The Wild Reed: Scotty T. Reid on James Clyburn as a “Defender of the Political Establishment and Its Policies of Oppression”

Rep. James Clyburn [right] says Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election because not enough Black voters turned out. I disagree. I believe he’s intentionally asking the wrong question.

The real question is Why did turnout decline? The real question is Why did so many lifelong Democratic voters became disillusioned with the party in the first place?

For months before the election, voters warned Democratic leaders that U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza had become a moral issue. Thousands of Black clergy, students, human rights advocates, and millions of ordinary people repeatedly called for an end to U.S. military support. Those warnings weren’t whispered behind closed doors. They were public. They were persistent. They were impossible to ignore.

Yet when Clyburn explains the election in a recent interview, he doesn’t acknowledge what I believe became the defining moral issue dividing the Democratic coalition and now the Republican MAGA coalition. The American Israeli genocide still being perpetrated against Gaza residents.

Instead, James blames Black voters.

As a student of Black history, I find that remarkable. Black political thought has a long tradition of standing with oppressed people, not simply because they are Black, but because oppression anywhere demands moral scrutiny everywhere. Malcolm X condemned Zionism as a form of colonialism. James Baldwin challenged the dispossession of Palestinians. The Black Panther Party expressed solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. That tradition didn’t end in the 1970s.

It resurfaced during the Democratic primaries.

In Michigan, one of the clearest dividing lines between establishment Democrats and progressive challengers wasn’t just healthcare, wages, or affordability. It was Gaza. Voters – including Black voters – said so themselves. Video after video showed Democratic voters explaining that they could no longer support candidates who continued backing U.S. military assistance to Israel. That wasn’t Republican messaging. That came from Democratic voters. Today there is a growing bipartisan coalition in Congress to end economic and military support of Israel.

James Clyburn’s analysis ignores that reality because he stands with those who stand on the wrong side of the moral line of this time.

Instead of asking why many voters felt morally betrayed, he ignorantly asks why they didn’t vote.

In my Proxy Racism framework, every elected official serves as a proxy. The only question is: a proxy for whom? Some serve primarily as proxies for their communities. Others become proxies for party leadership, wealthy donors, corporate interests, or foreign governments.

When I hear James Clyburn blame Black voters while refusing to seriously confront the moral concerns many of them expressed over Gaza, I don’t hear the activist who emerged from the civil rights movement. I hear a defender of the political establishment and its policies of oppression revealing extreme moral depravity.

The Democratic Party cannot rebuild trust by blaming the very people who warned it, months in advance, that it was losing them on this issue alone.

If anything, Black voters deserve credit for doing what Black voters have often done throughout history: refusing to sacrifice their moral convictions for political expediency.

If Democrats truly want to understand what happened, they should spend less time blaming Black voters and more time listening to what a significant number of Black voters have been saying all along. Stop supporting genocide.

– Scotty T. Reid
via social media
July 27, 2026

The Wild Reed

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Scotty T. Reid on James Clyburn as a “Defender of the Political Establishment and Its Policies of Oppression”

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