Top Cop’s New Challenge and the Musky Smell of Decline
Biden’s Black Voter Problem; Can Harris Help; and Elon’s Fall From Space
We crept closer to The End this week, with Republicans sabotaging their own border bill as an act of fealty to Trump; military aid to Ukraine and Israel drying up; Nevada holding a presidential primary that doesn’t count; Apple pushing pricey VR goggles that nobody needs; and a federal appeals court ruling presidents that aren’t immune from all criminal liability (quashing a ridiculous claim that could only come from Trump’s power-addled brain).
But amid our national mass psychosis, there are still some solo actors that could have a big impact on our path forward. Last week, we met a couple of the good ones. This week, I look at how one the richest men in the world keeps wrecking everything he touches. And I explore whether the top-cop-turned-vice-president has what it takes to help keep young people of color from returning the Orange Menace to power.
Biden’s Black Voter Problem: Of all the challenges to reelection facing President Biden — his age, an angry electorate, wars he backed not going well — one of the most frustrating is his declining support among young, Black and Latino voters. Some polls show 22% of Black voters in battleground states supporting Trump, the highest for a Republican since before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the racial realignment of the two parties.
Black voters in South Carolina and elsewhere were what propelled Biden to the Democratic nomination four year ago, elevating him over candidates who I and other progressives preferred. So it’s frustrating to read and listen to media coverage of Black voters ditching Biden, blaming him for life seeming bleak right now.
Some of this narrative got dispelled after Biden’s big primary win in South Carolina on Saturday, where Black turnout was high (for an otherwise very low turnout election) and overwhelmingly for Biden. But the fact still remains that Biden’s campaign can’t count on either Black or Hispanic voters the way the Democratic Party is used to.
Some of that is unsurprising. Too many Democratic Party leaders and pundits have long-predicted an "Emerging Democratic Majority” based simply on the steadily declining proportion of white voters in the American electorate. They even have a simplistic phrase of it: “demography is destiny.”
But analysts such as Yascha Mounk (who I wrote about a few weeks ago) reject this misguided hope, arguing in The Great Experiment that voters of color won’t simply vote Democratic out of default. We’re already seeing the signs. The party and its leaders must find a way to connect with Black, Latino and young voters of every new generation.
Which is why I’ve been thinking a lot about Vice President Kamala Harris recently. Now, I know that it’s reductionist to think the nation’s first Black, first Asian and first female vice president could and should help the Biden administration win over young voters of color. Maybe that’s why The New York Times The Daily podcast never once mentioned Harris during its Friday episode about Biden losing Black voters — although that did seem like a weird omission. The next day, the Times made up for it with a long story, “Kamala Harris Bolsters Biden in 2024 and Lays Groundwork for 2028.”
It was a typical horse-race politics story that I think missed the main point: why the Biden-Harris ticket is doing so badly with Black voters, and what Harris should be doing about it. Because she’s clearly doing something wrong if a racist like Trump win an unprecedented share of the Black vote.
Here’s what I think Harris should be saying on the stump, particularly to crowds of Black voters:
I understand many of you think Biden is too old, even though he’s only a few years older than Trump. But here’s the difference between these two old men: Biden hires good, smart people he trusts to help run the country, unlike Trump, a megalomaniacal dotard who thinks he knows best and rejects expert advice. So even if Biden has some senior moments, the country will still be in good hands. And if you’re worried about Biden dying or becoming incapacitated, then guess what? You get another Black president! And I can guarantee you that I will work hard to make you proud and more broadly share this country’s prosperity.
Can Kamala Help? Discussing what Harris should do raises the key question: Is she up to this challenge? Frankly, I don’t know. She wasn’t my choice when she was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, when I helped cover the race as city editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. But then I found new respect for her when she kept her campaign promise not to seek the death penalty, even after a cop got murdered and she was savaged by the San Francisco Police Officers Association. She showed integrity and toughness.
From there, Harris was elected attorney general of California, our “top cop,” which is where her problems with some Black voters really began. I talked to a friend who have long been active in Democratic Party politics and knows Harris very well — and he said this year will be a major test of her political skills and viability.
He cited polling data showing Black voters over age 50 are positive about Harris, but those under 50, not so much, particularly men. They know Harris mostly as California’s top cop and they generally don’t like cops. Combine that with the general political pessimism of young voters and it’s clear Harris has a steep hill to climb.
I supported Harris’ election to represent California in the U.S. Senate and thought she did a great job questioning Trump appointees on the Judiciary Committee. But then I was disappointed when she quickly left the Senate to run for president and ran a terrible campaign. So I’m still waiting to see if Harris is up for the job.
My consultant friend’s advice to Harris is to just let it rip and stop being so cautious. He compared Harris to Al Gore and said both politicians could be too nervous and fearful to just speak their minds in a full-throated way. He also said that Harris and the Biden campaign have been diligently working behind the scenes to shore up support from Black and Latino voters.
Can Harris find her voice, get on her political game, and help her ticket win a decisive victory? Or will she go down in political history as an Icarus-like figure, who got too big for her britches and flew too close to the sun? We’ll see.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…no, it’s Elon Fucking Musk: I saw Starlink before I ever heard of it. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, I was bikepacking through New Zealand with two buddies, spending the night in a remote cabin in the wilderness under the darkest of skies. I’d never seen so many stars.
We noticed a shooting star, or perhaps a satellite. Look! Then another, and another, a whole string of them moving in an unnervingly unnatural straight line at steady intervals. What the hell is that?!?! An alien invasion? No, we soon learned from some online research — it’s Elon fucking Musk and his latest assault on our senses.
Now, I understand the appeal of a globalized Internet connection that works in the most remote places. You can tweet (or X-crete or whatever they’re called now) from the middle of nowhere. Or in Ukraine’s case, coordinate counteroffensives against an invading global superpower. And at Burning Man last year, waiting out the rainstorm in our RV, I appreciated reading the news coverage of the epic disaster I didn’t realize was supposedly unfolding around me (in reality, we were far from cannibalism or Lord of the Flies).
But my visceral aversion to Space X marring the clear night sky, and my intuitive opposition to increasing space junk, have only grown since then. The New York Times Magazine’s Space Issue in November catalogued the cosmic cacophony: “Starlink has launched about 5,000 sofa-sized satellites, adding more nearly every week,” it reported, noting they already make up more than half of active satellites and that Musk plans to have as many as 42,000 of these things.
Low Earth Orbit is getting so cluttered with commercial debris that there’s real risk of collisions that would catastrophically spread fast-moving debris and wreck basic satellite communications for generations (as cinematically illustrated by Gravity).
No wonder Musk wants to flee to Mars — it’s just too bad he’s being allowed to play an outsized role in fucking things up here on Earth first.
Because, over the last year, Musk has been on a mission to prove rich people aren’t smarter than the rest of us. He fucked up Twitter but still enables and gobbles up its right-wing troll-bait like a lonely rural teenager, seemingly happy to return to his racist Afrikaner roots. His prideful boasts and insider manipulations have been tanking Tesla’s stock. Bragging about his drug use and encouraging board members to join him are now raising governance concerns on Wall Street and at the White House. And now Musk is playing God by embedding chips in human brains. What could possibly go wrong?
The only saving grace to this shit-show is we all get to watch just how far Musk, who just recently lost the title of the world’s richest man, can sink. It’s almost as good, in that perverse schadenfreude way, as the Trump Show. Pass the popcorn.
Unfortunately there is nothing currently in existence to connect younger Black/Latino voters to the Democratic Party. Neoliberal economics as promoted by the adherents of both political parties has seen to that.