Editor’s Note: Issac Bailey is a longtime journalist based in South Carolina and the Batten Professor for Communication Studies at Davidson College. He’s the author of “My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty and Racism in the American South.” His next book, “Why Didn’t We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland,” will be released by Other Press on Oct. 6. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to turn me into a socialist or whatever is necessary to save this nation’s fast-fading democracy. If he and Senate Republicans move forward with quickly replacing the recently-deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I would have lost all faith in what I believed this democratic experiment to be. In a healthy democracy, Republican senators would vow not to move forward with a vote on Ginsburg’s replacement until early next year or only accept a consensus pick who can garner bipartisan support. Maybe a nominee like Merrick Garland, the man whom now retired-Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch told then-President Barack Obama would easily win Senate confirmation – until Obama actually nominated Garland. But this is not a healthy democracy.
I’ve admired Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ focus on trying to level the economic playing field but have never considered voting for him – I thought him to be too radical. I’ve long gotten New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s blue collar appeal but have vehemently disagreed with her on policies, believing some of them would be taking us too far to the left. I’m among the small minority of Black voters who chose former President George W. Bush in 2000 and have voted for well-known Republicans such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
As much as I thought Obama earned a second term after guiding us through an economic calamity during his first, I would not have cried had Mitt Romney won in 2012. I’m among the most pragmatic voters in the nation, one who’s long craved the day that Black voters would be courted by both parties the way we were up through the mid-20th century.
The push-and-pull, the constant re-centering of our politics, is what I’ve long believed was our strength, even when I did not get my way politically. I see no other way to hold fast to that truth without becoming as radical as McConnell and his cheerleaders have become.