As President Joe Biden plans to visit Georgia Saturday to shore up his coalition, people ask me if Democrats can win in Georgia this year. I shrug: unlikely, but maybe with Donald Trump on the ballot Democrats will be recipients of a miracle. Trump is a uniquely unqualified and polarizing candidate. But I can say with great certainty that Democrats will not win on their own merits.
The Democratic Party of 2018 and 2020, the infrastructure of campaigns and advocacy groups, the passion that flipped Georgia’s 6th and 7th congressional districts, two Senate seats and the state for Biden have evaporated. Aided and abetted by Republicans, the Democrat’s multiethnic and multiracial coalition has fallen apart. We saw the results in the Democratic statewide losses in 2022, and the situation is much worse in 2024.
The problem is that Georgia Democrats have to hold together a coalition across a racial fault line. Republicans exploit this, and Democrats, deeply invested in the project of social justice, play into their hands.
Georgia Democrats managed to hold onto power up to 2004, longer than many other Democratic Parties in the South that “recentered” politically around the Republican Party after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. A Democratic Party of rural whites, the Black community and a progressive business community passed legislation in the 1990s for which Georgia is justly proud, including lottery-funded pre-K, teacher pay raises and the HOPE Scholarship.
This coalition started to fall apart in the 1990s for many reasons but among the most bitter was that Republicans realized they could offer Black Democrats a Faustian bargain: they could have more Black minority opportunity districts, but the cost would be white Democratic legislative seats. The collusion was not a secret.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
During the 1990s redistricting, the Republican Party offered selected Black Democrats assistance with drawing maps and bringing redistricting plans before the U.S. Department of Justice. Under orders from the DOJ to draw more minority opportunity districts, the Georgia congressional delegation went from eight white Democrats, one Black Democrat and one white Republican, to three Black Democrats and eight white Republicans. Many Black leaders recognized the danger and struggled to hold the coalition together. But by 2004, the Georgia General Assembly had flipped, and Republicans took power, largely at the expense of white Democrats.
The problem for the Democratic Party then and now is that as they pursue strategies to elevate Black representation and Black power, but at the expense of their own coalition. And Georgia Republicans leverage this to devastating effect.
As a member of Congress in 2021, I recall a meeting with the staff from former Attorney General Eric Holder’s group “All on the Line.” They were spearheading Democratic legal efforts around redistricting. The attorneys on his staff were explicit about their goals in Georgia: “Our job is to maximize Black voting power.”
As the only white Democratic congressional representative in the deep south, I knew this was a trap, but I couldn’t find a way out. Democrats would maximize Black voting power, most likely by litigating to form more minority opportunity districts. Republicans would maximize Republican voting power.
My district was then drawn to increase the Black population as a “minority coalition district,” and Lucy McBath, a popular Black woman, left her district to run against me when her district was drawn to be more Republican. Perhaps foolishly, I felt compelled to try to stop her because I knew that the diverse, but moderate suburban voter that I had worked so hard to bring into the Democratic fold held the keys to the coalition that could achieve political and policy goals. But the appeal of a sympathetic Black woman who might lose a congressional seat in the South was impossible for Democrats locally and nationally to resist. I understand. But once again, Democrats maximized Black representation, not by defeating Republicans, but by taking out one of their own.
Earlier this year, Georgia just finished another round of redistricting after Democratic-backed organizations brought litigation on the claim that Republicans had improperly diluted Black voting power. The Republicans complied with a wink. They conceded more Black opportunity districts but erased the minority coalition district of the 7th in favor of a black opportunity district, combined six white majority Democratic state House districts into three and made two other majority white Democratic Senate districts into majority Black districts.
Maybe Democrats will pick up a district or two in the General Assembly, but now that the paired incumbents have sorted things out, most likely next year, there will be only three white male Democrats remaining in the state Legislature.
I’d like to think it doesn’t matter, but it does, because it’s part of a series of ongoing signals from the Democratic Party that the diverse, but plurality white, moderate suburban voters are not important to their coalition.
Stacey Abrams’ nearly successful strategy in 2018 focused heavily on turning out minority voters, but she also capitalized on the moderate suburban voters disillusioned by Trump. In 2020, Democrats were able to realize the potential of this fragile coalition to flip the state, and I was the only Democrat in the country to flip a Republican-held congressional seat.
But then, the Democratic leadership never acknowledged or realized the importance of these swing voters and made no investment in either listening to their concerns or political outreach. In 2018, the doors in my suburban neighborhood bristled with Democratic door hangers. By 2022, my neighborhood was only canvassed once – by Republicans.
Ironically, Democrats are now even losing Black voters who are furious the Democratic Party has failed to deliver on important issues like police reform, Medicaid expansion and voting rights. Yet, Black representation is at an historic high, and progressive groups have poured millions into organizations devoted to minority registration and turnout. I understand the history. This is very important.
But Democrats also need to recognize they have turned their backs on a critical constituency that could deliver real political and policy victory. And to win again in Georgia, they are going to have to find a way to win them back.
Carolyn Bourdeaux is a former member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th District. She is a contributor to the AJC Opinion page.
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