Political Strategist Steve Philllps Discusses Midterm Elections, Democracy With Black Enterprise

In his forthcoming book, How We Win the Civil War, Phillips discusses how people who oppose white supremacy how can win more political power and save Democracy, following the organizing example created by Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, and others like her across the country.

The Stanford University and Hastings College of the Law alum said that the elections could go either way and no one knows what’s going to happen, but voter turnout will be the determining factor

“I mean everybody is nervous and anxious I don’t think anybody has a good handle and I think a lot of people are looking at the wrong data points and signals the election is going to turn on which side gets more of its voters to the polls,” Phillips told Black Enterprise. “So voter turnout is going to be no fundamental defining factor and we just don’t know yet who’s going to turn out in larger numbers. If there is a large turnout closer to the 2018 2020 presidential levels the Democrats should win which is exactly why the Republicans are so focused on suppressing new voters.”

Phillips has a wealth of political experience and serves as a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation, and an opinion contributor to The New York Times. He is also the host of “Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips,” a color-conscious podcast on politics and the founder of Democracy in Color, a political media organization dedicated to race, politics and the multicultural progressive New American Majority.

Phillips also discussed some disturbing trends surrounding the Midterms. On Tuesday, an Arizona judge ordered a Republican voting group to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.

Additionally, the attack on Nancy Pelosi‘s husband and President Joe Biden‘s own concerns about the future of Democracy has left Phillips worried.

“It’s absolutely getting to a point where we should be very concerned,” Phillips said. “What happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband was a result of Nancy Pelosi not being home. Somebody went to assassinate the speaker of the house and try to and so let’s not underappreciate what happened here.

Phillips has a reason for why these events are starting to take place in America.

“There’s this long-standing pattern and the ongoing struggles, the Confederates and their heirs have never stopped fighting the Civil War and that goes all the way from assassinating Lincoln to January 6, 2021, where people carried Confederate flags and stormed the US Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. So there’s a very deep longstanding fundamental battle going on in this country over whether or not it’s going to be a primarily White nation or whether it’s going to be a multiracial and multicultural nation,” Phillips added.

One of the things Phillips noted was the number of Black candidates in the midterms including Abrams, Sen. Raphael Warnock and Maryland Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore and Arkansas Gubernatorial candidate Chris Jones and added that the best thing Black people can do is show up at the polls and exercise the right to vote, which their ancestors died for.

“The main thing black voters can do is turn out in large numbers. This is the newfound power that has accrued over the past few decades, so in the 1960s when the Civil Rights Act was passed people of color were 12% of the population and today we’re 40% of the population,” Phillips told Black Enterprise.

“So people of color, anchored by the solidly progressive African-American model combined with the meaningful minority of White people who vote progressive comprise the majority of the people in this country and the majority of eligible voters, so the way you manifest by turning out at the polls in large numbers. That’s imperative at this hour and I want to see how that plays itself out.”

In addition to his numerous accomplishments, Phillips practiced civil rights and employment law and has appeared on multiple national radio and television networks including NBC, CNN, MSNBC and C-SPAN.