Political action is my lane, and sometimes a strong message can be a wrong message. Before deciding to leave the Democrat Party en masse, do we have a plan about how to exercise political power in an alternative way? Have we thought through the consequences of what short-term smugness will bring? If one of the consequences is that we've made Republicans happy, then we need to re-think that plan, STAT. If my marriage isn't going well, do I want to play the game of "shaking things up," or do I want to put in the effort to make things work? We don't want a vengeful "shake up" to become a permanent "break up."
We already know what happens when black people stay home. We stayed home in 2016, and the result was Donald Trump. Yep, we sent a strong message to the Democrats. The message was "I'm so short-sighted that I'll let Republicans win rather than get off my butt." (I don't care who's offended.) After complaining for four years about how horrible the Republicans are (and we already knew that from how they treated Barack Obama) we don't need to give them more help. Frankly, people who say "I'm not really political," or who will only bother to vote if a black candidate is on the ballot are not going to be the same people who unregister and re-register in time for primaries. Easy to do? If it were that easy, then maybe more of us would be registered in the first place. Warning: Republicans have only been making it harder. We need to expend our efforts on what's real, not on what's symbolic.
Do you want Democrats to respond to the concerns of the black community? The first thing we have to do is to show that we support Democrats. Then, we have to understand that there will be few times when Democrats will propose legislation that is based solely for the benefit of black Americans. The path to getting our needs met lies in pushing legislation in a more progressive direction. The Congress needs to be less responsive to corporate interests and more responsive to the interests of "regular people." That will only happen if we get them elected in the first place.
