“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
Buckle up, folks. We’re in for a bumpy ride.
Election Day is over, so I want to answer six big questions. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? What could we have done differently? What does this mean for the future? And what do we do next? So, here we go.
Question 1: What happened?
Donald Trump won the presidential race. Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate. And we don’t know the outcome in the House yet.
Question 2: How did it happen?
The early exit polls show Trump’s three strongest groups were white men (59%), Hispanic men (54%), and white women (52%). In Georgia, it was even worse. One exit poll said that 69% of white women voted for Trump. Even after he took away their reproductive rights and was found liable for sexual assault, the majority of white women voters still chose patriarchy over their own liberation.
On the other hand, Kamala Harris’s three strongest groups were Black women, Black men, and Latino women. The final numbers will change when more data comes in, but the problem is that Harris’s base (Black women, Black men, and Latino men) are only 18% of the electorate. But Trump’s base (white men, white women, and Hispanic men) made up 77% of the electorate.
As for the Senate, Democrats held a narrow majority and faced a brutal map trying to win in red states like West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, and Montana. That’s part of the reason Harris tried to stay away from controversies that might hurt the Senate candidates.
Question 3: Why did it happen?
This is a tricky question to answer before all the data is collected, so let me just say this.
Some people are blaming inflation and the economy for Trump’s success. I don’t buy that because Black voters are more negatively affected by inflation and the economy than white voters, and we voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris.
In fact, I don’t think it was about issues at all. If you look at policy alone, nearly all of Harris’s proposals got majority support, but only half of Trump’s did in a recent Washington Post survey. Missouri voters approved a measure to increase the minimum wage, which Harris supports, but still voted for Trump to be president. And the majority of Florida voters cast ballots to protect abortion and legalize marijuana, even though they didn’t reach the 60% threshold for a constitutional amendment.
Those are Democratic positions. Let’s be real. Trump doesn’t represent policy. He represents cultural resentment against a changing America. That’s what people voted for.
Question 4: What could Harris have done differently?
There’s going to be a lot of debate about campaign strategy, but it’s too early to draw definitive conclusions. Republican David Urban complained that Harris should have run a more centrist campaign. I disagree. I think she bent over backward to accommodate centrists and Republicans. On the other hand, critics on the left argue that she should have run a more progressive campaign to motivate the base, and that’s complicated, too, because doing so would definitely have cost Democrats the Senate in those tough red states.
But the truth is, I don’t know if any of that matters.
As a Black woman, Harris had little more than 100 days to introduce herself to the public and mount a presidential campaign against a powerful white man who is a former president bankrolled by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. In spite of those obstacles, she raised a billion dollars, drew huge crowds, and generated excitement in a race that was lifeless before she entered.
Trump did everything wrong in his campaign, and it didn’t matter to the majority of white voters. He got indicted four times, got convicted of 34 felonies, lost the debate to Kamala Harris decisively according to all the polls, couldn’t articulate any more than “concepts of a plan” for health care after 10 years of running for president, flip-flopped repeatedly on abortion, refused to answer a basic question about the minimum wage, simulated a lewd sex act on stage, refused to apologize for a speaker at his rally attacking Puerto Ricans and Latinos, joked about shooting the press, picked a running mate who called him “America’s Hitler,” and was outed by his own former chief of staff for saying “Hitler did some good things.”
Nothing mattered because it was never about issues. White America has been lecturing Black people about crime, morality, and patriotism for years, and then they vote for a convicted criminal, sex offender, and insurrectionist to be president.
No Black person or woman with Trump’s track record and two impeachments could ever be nominated, much less elected president. That’s why it’s not about policy. It’s about race and gender and the changing America. Donald Trump is the avatar of white supremacy. And the fact that a small but significant percentage of Black and Brown people were willing to excuse or embrace his racism, sexism, and xenophobia doesn’t disprove that. It just reflects how some of us have assimilated into the same white supremacist beliefs.
Question 5: What does this mean for the future?
First, he will be able to appoint a new attorney general who will fire Special Counsel Jack Smith and dismiss the criminal charges against Trump for the January 6 insurrection and stealing government documents.
Second, with a Republican Senate, Trump will be able to appoint several new Supreme Court justices, who will be young enough to give Republicans control of the Supreme Court for the next 20-25 years. That means if you wanted reparations, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, DEI, environmental protections, or any progressive policy, that won’t happen in your lifetime, no matter who succeeds Trump in office because the courts will strike it down.
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Third, Trump will be able to appoint vaccine denier RFK Jr. to head up women’s health and vaccines. He’ll cut taxes for billionaires, which is why rich people like Musk support him. And he may be able to begin his promised mass deportation of immigrants through executive authority, and impose tariffs on foreign goods that will cause inflation to spike.
He also promised to abolish the Department of Education, bring back stop-and-frisk policing, and give law enforcement immunity from prosecution, so be ready for that too.
Question 6: What do we do next?
Hakeem Jeffries will now become the leader of the opposition in Congress. And there is some good news in the results. Josh Stein defeated “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson in North Carolina. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks won Senate seats in Delaware and Maryland. Those two Black women in the U.S. Senate will give us new soldiers in the fight.
But what happens next is up to us. A lot of people are hurting right now, and many more will be hurt more in the years to come if Trump implements his policies. I recommend self-care. Do what you need to take care of yourself, and remember you are part of a broader community. We have to be there for each other in these trying times.
As I said in my final video before the election, this is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. And no matter what happens in the days to come, I am clear and certain that we are on the right side of history. Don’t give up. Live to fight another day.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
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