When ‘Electability’ Is the Excuse

There’s a line in Democratic politics that is often repeated. It is amplified at conventions, mentioned in donor meetings, and printed on PowerPoint slides like it is a settled fact.

“Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party.”

Those words usually carry a tone of admiration and sometimes even reverence. But there’s also an unspoken rule that comes with it. The praise is fine. The power is not.

Because the moment a Black woman steps forward to lead, the tone changes. The language tightens. The math suddenly gets complicated. We stop talking about loyalty and start talking about “electability.” We stop talking about turnout and start talking about risk. The backbone, it turns out, is expected to hold the weight. It is not expected to steer.

This came up in my recent conversation on At Our Table with Rep. Jasmine Crockett. It didn’t come up as a complaint. We both know it is a pattern that many people in the party recognize privately but rarely confront publicly.

Political consultants love the word “backbone” because it sounds appreciative without requiring a redistribution of power. A backbone supports. It stabilizes. It absorbs pressure. But it is rarely asked to decide direction. And it’s rarely trusted when change is needed.

Electability has become the most efficient tool for preserving that imbalance.

What “Electability” Is Really Doing

The word itself has become one of the most useful terms in politics because it can mean almost anything, but no one questions it. Sometimes it means polling. Sometimes it means donor comfort. Sometimes it means whether a candidate makes influential people feel calm. More often than not, it means whether a candidate fits a model of leadership that has been reinforced for decades.

That is where race enters the conversation.

When a white male candidate is described as “safe,” people hear “steady, familiar, proven experience.” When a Black woman’s electability is questioned, people hear “risky, unpolished, unknown.” The same party that treats “safe” as a strategic virtue in one case suddenly treats boldness and clarity as liabilities in another.

We need to be honest with ourselves.

Yes, there will be moments when the Democratic Party rallies around candidates who are well known and widely accepted. Supporting those nominees matters. But that reality does not excuse the double standard that treats white male safety as neutral and Black women’s ambition as suspect. One is framed as pragmatism. The other as danger.

That’s not strategy. That’s hypocrisy.

The Work That Actually Moves Voters

Black women are the most reliable voters in the Democratic coalition. Not episodically. Not only in wave elections. Consistently. Across regions. Across cycles. They organize when resources are thin. They mobilize when enthusiasm is low. They show up even when the party’s message does not fully show up for them.

And yet, when that work turns into leadership, the party hesitates.

There’s always an excuse: Voters aren’t ready. The state is too red. The district is too competitive. This isn’t the right cycle. These explanations get treated like hard facts when they’re really just habits passed down from campaigns that lost plenty of races themselves.

What Rep. Crockett said plainly is that turnout isn’t fate. “There’s a whole bunch of people that just aren’t voting,” she said. “So let’s look at who those people are.” Too often, Democrats act like the electorate is frozen in place. It’s not. It moves. It grows. It responds to whether people believe showing up will actually change something. Treating it as fixed has become an excuse for avoiding the harder work of earning trust and participation.

Black women understand this instinctively.

They don’t see politics as theory. They see it as relationships. As trust built in churches, schools, courtrooms, and neighborhoods. As credibility earned by showing up when systems fail and people fall through the cracks.

That’s the world I grew up in. My grandmother wasn’t a political junkie tracking every piece of legislation. She was at church and on our porch talking with people about the real-world effects of the decisions made by people in power. It was always about lived experience. Otherwise, what was the point of any of it?

When Black women mobilize voters, they are not talking at people. They are speaking with people who know them. People who have watched their work. People who believe that leadership will look different because it comes from lived responsibility rather than résumé polish.

That kind of leadership is powerful. It is also unsettling to systems that prefer predictability over participation.

There is another discomfort at play, and it is rarely acknowledged. Black women leaders are judged through a much narrower range of acceptable behavior. When they are direct, they are labeled aggressive. When they are measured, they are labeled evasive. Confidence becomes “too much,” while caution becomes “not enough.” The standard shifts, but the outcome rarely does. Either way, their leadership style is treated as a problem to manage rather than an asset to trust.

So the party quietly adjusts. Through funding decisions. Through media narratives. Through whispered advice to “wait your turn” or “run somewhere else first.”

Meanwhile, the work continues.

Aligning Praise With Power

When consultants say Black women are the backbone of the party, what they often mean is that Black women will carry us through another cycle. Knock the doors. Make the calls. Deliver the votes. And then step back once the victory photos are taken.

That is not partnership. That is reliance without respect.

If the party truly believes its own rhetoric, then leadership pathways should reflect it. Investment should reflect it. Trust should reflect it. The willingness to challenge outdated assumptions should reflect it.

Because here is the reality we avoid saying plainly. If Black women withdrew their organizing, their votes, their patience, the Democratic Party wouldn’t just struggle. It would stop functioning.

And yet, we continue to treat their leadership as optional.

This moment does not require abandoning everything that has worked in the past. But it does require asking honest questions. It requires recognizing that caution can become a habit, and habit can become a blind spot.

Electability should not be a euphemism for comfort. It should be an honest assessment of who can build trust, expand participation, and sustain belief in a system under stress.

Black women have been doing that work for generations.

The question is not whether they are ready to lead. The question is whether the party is ready to follow its own words—and finally align praise with power.

Because if the backbone carrying the weight gives out, we’ll all collapse.