“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election. This is my last post before Election Day, so it’s time for some real talk. I’ve been involved in left-wing politics for 40 years, and I’ve learned the only way to win is to play the long game. No single election or individual president can or will radically transform America into a progressive paradise, but one election — or one president — can set us back for decades. This is what social conservatives understood in the 1970s, which led them on a successful 50-year campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade. They aligned themselves with the Republican Party, and even though Republican presidents repeatedly failed to deliver their promise to ban abortion, those presidents appointed federal judges and Supreme Court Justices who laid the groundwork, brick by brick, year by year, decade by decade, for Roe to fall. Finally, in 2022, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed Supreme Court, they got what they wanted in the infamous Dobbs decision.  RELATED: Kamala Harris Has a Plan for Black Men. Trump Never Did This is the frustrating reality that progressives must face about American electoral politics. It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. You might even say it’s a long-distance relay race, with each generation passing the baton to the next. If you support a livable minimum wage, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, student loan debt relief, a universal basic income, an equitable tax system, legalizing marijuana, abolishing the death penalty, eliminating the electoral college, Palestinian statehood, reparations for Black people, restoring reproductive rights, reinstating affirmative action, banning assault weapons, and moving government resources away from aggressive policing to vital public services, all of which I support, no presidential candidate can deliver this for you. Not Kamala Harris, not Jill Stein, not Cornel West, and certainly not Donald Trump. In our system of government, we need Congress, governors, state legislatures, and judges to sign off on all that. And that takes time to build the infrastructure in a system that was never designed for us. So what happens is that some of us understandably withdraw from the electoral process when we don’t get what we want in a timely fashion. This is exactly what our opponents want us to do.  I’ve never agreed with any candidate on every issue. The wealthy white male property owners who created our archaic system of government purposely made it difficult to change the status quo. They did not allow women or Black people to vote, did not allow direct election of presidents, did not allow citizens to vote for U.S. Senators, counted enslaved people as only 3/5ths of a person, and required a virtually unattainable supermajority of 3/4ths of the states to amend the Constitution. This is why Audre Lorde reminded us that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” And that’s why our opponents don’t have to work that hard to slow us down. They know the system is on their side if they can just wait us out. In physics, they call it the law of inertia. An object at rest will remain at rest until it is acted upon by an outside force. In American politics, we call it the government. But the other side of inertia is that an object in motion will remain in motion until another force causes it to rest. We are the object in motion, and as Sweet Honey in the Rock instructs us, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” I’ve cast a ballot in all 11 presidential elections in which I was eligible to vote, from 1984 to the present, and I’ve never agreed with any candidate on every issue. RELATED: If Trump Wins, Republican Judges Will Rule the Courts—and Our Lives I worked for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and later worked for him in the White House, even though I vehemently disagreed with his support of capital punishment. But you know what? Bill Clinton appointed two Supreme Court Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who voted to abolish the death penalty two decades later in 2015. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, even though I fundamentally disagreed with his opposition to gay marriage. And you know what? Obama appointed two Supreme Court Justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who cast the deciding votes to legalize same-sex marriage. And I voted for Joe Biden in 2020, even though I spent months on CNN debating other Democrats because I felt we needed a younger, more progressive candidate to lead us. But you know what? Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has led the charge to protect voting rights, reproductive rights, student loan debt forgiveness, affirmative action, and other progressive priorities against a conservative 6-3 Trump-dominated Court.  A president can’t fix all our problems in four years, but they can make things a lot worse. Presidential campaigns have become the worst place to debate divisive issues because successful candidates avoid controversial issues like Gaza and reparations to get elected. But that doesn’t mean we have to be blind to which party is most on our side. I don’t agree with them on every issue, but I’m more aligned with Raphael Warnock, Wes Moore, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Hakeem Jeffries, Maxine Waters, and Barbara Lee, all of whom are supporting Kamala Harris.  I’m not aligned with hateful demagogues and opportunists like Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Rudy Giuliani, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, all of whom support Donald Trump. The people who support a candidate tell us a lot about the way the candidate will govern.  RELATED: Trump’s Vow to Be a Dictator Will Destroy Us All A president can’t fix all our problems in four years, but they can make things a lot worse. And the one presidential power that has the most enduring impact is the authority to appoint federal judges who serve with lifetime tenure. At 54 years old, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be on the bench for another 20 to 25 years. If Trump appoints the next batch of judges, progressives will spend the next twenty years of our lives watching nearly every left-wing policy slowly and methodically struck down by the courts. That’s the long game. It doesn’t mean you stop pushing, critiquing, and holding candidates accountable after you vote for them. It means you create the infrastructure for the change you want to see in the world.  Dr. King reminds us that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” I am clear and certain that we are on the right side of history, but history doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by action. Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles. The post It’s Time to Get on the Right Side of History  appeared first on Word In Black. The post It’s Time to Get on the Right Side of History  appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.