Gleeful Democrat leaning voters elated over the news that former president Donald Trump was convicted on thirty-four counts of falsifying business records were given a swift reality check the very next daywhen Fox News reported that the Trump campaign had raised more than $50 million overnight after his history making trial and conviction.
A jury of twelve unanimously handed down a guilty verdict, making him the first president to be tried for criminal charges in American history. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, and he has six months to file for appeal, meaning he can still run for president.
The Trump campaign’s reported “record shattering” haul underlines opinions that the 2024 presidential election may the most important election in modern times. Trump’s recently launched social media platform “Truth Social” states it is America’s “Big Tent,” but critics howl that his real-time comments describe nothing short of a dictatorship pandering to rusty, racist white power sympathizers.
Mirroring the national liberal and pro-Black view, local Democratic Party member and political historian Dell Gill states, “I think he’s a fascist. Black people are going to have to be very careful if he wins the election. He’s a threat to democracy.”
Shelby County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lexie Carter says the conviction makes the 2024 election “an entirely new game now. I think there’s going to be a reaction from independents and from Democrats on the fence. We needed this because it (the verdict) says ‘we’re not afraid of Donald Trump. Justice prevails.”
Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen immediately issued a nearly twin statement right after the verdict. “The rule of law, which the United States is founded upon, shone bright today. In America, no one is above the law.”
Carter warns it’s time for Democrats and the Black community to get the work in, but are they really ready for a real Get Out The Vote campaign?
Elected to her post in 2023, Carter says they’re digging in. “We are working really hard to do it and we have a lot going on. Remember the Kennedy Days that we used to do? That’s just one part of it. Part of the problem is money. We have got to raise the money (to be successful). There has been a serious disconnect, not just with the voters, but with the legislators. There was a change in the way we were structured in 2017, but it’s been fixed now. Instead of by district, it was changed to a commission process; I believe to increase the percentage of non-minorities on the (executive) board, but it didn’t work and we have returned to structuring by district. When they tried to increase the diversity, they found that many of the members’ voting records did not qualify them as a bona fide democrat.”
Bottom line, even in the artificial age, it’s going to take boots on the ground to re-elect 46th President Joe Biden. And she knows it.
“This is the most impactful election of our time,” Carter said. “Even though there are people saying that with Trump being a convicted felon they will still vote for him. I really believe that it will be hard for a voter that really believes in America to go in the voting booth and pull that lever for a convicted felon for the first time in American history. I’m 72 years old and my father was the first Black city councilman in Richmond, California, so I’ve been in politics since I was eight years old. I have no doubt that if we don’t get this right it will cost us our democracy.”
