The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
August 17, 2020

Senator Kamala Harris

There are more than 122 black women running for U.S. Congress in the 2020 elections, thanks to the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Watching AMJOY on Sunday morning, August 2, 2020,  I felt the bliss of ecstasy to learn that 122 black women are vying for U.S. Congress in the 2020 elections. This is a momentous event in American history, especially African-American history ever since 1619.  The event seems to speak to the late John Lewis’s farewell message: “Together, We Can Redeem the Soul of Our Country” (the New York Times), and to the preamble of the constitution… “In order to form a more perfect Union”   and to Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech … “That my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of the character.” In addition to this epic story, the Democratic vice presidential selection has become the most significant political story of the 2020 Democratic campaign because of the number of black women on the final list for consideration.  This has given black women politicians greater attention than ever before.  The selection of Kamala Harris has changed the 2020 electoral calculus and dynamics and electrified black women, the bedrock of the Democratic Party voting base.  

After nearly four years of colossal Presidential failure (predicated on xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and wallowing in the swamp of corruption) and a gargantuan failure in handling COVID-19, the worst pandemic since 1918’s Spanish Influenza (H1N1 virus), the 2020 Congressional and Presidential elections are destined to be the most crucial in U.S. history.  After the fall of Richard Nixon in 1974, the Republican Party was relegated to a political Siberia by the electorate. It seems that the fall of Donald Trump is likely to repeat history.  

Four years after the fall of Richard Nixon, the Newt Gingrich Revolution came and Congressional politics experienced a seismic change.  Prior to the Gingrich Revolution, “civil debate and compromise” had been the core and bedrock of  Congressional politics.  After the Gingrich Revolution, Congressional politics became acerbic, vitriolic, tribal, and uncompromising.  Thus, Congress became an institution of dystopia.  The Gingrich Revolution is rooted in a speech he delivered to young Republicans in 1978: “One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics” (The Atlantic). 

The election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States in 2008 amid the global recession, gave birth to a new 21st-century populist political movement (Tea Party) in the United States. On the morning of February 9, 2009, Rick Santelli on CNBC accused the government of “promoting bad behavior” with the subsidized housing program of $75 billion proposed by the Obama administration (Mother Jones).  His fury birthed the Tea Party Movement.  The Tea Party hijacked the Republican Party in 2010.  In the 2010 mid-elections, 87 Republican members who declared themselves Tea Party advocates came to Congress, threw out the first female House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and brought Barack Obama’s presidency to a near halt (The Atlantic).   Congress became more dystopic than ever.  The Gingrich Revolution, the Great 2007 – 2008 Recession, anti-establishment and anti-intellectual sentiment, and above all racism regarding the election of a black president brought Donald Trump to power. 
 
Donald J. Trump became President of the United States with the help of Russia and the mechanism of the Electoral College. His election shocked the American consciousness and the world.  His excessive mendacity, nihilistic delusion, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, his cerebral incapacity to accept facts, and above all his contempt for presidential norms have awakened another populist political movement that began with the Women’s March on Washington and around the country on July 21, 2017, one day after Trump’s inauguration.  

The 2018 (Year of The Women) midterm elections brought 117 women (89 Democrats and 13 Republicans) to Congress, the most in U.S. history. Among these 117 women, 20 blacks were elected for the first time (VOX).  The Blue Wave, as the 2018 midterm elections were called, validated the new women’s movement and rebuked Donald Trump’s outlandish behavior as President.  The convergence of the Year of The Women and the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality against black people is set to trigger a tectonic political paradigm shift in the 2020 Congressional and presidential elections, especially in the state legislative and gubernatorial elections.   

The 2020 election is poised to be a watershed moment in U.S. history.  There are 122 black women running for Congress (a historic record).  The confluence of COVID-19, the killing of George Floyd that had inspired a movement of unprecedented proportions, and the second Great Economic Meltdown present the perfect storm for a new Congress and a new President to bring sanity, decorum, and normalcy to the U.S.  It will be even more historic if 40 percent of the 122 black women running for Congress are elected.  With this number of progressives and people of color running for Congress, social justice and Obama’s legacy will be restored and the American position as leader of the free world will once again be respected.  

For this noble cause to materialize, Blacks and Hispanics must turn out in large numbers to vote, more so than during Obama's first election.  This is the greatest opportunity since the 1965 Great Civil Rights March, and the opportunity must be seized.  African immigrants should join their African-American brothers and sisters in getting out the vote. They should seek out candidates in their states (in Ohio, Ms. Desiree Tims, 10th District), support them financially, and VOTE.  

---

About The Autho: J. Patrick Flomo can be reached at zamawood@gmail.com and (614) 707 3636

---