I’m feeling good today. Like I never lost it. Didn’t slip and skid it away to age or retirement along the way. I could and probably should wait for accolades from others. But hell, I won’t. I was right when most of them were dead wrong. I know it and I said it. They, however, fell for the okeydoke and are now just scratching their heads, wondering what the hell just happened.
Like Clifford, the Big Red Dog, rather than the old Cincinnati Big Red Machine, the Big Red Wave was a figment of the mind cartoon, a wishful thinking mirage stoked by FOX and Friends and sold to a gullible audience. It was not political logic, it was pure wishful thinking and grandiose chicken-counting before the eggs were even in sight, let alone hard.
A critical thinker would have asked the questions, are there any real new factors to consider, and will the MAGA crew offer something real to compensate women, including Republican women, for the loss of freedom of choice?
Sen. Lindsey Graham was even publicly tossing around his intention of legislating a federal nationwide ban on abortion, for goodness sakes!! Some people should have been pulled away from the mirror before last Tuesday morning.
There was a major increase in the youth vote on and before last Tuesday. President Biden had earlier issued executive authorizations to substantially reduce student loan indebtedness, to eradicate federal charges, arrests and convictions for merely smoking weed, and he and the Democrats had tried mightily to change prevailing laws on gun sales in the country. All three were issues young Americans had fought for and sought for years.
No, President Biden’s efforts were not enough — the student debt issue has lost two major court fights so far — but he and the Democrats were trying to fulfill promises made.
Their efforts did not go unnoticed. Young folk got out and voted. They spoke through their ballots. The youth vote in 2022 was double that of 2016, and the Democrats received more than 50% of that vote, according to election authorities.
And why some Republicans were convinced (or simply just wishing mightily) that many, hopefully most, women, especially Republican women, had forgotten about or at least gotten over the Dobbs decision on abortion, is beyond the pale for most who still believe in logic, not political magic. No, they hadn’t and haven’t. They substantially voted their continuing discontent over that decision, sending many MAGA folk back to the pasture. Inflation was A problem, yes, but not Thee problem to most of them.
Karen Bass should end up winning the L.A. mayoralship, and Senator Warnock should be re-elected in Georgia. So says the logic of American politics. This is not trying to read the tea leaves or playing the super lotto. When one carefully lays out what is and is not possible, and lays out as many of the available facts as there are in a particular political situation, the correct and valid logical conclusion should follow.
Now if we could only get the accurate formulation together to lay out the valid political argument — if there is one to be made — toward getting authentic Black freedom and respect in the U.S., we’d really be doing something.
That sounds like the major public problem I and others interested in the topic, should be spending most of our time on. We must remember that while the universe is long-toothed, our presence in it is not.
Wakanda Forever !!!
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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