Democratic Strategist Ameshia Cross shares how Harris’ surge has energized the Democratic Party and what it means for the 2024 election season.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Black women are saving the day. Black women are coming in and saying like, hey, there is there's
00:04a fight here and we're going to get behind that. Black women are more than the backbone of the
00:07Democratic Party. They're the heart. They're the soul and the brainpower of the Democratic Party.
00:16I'm Essence Contributing News and Politics Editor Melissa Noel. And this afternoon,
00:20I'm joined by Amisha Cross, political commentator and Democratic strategist.
00:26Thanks so much for joining us, Amisha. We know there's so much to talk about with
00:30this surprise turn in the 2024 presidential election. So getting straight into things
00:36right here. This is a really historic moment with Biden, President Joe Biden,
00:41stepping aside. This is a rarity that we have not seen in recent politics.
00:45What do you think led to the decision, his sudden decision to drop out of the race
00:50after initially being so committed to seeing it through?
00:54I think that President Biden's strongest commitment is to democracy and to the United States.
01:00He has devoted 54 plus years of his life to engaging in politics, policy and diplomacy.
01:07He is a freedom fighter and he is someone who understood what's at stake.
01:11I think that he's someone who also chose a vice president who he knew could finish the job.
01:18The president has worked tirelessly for this country. And we know that in his first term,
01:22he was able to get more done than most presidents who served, too. He was able to get more done in
01:26the first term than any other president, with the exception of FDR, when he brought us back
01:31from the Great Depression. So I think that President Biden with a heavy heart decided
01:35that it was time to pass the torch. And that decision was not made lightly. It was not made
01:40easily. And it was one that was completely selfless. And I thank you for that and that
01:45insight there. So with Biden throwing his support behind, as you said, his vice president,
01:50who he knew we could finish the job and endorsing Kamala Harris. Do you think that this will unify
01:55the Democratic field or the Democratic Party, or will this ignite a major contest for the
02:00nomination within the party as they gear up for the Democratic National Convention?
02:04It's already serving as a major uniter. Vice President Harris raised over 50 million dollars
02:11in under four hours last night alone. We're seeing today that within that 24 hour period,
02:16she has totally busted fundraising goals and has made history with raising more than
02:22a presidential candidate in history in a 24 hour period. She's someone who has been able to not
02:27only align the party, all the names that were thrown out as potential contenders against her
02:32in a mini primary of sorts from Gavin Newsom to Governor Gretchen Whitmer to potentially J.P.
02:37Pritzker out of Illinois. All of the names who have been thrown out have all also endorsed her.
02:42Nancy Pelosi also also threw behind her her endorsement. We've seen time and again
02:47the PACs that matter. SEIU, the largest the largest organization in the country when it
02:53comes to union organizing, is behind her. We've seen the Latino Victory PAC. We've seen the AAPI
02:59community. We've seen the black community. I think that all of these things matter and we are very
03:04excited and the momentum is behind Vice President Harris. She's going into this process in the
03:10virtual roll call as well as the DNC with everyone really aligning around her. We're seeing
03:15the fundraising, but we're also seeing the Democratic voices from various states across
03:19the country, battlegrounds and not battlegrounds. We're seeing the former president, President
03:25Bill Clinton, as well as his wife, Hillary Clinton, a former senator, have also come out in
03:29support of Kamala Harris and her victory. So where she's on a mad rush to get the Democratic nomination
03:36and in a very short amount of time, we know that the DNC is just around the corner,
03:40it appears as though she will have everything that she needs pretty much locked up for the
03:44end of the week. Well, with the way things are going right now, we certainly see things continue
03:47to move. Speak to us a little bit about that, not only black women galvanizing, but knowing that
03:54black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party. Just how, again, black women are saving
03:59the day. Black women are coming in and saying like, hey, there's a fight here and we're
04:04going to get behind that. Speak to a little bit about black women's role in delivering and moving
04:09this through. Well, black women are more than the backbone of the Democratic Party. They're
04:13the heart. They're the soul and the brainpower of the Democratic Party. And I think that that has
04:17to be recognized. It has no more been seen than what we saw in a matter of organizing yesterday.
