As the democrats finish their national convention, having reaffirmed their commitment to imperialism under Harris, it’s time the left organise and smash the duopoly. We need a socialist alternative to challenge the homelessness of class politics in the states.
U.S. voters whiplashed by the contradictions of American capitalism now must sort through an election which is both stark and uncertain in heightened ways. Donald Trump’s road to victory has been detoured at least temporarily by Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal as Democratic Presidential nominee and his replacement by Vice-President Kamala Harris. As I write today, Harris and her own Vice-Presidential nominee, Tim Walz, Governor of the state of Minnesota, have just finished their national convention in Chicago.
The Harris ascension has saved the Democratic Party from sure defeat and inflated demoralized liberal voters with a sense of possible victory. Biden was forecast for a drubbing when he withdrew. Now, polls show Harris ahead at the national level, and even ahead or tied in so-called “battleground” states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania which are traditionally keys to victory
The renaissance of Democratic Party enthusiasm can be attributed more to fears of Trumpism than qualities of the Harris-Walz campaign. Working-class voters, voters of color, oppressed groups, especially women and LGBTQI+, have been terrified by Trump’s proximity to the so-called “Project 2025” document which has threatened to massively curtail civil liberties, eliminate abortion at the national level, dispatch with social welfare branches of government, like the Department of Education, and escalate a border war against Mexico and global south migrants: Constructed by right-wing apparatchiks and ruling class think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a potential blueprint for a distinctive form of American authoritarianism recognized as such by the most vulnerable in U.S. society.
And yet, the conditions upon which Project 2025 seeks to expand and build—sharply curtailed labor rights, the loss of federally-protected abortion rights, dehumanizing attacks on trans people, escalated police and military presence – have all been contributed to outright by the Democratic Party Harris seeks to lead. Her unconventional anointment as Presidential candidate has given shallow hope to voters that that same Party might be made better the second time around, despite no evidence to support such hope.
Harris is a former California prosecutor who has spent her entire life in support of law and order. As California Attorney General she supported a law which criminalized parents when children were truant from school: She has promised to build-up U.S. security along the border with Mexico if elected; offered to increase an already massive U.S. military budget; made no solid commitment to abortion or trans rights, and offered nothing to oppressed communities in the U.S. Harris has assiduously avoided any serious discussion of the climate catastrophe. She has even less than Biden’s scant and dubious record of mouthing support for labor unions. In short, Harris is benefitting from being for many an empty suit upon whom masses of struggling people can inscribe their own desperate hopes and wishes.
Significantly for the Left, especially the U.S.’s substantial Palestinian and Muslim populations, Harris has been crystal clear on one position: doubling down on the U.S. duopoly’s long-standing support for Israel and the current genocide. Harris and the Democratic Party refused to allow a single Palestinian to speak at the Chicago Convention, despite desperate pleas of many “Uncommitted” voters constituting large blocs of Arabs and Muslims: This followed on the heels of Harris shutting down pro-Palestinian protesters at a campaign rally, saying “I’m Speaking” over their cries to end arms to Israel. At the Democratic National Convention, the presence of feel good celebrities like Oprah Winfrey embellishing Harris’s contention that the U.S. is the “greatest democracy in the history of the world” was excruciating for those on the Left and those with deep personal connections to the current livestreamed genocide of 40,000 Palestinians.
The Gaza war may be the primary contradiction of U.S. empire in the current moment, but deeper currents will now determine the outcome of the election as it enters the final two months. One of those regards Harris’s identity as a Black and South Asian woman and children of immigrants. Her campaign—and the Democratic Party—are cynically using both elements to uplift her as an exemplar of the U.S. overcoming racism and sexism—even while the Party trades downward on the lives of women and immigrants in its social policies. This gambit is reminiscent of the Obama campaign in 2008 (both Obamas spoke up for Harris at the Convention) which successfully deployed Obama’s African and mixed-race ancestry as a promise of reduced racism if he were elected. Instead, Obama deported more immigrants than any President in U.S. history, and his Presidential “watch” gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement’s massive uprising against police racism and violence. For many liberals, Harris’s race and gender are also an excuse to look past the Gaza genocide. In another inflection point in America’s vexed racial history, Harris’ ascent to power represents the solidification of “Black faces in high places” who carry out the policies of majoritarian predecessors.
Another electoral factor in indeterminate flux is Trump’s ability to motivate voters with racist appeals, fears of further U.S. economic decline, xenophobia, isolationism, in short a psychic grab bag of national resentments—classic fascist tropes in many ways. These could result in motivated voters in November or increased apathy towards a system he has convinced them is broken. Trump’s candidate appeal is built on negation—the argument that U.S. history has been a cheat on the lives of deserving (white) citizens: Make America Great Again. That message has appealed to a strong base within the Republican Party that is unlikely to abandon Trump no matter what, but may not catch on with centrist voters desperate for a reprieve from massive political and economic stagnation in the U.S.
In this way, the November election is a distinctly U.S.-style referendum on what has come to be practiced globally as a politics of rejection of hegemonic parties. Harris seeks to wrap herself in a politics of personal uplift meant to transcend a Democratic Party she is deeply embedded in and whose policies have disenchanted a majority of voters, while Trump works to build more loyalty to the cult of MAGA than to the traditional Republican party. Indeed just two months ago U.S. voters were damning both parties for their failures to provide the most meager relief from rising levels of economic immiseration in the U.S.
Then there is the U.S. ruling class, which since Trump’s election in 2016 has itself whipsawed between support for the two parties, demonstrating its primary fealty to the continuation of generally neoliberal economic policy of any stripe: green over either red or blue. The right-wing tech sector (including reactionary figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk) will openly campaign for the Trump-Vance ticket, but Harris will attractsupport from more traditional sectors of capital and big labor—damagingly embedded in the Democratic Party’s orbit – which have already made clear their endorsements for the latter.
For the Left, the challenges of this election season are multiple: it is tiny, fragmented, still smarting from years of popular “reformism without reforms” in the guise of the accommodationist Democratic Socialists of America, whose “Squad” and Bernie years have devolved into defeat and endorsement for the Democratic Party status quo. The Palestinian encampment movement, and the broader anti-imperialist movement against the war, is at a crucial moment of uncertainty, with colleges, universities and the state ratcheting up massive repressive mechanisms to keep campuses quiet. There is also a sense of movement frustration and organizing fatigue at theseemingly endless nature of the genocide—the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention were smaller than organizers had hoped for. Small Left groupings like the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization which have played uneven roles in the Palestine organizing to date are likely to become even less relevant should the Palestine movement itself continue to slow.
This means there is an urgent need and opening for new, independent Socialist organizing based in working-class struggle with oppressed communities who need to see past electoral aspiration into organizing from below. The past 12 months of heightened political consciousness in the U.S.—particularly against U.S. imperialism and its support for Israel’s genocide, and especially among U.S. citizens under 30—remains the most productive and untapped vein for those seeking to restore and rebuild a revolutionary socialist movement. In the face of continued U.S. militarization and border crackdown, suppression of Palestinian protests, and continuous attacks on workers and labor rights, the Left has an opportunity to rebuild only by being relentless, creative and uncompromising about the promise and potential of socialism to win a new world.
1 comment
The problem with ‘they are both bad’ position at this time in history, is that there is a unique turning point for us all here. The left have a dogmatic ‘never vote Democrat’ position but in this instance that seems to me to be clearly a mistake. A Trump victory would fast track fascism and put us on a completely different trajectory to a Harris one. Like with Brexit, where you sleepwalked into the wrong position rather than refresh your politics in the light of feedback from those affected, you’re in danger of getting this very important issue wrong.