If you want someone better than Joe next time, listen to Black people.

While the fat lady hasn’t sung in this election, I can hear her clearing her throat. — Katie Couric

Katie recited those lines moments before Barack Obama was named 44th president of the United States. I was involved with his campaign in Ohio, and it was my second time voting in a presidential election. The first was Bush/Kerry (with the memory of Bush/Gore) and I was still bitter, seething at the result. So I tried to channel that energy into something useful and I did. I remember being in bed and then jumping out of it to throw on the lights as I stood inches in front of that TV as the votes were called, that moment is seared in my memory.

Katie’s words might be useful for the 2020 election at this point. Here we are sliding sideways into home base, bruised, bloodied, exhausted, and with our face mask on, at the end of what has been the most challenging year for so many of us and in many of our lifetimes. While the ink hasn’t dried on the election (at the time of this writing), I am hopeful that Biden will pull out a victory. It is a bittersweet moment because for so many of us progressive folks (especially Black/Brown) Biden was not our dream candidate. We want and need much more from our politicians, we need for them to stop sliding to the right to court voters who will never come. Instead, we want them to focus on the base of the party and courting new generations of coalitions that believe in the potential of true democracy, with justice for all.

If elected, we will celebrate this win and our hopeful halting of the U.S. march toward fascism. Then immediately on January 20th, 2021 we will start taking the Biden/Harris administration to task for doing the real work for our communities, while we continue to organize. The backlash (whitelash) of this result will be swift, and we will need to be resolute but I am hopeful, even if naively.

The point of this writing though is to trace how did we even get to a potential Biden presidency? In the early part of the primary, Biden was lackluster to put it gently and we all rolled our eyes collectively every time he mentioned “Obama”…. we get it. Yall are friends. But I think our journey here is important to understand because it will better situate what our organizing might mean moving forward.

First, a caveat: There was not (is not) a lack of enthusiasm for many people to try and vote Trump out of office. We are in the middle of a pandemic, civil unrest, and highly contentious political battles across the board. So that is not surprising or lost on me, and, I’d like to offer to you that there were some folks who understood the urgency long before any of this and before everyone else: Black people. Specifically Black elders in the south.

Going back to the primary it is easy to trace the precise moment of many candidates undoing by the South Carolina primary. Before that, we were all really thinking “Joe, who?”, but that moment, in all essence, sealed the deal. To be clear, there are absolutely valid criticisms of the primary process (as a current resident of Iowa, I’m not sure we should ever go first again honestly) but that’s another essay. The point is, the Black delegation of South Carolina dealt Biden a swift victory and the rest, as they say, is history (yeah there’s more to the story but you get my point).

But let’s consider the why of it all. First, Black folks in the south remember Obama and specifically, think fondly of the Obama/Biden ticket. Secondly, many of them identify as the Obama/Biden coalition. Thirdly, they remember the safety and peace of that coalition in their experience and view. Further, as subsequent primaries progressed many Black folks (especially loyalists to the Obama/Biden coalition) struggled with the simultaneous slander of the “democratic establishment” while also courting *their* votes (think back… ah-ha it makes sense now why HRC and Biden ultimately won those nominations consecutively). You can’t have it both ways, Dems.

But more than that, Black folks (especially senior ones) actually lived through Jim-Crow, or have that inter/generational history and memory in their literal DNA (any Black person in touch with their Blackness also has it). Take this together with experiencing a Trump presidency in action, survival mode(but more specifically harm reduction mode)was activated. It would be irresponsible to think that those Black folks or any of us didn't have other candidates that we enjoyed, rooted for, and ultimately really wanted to vote for. Unfortunately, the central question becomes, can they win? And what are the consequences if they don’t? Whatever they are, they are always worse, for us, for Black people. Black southerners made a decision that we had no choice but to get behind, in my view.

In recent days we’ve heard about strongholds in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, having the potential to deliver states, and ultimately electoral votes for Biden. So then let it not be lost on you how we are trying to complete the work that we started. Sure it took many people of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalition to get this done*and* there is no disputing that Black people are the backbone of the democratic party based on consistent voting histories. Yet, we still must endure narratives that situate any small centering of our voices, needs, visions, or labor as inherently divisive, as inherently problematic to the party.

It was a hard pill to swallow to vote for this ticket personally, but I recognized the alternative like so many of us do/did and voted for harm reduction. Moving forward if we want more radical and progressive candidates and platforms and for those folks to actually matriculate to a national stage we cannot start by alienating the base or deluding ourselves into thinking a democratic ticket could ever win without Black folks on board. The Democratic party must show that they can win and that they actually care what happens to Black folks if/when they don’t. They have to be able to say what they will do specifically to help us, and then respect who we do or do not throw our support behind (because ultimately we know we can only really count on ourselves). Nancy Pelosi said she had arrows in her quiver but Stacey Abrams is the one looking like Katniss Everdeen.

No, Blackness is not a monolith, but Black Americans specifically have a similar racial experience that shapes our political views but more strongly inform our political strategies. Let’s invest in Black communities, in Black schools, in eradicating voter suppression, in justice-oriented law and policy that helps us get free; and do it quickly. If in the face of so much adversity, racism, and white supremacy, suppression, and intimidation at the ballot box if Black folks are still able to deliver in the ways we have in this election…imagine what more we can deliver for ourselves and for this country.

And don’t you ever forget that we have always already delivered for this country, and owe it nothing. We only owe it to ourselves to survive it and maybe one day, thrive in it.