A letter to the DNC
9th December 2019 · 0 Comments
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris last week folded her tent and bowed out of the U.S. presidential race because she came up short of funds to continue. Harris admitted that she can’t compete with billionaires.
There are two admitted billionaires competing to be the democratic presidential nominee, both of whom jumped into the race late. Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg.
Clearly, the discombobulated scheme the DNC cooked up for candidates to qualify for debates based on fundraising and polling percentages is inherently flawed. For example, to be on the November 13, 2019 debate stage candidates had to meet grassroots fundraising and polling requirements.
To meet the small donor fundraising goal, candidates had to receive donations from at least 165,000 unique donors and a minimum of 600 unique donors per state in at least 20 states, U.S. territories or the District of Columbia.
Candidates also had to get at least three percent support in four national polls or single-state polls from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and/or Nevada. All four polls had to be sponsored by a different qualifying poll sponsor or, if they share a sponsor, be in different geographical areas.
In New Orleans, we call that Voodoo math.
Not only is the pool of donors being split among the 13 remaining candidates, but who is actually being polled?
The Democratic Party will hold a presidential primary debate on December 19, 2019. It is the sixth of 12 Democratic primary debates scheduled for the 2020 presidential election. As of December 3, 2019, six candidates had qualified for the debate: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Tom Steyer.
Former presidential candidate Kamala Harris also qualified for the debate before ending her presidential campaign and two polls had her above three percent. Still, she lacked the money to fully fund a competitive campaign, according to Harris. To stay in, she would have had to raise $5 million in two weeks or go into debt.
At press time, U.S. Senator Corey Booker, the only African-American Democratic presidential contender, had not yet announced that he qualified for the December debate.
It is a disgrace that the Democratic Party is eliminating candidates based on money and polling. Did we learn nothing about the wealth gap in this country, how the haves have destroyed the middle class and we’re now a nation of haves and have nots?
Have we learned nothing, Mr. DNC Chair Perez, about the unreliability of polls vis a vis the exit polls the night of the 2016 presidential election that declared former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the next president?
Have we learned nothing from the decline in African-American voter turnout in recent years? A lot of African-American voters sat out of the 2016 election, some out of resentment that U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wasn’t the democratic nominee, while others didn’t see themselves in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s platform.
Do you understand, Mr. Perez, that most of your base lives in the South, in states your candidates rarely court? Senator Kamala Harris did come to New Orleans! Harris was a speaker at the Power Rising Conference held in New Orleans earlier this year by a powerful group of African-American women.
Here in Louisiana, we have a democratic governor. Have you stopped to think why? It’s because of state house Republicans who used partisan gerrymandering to suppress the African-American vote but couldn’t stop the Black electorate when it came to statewide races.
Harris’ star still shines brightly. The twitterverse was lit up by people advocating for Harris to become the U.S.’s next vice-president or attorney general, after she announced her withdrawal from the presidential race.
Harris said recently that even though she is suspending her campaign, she will remain in the fight, ostensibly for justice. As a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs which oversees the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management, and the Budget, Judiciary, and Intelligence Committees, Harris’ prosecutorial skills will be on full display in the Senate’s Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump. At some point, she may also get to grill corrupt and disgraced U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, whom she may one day replace, about his participation in the Ukraine scandal.
The DNC’s preposterous and ridiculous elimination protocol is flawed to be sure, as viable candidates retreat from the stage because of the ratcheting up of the elimination standards. What the DNC cooked up to whittle down the field is tantamount to opening the door wide to the type of so-called conservative swamp creatures that have infested the oval office.
Do you, Mr. Perez, understand that African-American voters are sick and tired of being sick and tired, as the late great Fannie Lou Hamer, once said.
We’re sick and tired of our votes being taken for granted, our needs being ignored, would-be officer holders and presidential candidates that exclude us from their platforms, eliminated from the table where decisions are made and contracts are let, not having access to small business loans from the SBA, locked out of HUD financing, not being able to afford even a minimum higher education degree, and being relegated to working poor status without decent wages or salaries. This is what we get for being democratic loyalists?
Well, understand this: African-American millennials and Gen Z are not the cautious, patient, voters of past generations. They understand that everyone who is tolerant of us do not have our best interests at heart.
The DNC may win back the White House in 2020 but only because African-American voters have decided that Trump and the Republicans are intolerable. But if the DNC thinks African-American voters will continue giving up their votes without getting anything in return but BS, the DNC had better think again.
A reckoning is coming.
This article originally published in the December 9, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
