On November 12, 2022, New Black Nationalists urged the Black Commons and Black Democrats to dump the Biden-Harris national ticket in 2024. With the recent revelations that classified government documents were found in Biden's former vice-presidential office and his home, we are renewing our call with increased urgency.
As the Democrats most unified and determinative voting bloc, Black Democrats have the power to underwrite the 2024 national ticket. We encourage the Black Commons and Black Democrats to begin discussions to draft an alternative presidential and vice-presidential ticket.
Congressional Black Caucus and Black Democrat leaders will not challenge Biden. Quite the opposite, on January 18, 2023, (D-SC) Rep. James Clyburn told CBS New's Robert Costa "I am all in for Biden" in 2024. It was Clyburn's last-minute endorsement of Biden days before South Carolina's 2020 presidential primary, that resurrected his campaign dangling on life-support.
If Clyburn wants to endorse Biden, that is certainly his prerogative. But Clyburn had a larger agenda. Asked if Biden will face a primary challenge, Clyburn told Costa, "I don't think he will, and I don't think he should. The history is very clear on what happens when you challenge a sitting president like this." Clyburn was referencing Sen. Ted Kennedy's 1980 primary challenge to President Jimmy Carter: a challenge he insinuated led to Carter's loss to Ronald Reagen.
Notwithstanding Clyburn's revisionist history of the 1980 presidential campaign, his warning to fend off challengers to Biden in 2024, is tantamount to bare-knuckled intimidation. This is especially true of any potential Black presidential candidate who would need to clear two significant hurdles.
First, the awkward appearance of running against a ticket with Kamala Harris as Biden's Vice-President is not a good look. Moreover, unduly offending Black women voters is the kiss of death in Democrat primaries. Beyond the "Kamala factor," if we buy into the notion that Rep. Clyburn is the Democrat Party's sage "Kingmaker," any Black candidate would have a steep hill to climb to capture 40% of the Southern Black vote that has a disproportionately higher percentage of the total primary vote in Deep South states.
With the South Carolina Democrat primary potentially being moved ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire on February 3, 2023, a Black candidate would have to charge out the starting blocks to put a chink in Biden's armor and deflate Clyburn's "Kingmaker" status. That means fighting Biden to a relative stalemate in a state he's expected to win big. In South Carolina's 2020 primaries, Biden won 48.6% of the vote, followed by Bernie Sanders with 19.8%. Tom "Big Bucks" Steyer finished third with 11.1% of the vote.
NBN's predictive model suggests Biden is going to be a much weaker frontrunner in 2024, with serious vulnerabilities among the Black Commons on voting rights and police reform. Biden's trust/betrayal deficit with the Black Commons will not be overcome by Rep. Clyburn's suggestion that Biden adopt Harry Truman's 1948 strategy of running against a Republican Do-Nothing Congress. Black voters already know that. What they don't know is whatever Biden promises he will deliver. Supreme Court appointments are easy: voting rights and law enforcement reform are not.
In our view, Clyburn's endorsement is not going to carry the same weight among Black Southern voters in 2024 as it did in 2020, particularly if Biden performs below expectations in South Carolina's opening primary.
In effect, Clyburn's endorsement and comments discouraging presidential primary challengers saddles the Black Commons with an 80-year-old presidential incumbent, weighed down with a 36% approval rating. Clyburn is asking the Black Commons to support Biden before the Justice Department's Special Counsel Jack Smith has started his investigations into Hunter Biden's unsavory business practices and Joe Biden's possession of classified government documents.
Those splitting hairs about the difference between Trump's stealing and concealing classified documents from the Feds, and Biden's staff 'accidentally' packing up classified materials when he left office in 2016, miss the point entirely. To many voters, especially independents, it's a distinction without a difference. Dems making excuses for Biden will only make matters worse, and it reeks of base hypocrisy.
Joe Biden is going to be skewered for the next two years by Republicans and possibly impeached. Neither will Special Counsel Jack Smith's report be flattering. Should Democrats continue to cleave to Biden, their only hope is for the Republican's conspiracy theory sedition caucus to overplay its hand. That may well happen, but that's not a strategy.
