Biden’s exit would be a boon for black families

The inevitable push to put the current president out to pasture will be far more beneficial for black families in the long run than any of the accomplishments Joe Biden touted Thursday night on CNN’s debate stage.

Decades from now, children who have not been born yet will talk about the optics of the CNN Presidential Debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump the way people talk about the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. The former president was relaxed, energetic, and disciplined. The current president was barely audible and unable to complete some of his thoughts.

The black family will never be treated like a top priority until black men and women show as much commitment to one another as we do to Democrats.

At one point, the moderators asked Biden what he has done for black voters, and he rattled off a series of talking points on black unemployment, small businesses, and homeownership. Given his clear physical and cognitive limitations, appeals to his most loyal supporters will not be enough to save his 2024 campaign.

Much of the debate for progressives in the days and weeks ahead will surround who Democrats get to replace Joe Biden. It’s clear that the party is completely uninterested in having Vice President Kamala Harris lead the ticket. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been mentioned as a potential Biden replacement. The problem for Democrats is they can’t afford to alienate black women, who are their most loyal voter base and the “backbone” of the party. Picking Newsom over Harris would feel like an act of disloyalty to black women, but it might be exactly the move needed to break the stranglehold the left has had on the black community for decades.

The buzz on the right is that Trump will increase his support from black voters, especially men. If 2020 is any indication of what is to come in this election, we can expect every black politician, journalist, entertainer, and professor on the left to be out in full force trying to convince black men that a vote for Trump is an act of racial disloyalty. But that message will be much harder to sell if Democrats push aside the current vice president for California’s governor, who has the least favored set of identity intersections to modern progressives — namely straight, white, and male.

A Newsom nomination would create a rift between the party and the black women who power it. That’s a net positive in my mind, largely because it would create an opportunity to reiterate a very simple message: The loyalty black voters show Democrats should be reserved for the marital covenant, not for a political party. Sidelining Vice President Harris for anyone other than Michelle Obama would be taken as a slap in the face by the black women in the party. Perhaps that’s exactly what is needed to wake them up to the perils of liberal paternalism.

The breakdown of the black family since the mid-1960s has occurred alongside the growth of government and the symbiotic relationship between liberal politicians, government administrators, and poor single mothers, which has developed over the past six decades. Everyone in this iron triangle has something to gain from the arrangement. Politicians get power, the administrators of the poverty economy retain job security, and low-income women get financial support.

This dynamic has evolved since the 1960s as women have attained higher levels of education and greater financial independence. The left has adjusted by tweaking its patronage scheme to highlight influential appointments for black women, including Kamala Harris as vice president and Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first black woman to the Supreme Court.

Roughly 80% of black men voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but the left’s entanglement with black women in particular threatens a “marriage before carriage” movement. A woman cannot have two husbands at the same time, so “marrying” a political party is an act of bigamy that is guaranteed to complicate the relationship dynamics in any community. A man with traditional values wants to be seen as a potential husband and father, not a damsel in distress needing to be rescued by a woman and her favorite politician.

The black family will never be treated like a top priority until black men and women show as much commitment to one another as we do to Democrats.

The CNN debate was the evidence the left needed to move on from President Biden. Choosing Gavin Newsom to be the nominee would be devastating to the black women who are the party’s “backbone,” but it would be a small step to reestablishing order in the household. The government is an absent father and unfaithful spouse because it is not designed to be the man of the house for millions of American women and children. The black community will be in a much better place in three generations if we focus our political, financial, and cultural resources on rebuilding our families rather than being the workhorse for a political party.

Democrats want “Uncle Joe” off the ballot. I want “Uncle Sam” out of our homes.