04:24And I can't underscore that enough because the moment that it hit Twitter, the moment that it
04:29hit social media, that the president was going to be stepping aside, that he was going to step
04:35aside and he had also thrown his support behind his vice president. Black women across the country
04:40united so quickly. It was like the Avengers coming together and states across this across this great
04:45land. And they decided, hey, we're going to do this call, but we're not only going to do a call,
04:49we're going to fundraise. It mattered because one of the essential points that many of us have
04:54watched over the past few weeks in how several members of the House, the Senate, as well as some
04:59of the money class decided that they no longer wanted Joe Biden. One of the first things that
05:03they did was reach to turn off the spigot for fundraising. So black women said, you know what,
05:08we're going to prove to Democratic elites and the fundraising community that we can not only
05:13prove truth to power and canvassing and advocacy, but we can also bring our dollars to the table.
05:17So they have it. They have amassed that level of support in record time. In addition to pulling
05:24together people across battleground states, going into community, there are people who had T-shirts
05:29printed with Harris on it today who are riding on the train. You see, they were ready today.
05:37I think that it really matters because we've seen them come out, be surrogates, be spokespeople.
05:41They rolled up their sleeves and they were ready immediately. As soon as you know, as quick as you
05:46can press send on a tweet, black women were organized and ready to get the ground, hit the
05:50ground running in protection of our democracy. I think they've watched the anti-DEI policies.
05:55They've watched the attacks on black scholarships. They've watched the anti-CRT, the book bans.
06:00They've watched the removal of black history from our classrooms. They've watched our communities
06:05be targeted and they are ready and willing to fight against that. They know the threat of
06:09Project 2025. They are out here telling people from urban centers to rural areas, what that
06:14actually means for them and what is at stake up to and including eradication of things like access
06:22to doctors, access to health care. And we already know what the maternal mortality rates look like
06:26for black women in particular. We know what it looks like when you don't have access to women's
06:30reproductive rights. Those are things that have helped to galvanize black women, but have also
06:35brought them together in terms of their advocacy potential. And I think they're working to put the
06:39Democratic Party on notice to say that we will not be forgotten. These are some of the same black
06:44women who, what is it, 1,400, 1,500 signed onto a letter just a few days ago, reiterating their
06:49support of a Biden-Harris ticket. And once Biden decided that he was going to pass the torch,
06:54they immediately aligned around a Harris ticket. We still don't know who that VP is going to be,
06:58but we do know what a black job is. And a black job was vice president and a black job in 2024
07:04is also going to be president. And I, on that point right there, you bring up a really important
07:08point, right? There has been a section of black men who have felt forgotten about by the Democratic
07:13Party and many who have, um, you know, pushed their allegiance behind a former president Trump.
07:19So speak to how this is also galvanizing black men, because we're seeing that not only excitement,
07:25but also that organizing taking place with them as well. I think that what we're going to see
07:30is black men aligning around a purpose, understanding that with a, uh, with a potential
07:35Trump presidency, not only what's at stake for them, what's at stake for their sons, what's at
07:39stake for their communities, when it comes to jobs, when it comes to protections, when it comes
07:44to not being seen as a villain in their own communities with police brutality up to, and
07:48including what we've heard from, uh, what we've heard from former president Trump, when it comes
07:52to, um, a lot of the advocacy in the streets, because he's against protests. We saw how he was
07:58fervently against the black lives matter protest. When the looting starts, the shooting starts,
08:02he still has not had any, um, any conversation or taking back up his words as it relates to
08:08those young, those young boys in New York, who he pushed to have actually received the
08:13death penalty when all of them have been exonerated. I think that what we really have
08:17to look at here is first and foremost, um, there are black men and boys and black men in particular
08:23across this country who feel as though our country and our democracy has always left them out.
