The most important election day for the 2020 Presidential race so far is here — Super Tuesday. According to Ballotpedia, Super Tuesday is “the Tuesday in a presidential election year when the largest number of states and territories hold a presidential preference primary.”
Today marks itself as a big day for the Democratic primary campaign. Fourteen states will hold nominating contests to pick who they believe should run against Donald Trump — including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. The result’s from today’s election will help determine how presidential candidates will fare nationally on the road to the presidential election.
Today is a significant day for Democratic candidates and voters, but more importantly Black voters. 2020 is recognized as the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the right to vote. Practicing our right to vote is to honor our ancestors who fought for that very right. Many of the voting states participating in today’s primaries have a large population of Black Democratic voters, so Black voters’ job today is to show up in strong numbers at the polls and choose the best candidate to represent us in the Presidential election.
Candidates like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who both seem largely popular among Black voters, are counting on the Black vote to win over Southern states and urban areas in order to clinch a nomination.
“The decision Democrats make tomorrow and the next few weeks will determine what we stand for, what we believe, and where we’re going to go,” Biden said Monday at Texas Southern University.
An overwhelming number of delegates have been awarded from racially diverse areas and some of the most delegate-rich districts in Southern states like Alabama and South Carolina have a large number of Black Democratic voters. If Biden strengthens his numbers with the Black vote, then he’d have a great advantage in the nomination race.
Black voters wield political power for Super Tuesday as we have the biggest opportunity among minority voters to weigh in on this intense Democratic primary election.
“For black people, we have someone in power that’s kind of put us back in time and so we need to look to the future,” Martha Whiting-Goddard said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Voting was the one right that we recognized long ago that we had that was important.”
Whiting-Goddard is the great-granddaughter of Rev. John Henry “Jack” Yates, a freed slave who helped to found Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in 1866, Houston’s oldest African American Baptist church. Whiting-Goddard, like many others, recognizes that Black voters have contributed a lot to revolutionize this year’s Democratic race, so we have a responsibility to follow through with it.
Today the Black vote is a powerful vote and a matter that isn’t to be taken lightly. Only five presidential hopefuls remain. Therefore, the results will provide an interesting course of action for the American people over the next couple of months.
