The Democrats' Great Gamble

After the South Carolina primary results came in, Joe Biden was back, we were told.  He beat Bernie Sanders by a wide -- and unpredicted -- margin, thanks to the black voters who turned out to support him.

But at what price?

Did former Vice President Joe Biden make a promise that he'll either break, or rue keeping?

Did Biden promise powerful black politicians that he would select Stacey Adams of Georgia as his running mate?  If so, what will come of that?  Will he honor his word, and put the untested black woman a heartbeat away from the presidency... with voter support?

Or... if Ms. Abrams polls poorly, and would be more a liability to the ticket overall than say a Biden-Klobuchar or a Biden-Buttigieg team, does he tell his black supporters to wait... it's just not time yet to have a black woman so close to the ultimate pinnacle of American power?

I do think promises were made to the black community leaders before the South Carolina vote.  I do think, they delivered for him there.  I don't think a Biden-Abrams ticket would be successful nationally, not because of her skin color but because of her lack of experience and notoriety

Vice President Joe Biden, fresh off his win in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, received a standing ovation during remarks at the historic Brown A.M.E. Church.
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Former candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, gave the keynote address at Brown.
Abrams spoke about Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race, which she lost narrowly after raising concerns about voter purges, rejected ballots and other problems she said amounted to voter suppression. She also noted that she had engaged more Democratic voters that previous statewide candidates after visiting each of Georgia’s counties during her campaign.

“I say we won, not that I won,” she said. “Because we won by proving that identity matters; if we can be seen, we can be served. We won by speaking up and declaring with a single voice in the state of Georgia that we weren’t going to be ignored anymore.”
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Throughout the day, Abrams was repeatedly mentioned as a possible running mate for one of the candidates this year if not a candidate herself in 2024.

“I’m talking about Stacey, not you, Joe,” the Rev. Al Sharpton joked after bringing a greeting during his speech at Brown “to our VP.”

Remember who spoke up first in the Obama administration saying of course national political leaders supported ending civil marriage discrimination and the Don't Ask Don't Tell policies that benefitted heterosexuals (and homosexuals who denied their natural inclinations and orientations to advance their careers and build "straight" families)?  Yep, it was Joe Biden.  Not out of any sense of honor necessarily, he just slipped up and it came out...

During an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, as host David Gregory quizzed Biden on the subject, the Vice President made some news:

GREGORY: You’re comfortable with same-sex marriage now?
BIDEN: Look, I am Vice President of the United States of America. The President sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.

Some people—like Igor Volsky, of ThinkProgress, a blog run by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank with ties to the Administration—are interpreting this as an official endorsement of gay marriage. That is, as Andrew Sullivan argued, almost certainly not the case. Indeed, the White House was quick to walk back Biden’s remarks:

The vice president was saying what the president has said previously—that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to rollback those rights. That’s why we stopped defending the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in legal challenges and support legislation to repeal it. Beyond that, the Vice President was expressing that he too is evolving on the issue, after meeting so many committed couples and families in this country.

This doesn’t even appear to have been a trial balloon; if it was, the White House wouldn’t have shot it down so quickly. It looks like just another case of Biden sticking his foot in his mouth.

 I don't think Joe Biden is in control of his campaign at this time so much as national Democratic party leaders, who have been putting in the overtime in recent days to sell recent candidates on a unity platform -- the coordinated drop-outs before Super Tuesday, reducing voter choices as the once diverse field of candidates dwindles down to Bermie Sanders and the acceptable establishment pick... where it appears the party this past weekend settled on Biden.

Where does that leave Stacey Abrams and the black voters who are needed nationally in big numbers  to defeat President Trump at the ballot box in November?  I think Joe Biden will honor his promises, and take a risk with an African-American woman as his partner this fall. 

Win or lose, I think American blacks, like American gays, are not going to be content to be told to wait just a few more years until it is their time.  Once individuals understand the power of their voice, they are much less likely to be content being viewed as a monolithic base...

The opposite of monolithic is of course polylithic. These terms are used with megalithic architecture and structures. Rather than referring to something composed of a single stone, it is something composed of several or even of many stones.

Out of many stones, something bigger is built.  Americans know that instinctually; it is in our shared roots, our national motto:   E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one).

What remains to be seen is whether Donald Trump's administration, or the ever-evolving new Democratic party, represents the needs of the country now and reflects not a gambler's penchant for picking a horse, but a reasoned appreciation of how people work together... and why.  Generally, this involves not only winning at the top, but a shared acknowledgement that without all those stones coming together, there is no solid foundation remaining to support American society.