Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama at the White House, April 5, 2022 (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
Having a new Black SCOTUS justice or bringing Barack Obama out of retirement for a photo opportunity won't raise Joe Biden's poll numbers or stave off defeat in the mid-term elections. Only fulfilling campaign promises and giving the people what they need will help Biden and the democrats.
The Black political class and the democratic party are once again infantilizing Black voters instead of giving them what they need and want. They pass useless legislation and stage political performances because they have lost the trust of the people. Biden’s poll numbers continue to drop. He now has a lackluster 40 percent approval rating for the simple reason that he hasn’t done what he promised during his 2020 presidential campaign.
Biden said he would provide student loan debt relief, raise the minimum wage, and improve the government response to the covid crisis. His friends in corporate media covered for him by claiming that stimulus and child tax credit payments would “cut child poverty in half.” That claim was never true and now that tax credit is gone along with the much touted Build Back Better legislation. Not only does covid continue to kill, with 1 million dead in the past two years, but the millions of Americans who are uninsured no longer have free treatment, testing, or vaccinations.
The Black political class have so little to show for their efforts that they now resort to passing legislation so meaningless that it insults the collective intelligence of Black people. One example is the passage of the Emmett Till Anti Lynching bill. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation when the public murder of Black people was a common occurrence. But now the lynchers are not local white citizens councils and Ku Klux Klan members. It is the police who kill an average of three people every day, and one of those persons will be Black.
Despite this continuing bloodshed committed against their constituents, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has never even attempted to pass legislation which would protect the public from summary police execution. There is plenty of kente cloth and posturing but the CBC go along with Biden’s plan to add $30 billion in funding to states and localities to hire more police, the people who actually commit lynch law in this country.
When they aren’t virtue signaling about lynching, Black politicians are passing legislation about hairstyles. The legislation, Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN Act) would prohibit discrimination against people with natural hair. The House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act but it faces what is called an uncertain future in the Senate. That means it probably won’t be taken up at all.
No Black person is in favor of hair based discrimination, but there are far more important issues that need to be addressed. The democrats are rightfully worried about the November 2022 mid-term elections and are in danger of losing control of the House. Their response is what one would expect from a faux leftish party.
They bring out their faux leftish former president, Barack Obama. Obama appeared at the white house to celebrate the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. Obamacare enshrined corporate control over health care and gave people the right to purchase insurance which is too expensive. Medicaid expansion was the most important aspect of Obamacare but it was never accepted by most of the southern states, the region with the largest Black population.
Pulling out the Barack Obama card didn’t help Hillary Clinton secure votes where she needed them in 2016. Similarly, his presence is unlikely to help Biden in 2022. Biden and the democrats are hamstrung by their reliance on the oligarchic class, the people he promised, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” They won’t allow Build Back Better or student loan debt relief or universal health care and so the people go without what they need the most. Thus the CROWN Act is born.
The problem for Biden and the democrats is that the entire political system is in disrepute. They post on Twitter about expensive health care and give the impression they will actually do something about this crisis. But they can’t fool all the people all the time. Inflation is eating away at the well being of millions of people. The party in power takes a hit when times are hard. Ridiculous propaganda about “Putin’s price hike” won’t get the votes they need.
Senator Cory Booker may wax elegiac about the CROWN Act, or move Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson to tears with maudlin oratory, but those performances won’t move the needle as much as democrats hope. Booker and his colleagues are joined at the hip with Biden and none of them even go through the motions of asking a hard question.
Ultimately the people are the losers, getting none of what they need while being fed very obvious propaganda. It is true that nothing has fundamentally changed. Black voters know it and they will not fall for the charade on Election Day.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via email at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
This week’s featured author is Lorgia García Peña. Peña is Professor of Latinx Studies at Tufts University. Her book is Translating Blackness: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective.
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