By BRIAN CRAWFORD
As the United States staggers toward the 2026 mid-term elections, desperation has overwhelmed the White House with the prospect of losing Republican majorities in Congress. As multiple crises spin out of control—exacerbated by the administration’s own doing—support for the party is falling.
The administration is putting government agencies to work to influence the elections. Efforts to suppress the vote have reached an unprecedented degree of intensity as the election draws near. Voter suppression is not an alien concept in the United States. Trump’s version is just its latest iteration. Invariably, Black political participation is threatened in every election. While the Democratic Party offers itself as a foil to Trump and his authoritarian tendencies, the party has betrayed African Americans when in power.
Black participation in the electoral process was achieved through the historic Black liberation struggles over two centuries. While we seem trapped in the vice grip of the two-party system, no progress is made solely through electoralism. Abolition of chattel slavery was a revolutionary accomplishment. From its ashes rose Reconstruction, which fell victim to not just white terror but the betrayal of the Northern “allies” in the Republican Party. For the sake of uniting the Northern and Southern ruling classes and consolidating U.S. capitalism, the promise of the “second American Revolution” was sacrificed.
This was a treachery forged by both political parties. One party has origins in the slavocracy, the other in industrial capital. Democrats of the 19th century represented the planter class and later instituted a regime closely resembling slavery. The Republican Party was an heterogenous organization that included northern industrial capital but also the abolitionists.
Black political power was defeated with the fall of Reconstruction, disenfranchising the Black population and solidifying white ruling-class hegemony. Many methods were used, including voter fraud on a massive scale. Black Republicans were blacklisted; ballot boxes were stolen and ballots destroyed. Poll taxes and grandfather clauses were instituted; intimidation and murder were part of a full-scale white terror campaign.
History repeats itself as the past rears its ugly head. The seizure of ballot boxes, restricting mail-in voting are all part of the Trump administration’s arsenal. Republicans conjure conspiracies of fraud, crafting a convenient narrative in case they lose the election. And yet, instances of voter fraud, according to studies by the conservative Heritage Foundation and The New York Times, represent .000008% of votes cast.
Measures to institute voter I.D. are on the ballot in several states. The impact of these laws disproportionately affects African Americans. Likewise, reducing the number of early voting days and eliminating Sunday voting can reduce voter participation. Combined with reductions in the number of polling stations, these methods create longer wait times in Black districts. Trump is also considering deploying federal agents to monitor the polls and the president has not ruled out declaring as state of national emergency—a move synonymous with authoritarian regimes.
Democrats are not a solution
The Democratic Party stands to gain from the mid-terms. Neither party is popular, and the Democrats fail to distinguish themselves where it really matters: changing the conditions of the working class.
The party of slavery and segregation transformed into the party of New Deal and Great Society programs under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. But neither program flowed from great beneficence, and neither provided a guarantee to Black people. The party tolerated the segregationists for political expediency. This state of affairs prevented anti-lynching legislation from passing while African Americans were trapped in the South’s house of horrors, all to appease Southern segregationists.
Asa Phillip Randolph, who formed the first Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened a march on Washington in 1941 in response to discrimination in federal hiring practices and the Jim Crow system of segregation. President Roosevelt applied constant pressure on Randolph and other Black leaders to call off the march. Finally, Roosevelt offered the concession of signing an executive order that banned racial discrimination in defense industries—while ignoring segregation in the armed forces and government departments. The Black leadership relented and called off the march.
In the 1960s, although Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act under the pressure of the civil rights movement, he was more committed to the Vietnam War. Great expectations can often lead to great demoralization; African Americans place hopes in Democratic candidates, but once they are elected we are told to lower our expectations.
Politics of the possible
After a dozen years of Reagan and Bush, there was great anticipation with the arrival of Bill Clinton. Another promise of change, more promises broken. Reagan deployed the racist caricature of the “welfare queen” to undermine the benefit system. But where the Republican Reagan failed, Clinton the “the New Democrat” succeeded. He proudly proclaimed “the end of Welfare as we know it.”
Clinton’s liberal supporters remained reticent to oppose him. Katha Pollitt of The Nation magazine noted: “These liberals [. . .] preach the gospel of the lesser of two evils [. . .] that will doubtless end with liberals in hell organizing votes for Satan because Beelzebub would be worse.”
This road to hell is well traveled. Black Lives Matter, the mass movement of 2020, suffered a counter-offensive from the right. Democrats not only increased funding for policing but renounced the demands of the movement.
Between African Americans and the ballot was every obstacle the Jim Crow South could conceive. Under Trump these tactics are resurrected, and more are being devised. There will be no surrender to the threat.
Recently, North Carolina A&T State University, the largest HBCU in the country, protested the removal of early voting sites. The students and faculty marched 45 minutes to prove they would not be deterred. The assertiveness of struggle remains, and the vision of liberation is the motive force. African Americans can lead as the vanguard against Trump’s aggressions. Voting is not a privilege; it is a right. It must be defended; we cannot take another step backward. And in doing so, we must take a giant step toward socialism as the only real and lasting alternative.
Top photo: Students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University march through Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 22 for voting rights. (Rachel Moody / WFDD)
Below: Members of Atlanta NAACP cheer during Aug. 28 March for Voting Rights in Washington, D.C. Thousands took part in events in several cities, on the 58th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. (Tyrone Turner / NPR)