly questions, and then climbed back into the car with them afterward so we could discuss how they did.

I have watched a candidate’s victory speech on television, only to notice the tight shot wasn’t reflective of the campaign’s diversity, so I picked up the phone and made a call, and within seconds watched the human backdrop rearrange itself according to my instructions.

I have sat in the Speaker’s box in the House Gallery, at her invitation, to watch her preside over a historic vote.

I’m the Stephanie in the sentence uttered on several occasions: “I know you all think I need to do thus-and-so, but I need to know what Stephanie thinks before I make a decision.”

I’m telling you this, not to boast or show off, but to illustrate my bona fides support what I’m about to tell you.

I’ve done all of these things and more.

But you know what I have NEVER done?  I have never, not once, not ever, told a reporter that I thought someone I worked for or advised had performed poorly in a debate, speech or interview, or was likely to lose an election or needed to change course.  

And I definitely never called or took a call from a reporter during or after a debate, speech, or interview to tell them that I was “jittery” about anything.

Because true insiders don’t do that.

Actual insiders don’t talk to the media about what’s happening on the inside, and they certainly don’t try to send messages to principal through journalists. A hallmark of being an “insider” is that we can communicate directly with the principal or we are well-connected and respected enough by the people in the inner circle that we can tell them and know that our thoughts and advice will make it all the way in.

We don’t go around talking off the record to reporters who are looking for dirt and we definitely don’t provide it to them.

That said, there is a cadre of people in Washington I refer to as “Inside Adjacent”: folks who perhaps worked on the Hill or in a department years ago and have stayed connected enough with certain players to get invited to an occasional DNC briefing or the White House Easter Egg Roll or annual holiday party and have lots of pictures with powerful people they took at fundraisers they paid good money to go to so they could get their pictures taken with powerful people.

I suspect that when we hear pundits talking about how their phones are “blowing up” with calls from “nervous Democratic insiders” and then presenting this as proof that President Biden is “in trouble,” or that “Democrats are wavering,” what you’re really hearing are opinions from the Insider Adjacent crowd.  And I strongly suggest that you take what they’re supposedly saying with a huge dollop of salt.

Of course, it’s always possible, even if it’s not likely, that an actual insider has spoken with a reporter. But, unless and until breathless journalists who claim they are talking with anonymous “insiders familiar with Biden’s thinking” reveal who these so-called “insiders” are, THIS genuine insider suggests that you give their reporting the consideration it merits – in other words, just ignore it.

I remember attending John Roberts’ confirmation hearings in 2005 (including the one in which my father, Judge Nathaniel R. Jones, testified), and noticing a cabal of young lawyers – all of them white Ivy League men – there to support him.

I was struck at the time by their smugness, their confidence in their assured future success, and their generally privileged and rather off-putting and often rude and condescending conduct and demeanor.

Several of my colleagues noted it too, with one saying to me, “They look like the young Aryan Nation. If we don’t stop them, this is our future.”

I have no doubt that those young men we saw then have been, over the last 20 years helping to build the foundation for the MAGA movement and have been instrumental in Project 2025 and its related agendas.

And they are the middle-aged men who are now putting the finishing touches on their wholesale takeover of our democracy. Foremost among their cohort is Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the U.S. Supreme Court, but was a high-level White House official when Roberts was appointed and confirmed. The following year, he was appointed to the federal appellate court, which launched his elevation to the Supreme Court where he now is fervently carrying out the MAGA agenda.

It’s important to understand that this didn’t just spring up with the rise of Trump. It has been in the works for decades, even before Roberts’ ascension to the Court. In fact, Roberts was one of the young lawyers in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses that my father described in his testimony as stoking the fires for what is happening today.

“At the time I left my job as General Counsel of the NAACP, a position that I had occupied which Thurgood Marshall also occupied, I had been involved in litigating major civil rights cases all across the country. I joined the court upon appointment by President Carter in 1979.

“At that time, we thought generally that certain civil rights principles were settled. We thought that the issue of school desegregation was settled in light of Chief Justice Burger’s decision in Swann in which he said that busing transportation was an appropriate remedy when you had a finding of constitutional violations that rigged a school district.

“We thought the issue of affirmative action was settled with the Bakke case and Justice Powell’s plurality opinion in which he said you may take race into account.