Rep. Clyburn has thrown down the gauntlet to Black Democrats and the Black Commons to fall in line, even before Biden has announced his candidacy. Unless the Black Commons is "all-in" with Biden-Harris in 2024, they should accept the dare and demonstrate their independence and veto power over the party leadership by drafting an alternative national ticket.
By launching a draft effort to nominate an alternative 2024 national ticket, the Black Commons will provide political cover for its candidates of choice not to be smeared as disloyal party members who aren't team players.
New Black Nationalists' are not in the business of disparaging Joe Biden or Kamala Harris's re-election campaign. Rather, we continue to assert that there is a substantial enthusiasm gap in Black communities for a Biden-Harris ticket in 2024. For all the aforementioned reasons we are skeptical about the prospects of the gap being overcome.
The Black Commons, and those willing to support a Democrat presidential candidate in 2024, want new blood and a campaign they can connect with emotionally. A pall of "Biden fatigue" cast over the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign is palpable. The combination of Biden as a dated political quantity with low approval ratings, and his inability to generate enthusiasm among the Black Commons spells trouble in 2024.
If the Black Commons is going down with Biden's sinking ship, they cannot do so without a serious and principled fight. Token resistance in this instance is acquiescence. Nor should the Black Commons risk staining its time-honored reputation as a moral tour de force in a wayward nation by supporting Biden if dirt is under his fingernails. Moral rectitude like moral hazard matters. There is simply too much as stake.
New Black Nationalists want to be clear: We don't support any existing political party. We don't view elections as a vehicle to achieve social equality or liberation for the Black Commons. Nor do we have an interest in preserving American Empire's corporately managed democracy. As the January 6 Capitol Coup signaled, American Empire's government, vital institutions, and political system is not sustainable on its current trajectory.
We are encouraging the Black Commons and Black Democrats to draft an alternative national ticket that can win in 2024 presidential race for one reason. Any victorious Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race--whether it's Trump or not--will be bound by the GOP's commitment to install an authoritarian white-nationalist regime.
The MAGA-Verse, the Republican Party's sedition caucus, and white nationalist militias have made it abundantly clear by its participation in and subsequent support of the January 6 Capital Coup that it's willing to pursue any means to recapture the Oval Office. Since January 6, the MAGA-Verse regime change project has accelerated its efforts to orchestrate a stolen national election and pre-position a rigged Supreme Court decision [Moore v Harper] that could award a contested presidential election to the
GOP. They continue to foment coup plots, agitate for civil war, and probe avenues to pursue secession schemes by jumping into the debate on National Divorce.
A Republican presidential victory in 2024, will empower Trump-inspired forces to begin imposing a variant of white nationalist American Apartheid on the country and the Black Commons. Republican Party control over the U.S. military, deep state intelligence services, the FBI, and Homeland Security Department, and emergency presidential powers constitutes an existential threat the Black Commons must resist at all costs.
Barring the Oval Office door to Republicans is a critical strategic objective that must be undertaken not to save America, the Democrats, or corporately managed democracy. It must be done to prevent the Black Commons from succumbing to the tyranny and white nationalist authoritarian rule. The January 6 Select Committee Report on the attack on the U.S. Capitol only scratches the surface of the Trump-directed effort to overthrow the government and impose American Apartheid.
The Black Commons and Black Democrats who are clear that the Biden-Harris 2024 national ticket must be abandoned have a consequential decision to make. What two candidates can be drafted to run in 2024, as a national ticket with the best prospects to win? What battleground states are in play and what is the electoral college arithmetic that opens a path to victory?
New Black Nationalists' have recommended an alternative draft effort in 2024 to encourage former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan to run for president and Rep. Nannette Diaz Barragan to join Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate. We also mapped the outlines of a 270 electoral college vote strategy for victory. NBN's argument matched demographics, issues, geography, and cultural considerations with a gender balanced ticket between a perceived moderate (Tim Ryan) and a self-identified progressive (Nanette Diaz Barragán--recently named Chair of the Legislative Hispanic Caucus). The analysis attempts to optimize Democrats strategic advantages across four discreet areas of opportunity.