08:27And when it comes to employment, when it comes to housing, when it comes to basically really
08:31having an experience of getting to that American dream, we talk about so much,
08:35right? Black men have every right to be upset. They are pushing to have policies and agenda
08:40items recognized by the democratic party that actually benefit them and their lives and their
08:45futures. That is something that I think has to be brought to the table and something they're
08:49willing to have a sit down conversation with Kamala Harris about. But on that same token,
08:53I pushed back against the idea or the notion that those black men who were frustrated with
08:58certain elements of the party, not necessarily moving forward in ways that they could physically
09:03see and feel in their lives. We're also jumping to Donald J. Trump. What we saw in recent polling
09:08was that over 70% of black people, the majority of those being black men, not only did not support
09:13Donald Trump, they did not support his vision for the future. The greater risk was that if
09:18these black men felt as though their voices were not heard and their policies not taken up,
09:22that they would have probably set this race out in general. And I think that that is something
09:26that we need to keep a focus on that black male voices matter in this movement. Black male voices
09:31matter in the drive towards policy change and equity and black male voices should be heard and
09:36should be, you know, elevated in shaping what policy looks like moving forward for the Democratic
09:40Party. And we absolutely cannot afford for anyone to sit this election out. So on that note, I have
09:46my final question here with this surprising turn of events in this election and the excitement that
09:53it has galvanized. We haven't seen excitement like this for quite a long time when it comes to
09:57elections. We have just about 15 weeks left until election day. How do you expect Biden's exit and
10:04now Harris's candidacy to affect Republican strategies going into debates and just kind of
10:12as we gear up to head towards election day? Well, Republicans had an RNC and we all watched
10:18it. It was supposed to be conciliatory and it turned out to be the same old mixed state we've
10:22seen time and time again. But all of their ads, all of their campaigns have been driven against
10:28towards targeting Joe Biden. That's millions of dollars in the hole against a candidate who is
10:33no longer in the race. So they're trying to reframe as we go along. They're building the plane as
10:38they're flying it to actually target Kamala Harris. I think that at this point they're very upset that
10:44J.D. Vance is their vice presidential pick and they can't change it because Kamala Harris is a
10:48different type of candidate. They can no longer lodge the two old comments that we saw surrounding
10:54Joe Biden. They can't talk about not being with it and things like that. She's a former prosecutor.
10:59She's a former U.S. Senator. She was a sitting vice president. She still was sitting vice
11:03president. She has such strong capabilities here. And with that being said, she also has the
11:09opportunity to choose a vice president who's also a uniter and someone who can bring together the
11:14battleground states that we all so desperately need for a Democratic candidate to actually win
11:19in November. But moreover, I think that what we're going to see from the Republicans is a
11:25rewind of sorts. We see Donald Trump already trying to run as far away as he can from things
11:30like Project 2025. We know that even at the RNC, he did not talk about abortion rights purposely
11:36because that is a spot that has been a losing battle for Republicans on the campaign trail
11:40for quite some time, even though we know that they have plans to eradicate women's reproductive
11:44rights. I also think that what we're going to see is a president who is going to refuse to debate.
11:50He was more than happy to debate Joe Biden. He is running scared of debating Kamala Harris.
11:55And I don't think we're going to see a debate in September. He does not want to face a Black woman
11:59on that stage. He does not want to face a fierce prosecutor when he's a 34 felony convicted
12:04criminal. He does not want to be in that space. So I think we're going to see is a hell of a lot
12:09of racism because that comes early and often from Republicans. We're going to see sexism.
12:14Much to the sights that we've never seen before. But we're also going to see a party that is in
12:19disarray trying to figure out how to target and get something that sticks against Kamala Harris.
12:24I think that they're going to have a really hard time doing that.
12:27Amisha Cross, Democratic strategist, political commentator. Thanks so much for joining Essence.
12:31And we look forward to chatting with you as we gear up. We know there'll be lots to talk about.
12:36Thanks for having me.