“But we find that following that case, or those cases which I thought were settled, I was then sitting as a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and I was engaged in dealing with the first wave of attacks against school desegregation and against affirmative action. The challenges claiming preferential treatment, claiming “forced busing,” all of these buzzwords were coming at the court and we were then faced with the decision, are these principles settled?

“I have now learned that in the boiler room of the Reagan administration, stoking out and crafting out a lot of the theories that were being used in the courts to attack these settled principles, was the nominee [John Roberts]. *

This is a long plan coming to fruition. Many of us have tried to warn of this happening, but were ignored or accused of overreacting.

But now that the danger is clear, we all must do everything in our power to stop it.

VOTE BIDEN-HARRIS and VOTE BLUE up and down the ticket.

*You can watch my father’s full testimony here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?188799-3/roberts-confirmation-hearing-day-4-part-3

I can’t help but notice that most of the calls for President Biden to be tossed out of the presidential race and replaced by a shiny new and younger but usually unnamed candidate have two weirdly connected features: 1) they also include jettisoning his Vice President Kamala Harris, his hand-picked successor: and 2) the cabal of commentators calling for this move is almost all white.

Hardly a coincidence. The white media elite has long treated America’s first Black vice president as invisible.

And, true to form, they have also thrown the invisibility cloak over tens of millions of Black voters who wholeheartedly support President Biden and Vice President Harris, pretending we don’t exist or just don’t matter.

It’s easy to float ideas when you’re not responsible for gaming them out, much less, making them work, and to assume that the outcome you want is the only outcome that will ensue. But that’s a child’s way of thinking, like a 5-year-old assumes the only possible consequence of dashing into traffic to retrieve her errant ball is that she will simply retrieve her errant ball.

The folks floating the cockamaimie Biden Replacement Theory that has no possible path to success (see my analysis here), seem not to have considered the political ramifications of banishing the sitting vice president into political exile.

The cavalier dismissal of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s replacement is particularly interesting given that she is one of fewer than a dozen people alive today who have actual hands-on experience as president or vice president. And three of those people are term limited, one is in hospice, and other than the previous vice president whom Biden’s opponent sent a mob to kill, the others have shown no interest in returning to the White House in any capacity.

So, if Joe Biden needs to be replaced, his hand-picked vice president is not only the most logical choice, she is literally THE most qualified person on earth available to step into his shoes should the need arise.

And yet, these pundits barely mention her in this regard and when they do utter her name, it’s simply to bat it away so the they can float the names of various white people who don’t come close to having her bona fides, name recognition, political support, or confidence of the president they want replaced.

The purported goal of the Biden Replacement Theory is to ensure a victory in November by switching him out with someone who supposedly will attract more votes than the incumbent president will. And yet the Kamala-free solution would hemorrhage tens of millions of votes of people – particularly African-American voters – who would not docilely go along with the first Black female vice president being supplanted by a largely unknown and untested candidate plucked from the Great White Hope short list, whom most people outside of their home state and a small circle of political junkies have never even heard of.

And yet, the pundits haven’t considered, much less managed to come up with a plan for making up for the innumerable critical votes that will be lost in this gambit and pulling together the fragile coalition of voters needed to win in November without Joe Biden on the ticket with Kamala Harris by his side.

Black voters, the loyal base of the party, who year after year put in the hard work and drag us over the finish line to victories made more difficult by reticent white Democrats, are only so tolerant and will only take so much before we say “Enough!” We are not going to accept being spit in the face as our votes and candidates are snatched away from us in order to appease a handful of unreliable Independents and shaky, fair-weather Democrats.

Many of the people who demand that Democrats upend our entire campaign to appease a few people they think might not vote for Biden because he’s not a spring chicken assume that Black voters don’t deserve the same (or any) deference because we’ll put up with anything – after all, “where else are they going to go,” right?

Well, invoke the ultimate act of white supremacy-steeped political betrayal against us and you’ll see where a critical mass of Black voters go. Or more accurately, where they DON’T go: to the polls.

And the few independents picked up with this scheme won’t come close to making up for the loss of Black support or the irreparable long-term damage done to the party and to the country as a result of such a monumental double-cross.

The chattering class of pundits and self-proclaimed but unidentified Democratic “insiders” have made it clear that Kamala Harris and millions of Black voters are irrelevant and invisible to them. But if the Democratic Party were to lose its collective mind and follow their advice, they will realize, too late, that they’ve made a tragic mistake.

Because while Black voters may be invisible to the media elite, the last thing the party or country needs is for Black voters to make ourselves invisible in November.