An obvious criticism--at least from a Black perspective--may be that our recommendation does not include a Black presidential or vice-presidential candidate. We get that. Our reasoning and methods on these questions is explained in the call. The point, however, is that the Black Commons have the voting power to name the best consensus national ticket they can forge. NBN would be more than happy to see suggestions for a different national ticket and weigh the arguments of their potential for success.
That said, we must confess we don't foresee any circumstances whereby Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg can light a fire among Black primary voters. California Governor Gavin Newsome would be well received on the Black Street. In a one-on-one primary against Biden, Newsome could win. However, savvy Black voters would instinctively discern that Newsome sounds, feels, and looks too much like a wine and cheese Hollywood left-coast liberal. They know that would be a tough sell among independents and gritty Midwest battleground state voters in a general election.
Unless the Black Commons are willing to get behind Georgia Senator Rafael Warnock or Eric Holder, New Black Nationalists can only envision one other viable option: "BIG Gretch." Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is an imaginative leader with lots of swag, policy-chops, serious economic develop accomplishments, a marquis abortion rights state referendum victory in 2022, and a national following among women. She was driving force in flipping Michigan's state legislature blue in 2022. To cap off that muscular resume, Go Big or Go Home Whitmer has something no other potential Democrat presidential candidate has: her own serious rap song. "BIG Gretch"
is a catchy riff dropped straight outta Detroit, by artist CmacCash during the 2022 governor's race. Embraced by Whitmer, BIG Gretch became part of the cultural furniture symbolic of the edgy leaning forward of Whitmer's campaign.
In many ways, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a similar political profile as Tim Ryan in the Midwest battleground region. Both are hard-hitting, down to earth, can-do politicians who don't radiate arrogance and elitism. With Whitmer as the presidential nominee the logic and calculus of the NBN's strategic assessment centered on the Midwest as the critical battleground region and unleashing a new wave of Hispanic voters' wave in the second-tier swing states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Texas and Georgia would remain the same.
With Gretchen Whitmer as the Democrat's nominee, New Black Nationalists would recommend Xavier Bercerra as her running mate for vice-president. Xavier Becerra, is the current Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, appointed by Biden in 2021. Like Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan who NBN recommended as Tim Ryan's running mate, Becerra has strong roots in Mexico. His mother was born in Mexico, and his father grew up in Tiajuana. Bacerra can give voice to the struggle of Hispanic immigrants and experience of navigating the border as an idea, a boundary and integral part of the culture of millions of Hispanics. A Stanford educated lawyer by training, Bacerra replaced Kamala Harris as California's Attorney General in 2017. Having spent 25 years in the Congress, Becerra would an invaluable asset to Whitmer to navigate the political hornet's nest on Capitol Hill. Photogenic and a smooth talker, Becerra's calm demeaner belies his reputation for toughness as a negotiator and facilitator of political deals. NBN
Of all the possible replacements for Biden in 2024, it is Gretchen Whitmer that is most feared by Republicans and hard-right conservatives. On November 11, 2022, when the Ragin Cajin Democrat strategist James Carville told MSNBC's Joy Reid that "Whitmer would be a very serious presidential candidate in 2024,' alarms, tweet storms, blog posts and a blizzard of email and social media chatter spread in all quarters of the MAGA-Verse.
How the Black Commons react to this political crisis and opportunity will have far-reaching ramifications. New Black Nationalists believe the Black Commons is well-schooled in the arts of advanced democracy and will meet the moment.
It must be said that if Democrats manage to hold the White House in 2024, Trump, the MAGA-Verse, Republican Party insurrectionists, and white nationalists' militias will continue to press the agenda for American Apartheid regime change. What a Democrat presidential win gives the Black Commons is breathing room to craft a grand strategy that responds to American Empire's impending collapse in the 2020s.
The Trump-inspired regime change project made landfall in 2016, when he won the White House. After Charlottesville, Trump's sedition coalition burned their ships in the harbor, and proceeded to march inland contemplating no possibility of turning back. There is no middle ground. America is being propelled to the precipice of an existential crisis--one so profound that it may also produce the unthinkable--an implosion that also creates the possibility to launch a new Black nation state.
The 2024 presidential race will decisively shape the political battlespace we must negotiate. We urge the Black Commons and Black Democrats to weigh its options wisely
