Some Brief Thoughts II

I wrote something when Biden triumphed in 2020 primary, so I owe it to myself to write something now that he has presided over a historical collapse of his political project.

1.

I started writing a post in October complaining about Harris' campaign.  I did not end up finishing it because I foolishly believed that her vibes-based, policy-light campaign was going to win regardless of its lack of substance, which would render my complaint somewhat irrelevant.  It turns out that my cynicism, while not itself unearned or incorrect, was still directionally incorrect.  It was instead Trump's fundamental lack of substance that convinced enough people (falsely of course) that he was the answer to the growing discontent of the masses.  As a penance, I have finished this post below.

The common refrain from Democratic-aligned pundits is that the economy is doing well because of Democratic policies, which means you should vote for Harris/et al to let the good times roll.  And yet, voter enthusiasm, especially that of the working class, lags behind this perception.  Why is this?

There's a lot that can be said about this, so I want to keep it relatively simple.  This means I will forgo discussion of higher-level thoughts about what "the economy" really is and if it is actually "doing well," and will instead take the Democrats' word at face value.  This is easy enough to do, as your average wonk will produce plenty of charts and graphs to this effect.  Start with this example:

This sure looks good!  The bottom earners are making more!  But real quick, which do you think is more?  Nine percent of nothing, or 5% of a lot?  The idea that we're not in the midst of a long, slow redistribution of wealth to the wealthy is directly undermined by the very data liberal pundits share to defend their candidate!  Here's another similar example:

In this case, the ~2% difference between wage growth and inflation is indeed good.  It's just that we can see the rest of the chart!  The argument that a year of this trend accomplished anything more than somewhat offsetting the previous surge in inflation is fundamentally an argument to sell you nothing but crumbs.  Put another way, it's effectively a newer, friendlier trickle-down economics that supposes that some mildly positive third-order effects of economic policy are the best the working class can hope for.

Of course not every argument the Democrats put forward is for literal crumbs.  There are some things that are a little bit better, which can be thought of as crumbs+.  One such proposal concerns home care/long-term care for seniors, which has been a long-neglected aspect of our already pretty neglectful healthcare system.  To be clear, this is a very good proposal, and its enactment would be one of the most positive political developments in years.  And yet, I can't help but notice a few things in the details:

• Innovate and Engage with the Private Sector: This initiative will draw upon best practices across Medicare plans as well as the private sector to expand the home care workforce, partner with technology companies in areas such as remote patient monitoring and telehealth services, as well as other private sector partnerships.

• Lift Up Care Workers: This initiative will provide care workers access to better wages, improve quality of care for seniors and those with disabilities, and treat our seniors with the dignity they deserve.

Making such a benefit part of Medicare is great, but if all that Medicare money is going to private sector companies with only a weak acknowledgment of the actual labor that goes into home care, then I start to get suspicious of the true aims of this endeavor.  Much like with the ACA, I view this as fundamentally a giveaway to private interests with the ancillary benefit of providing better/cheaper care to some.  Perhaps this sort of bargain really is the best we can hope for, but if you believe this I'd like to ask: which end of this bargain do you think is going to be sacrificed next time there is a recession and/or a Republican-controlled government?

In the end the case Harris is making is that Biden has given us crumbs and she hopes to give us crumbs+.  Has anything really changed from Biden's lethargic campaign?  And even if it has, will it be enough?

2.

Two red-state Democrats (at least) ran Senate campaigns that were not explicitly anti-trans, but did capitulate to right-wing framing on the issue in particularly gross ways.  One was Sherrod Brown, who had a disgusting ad that I, as a resident of Ohio, had to see one thousand times.  The other was Colin Allred, who did essentially the same thing as Brown:

Both these guys lost, running well behind Democratic performance in their state in 2018.  Transphobia is not just morally wrong, but is also an electoral loser, or at the very least an electoral dampener.  If you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing at all.

3.

Moments like these often serve as good reminders that many (if not most) Democratic electeds are really just Republicans and/or fascist enablers at heart.  Any serious movement to combat Trump and his policies must treat these people as the enemies that they are.

4.

To this end, plenty of people will argue that we missed our chance at avoiding fascism by not electing Kamala Harris.  Never let them forget that Kamala Harris accepted the endorsement of Dick Cheney, the most evil man of my lifetime.  Hard to "vote against fascism" when that's the other option.

5. 

There was a good deal of debate about the role Palestine played in the election.  I could devote thousands of words to this, but even then I don't know if I would come to a clear conclusion.  On one hand, there was some evidence that Harris changing her position on this might have mattered.  On the other hand, support for Israel is a load-bearing part of the bipartisan national security apparatus of which Kamala Harris is a key part.  And more importantly, voters implicitly understand this, rarely treating foreign policy as a particularly important reason for their voting decisions.  All this said, given that the election results point more towards Democratic lethargy rather than a fundamental shift to the right in the electorate, it's important to consider the second-order effects that facilitating a genocide may have on the people who work in Democratic campaigns. 

6.

The other point to make about Palestine in this context is that Democrat-controlled cities and states fully supported cracking down on peaceful campus protests, and then turned around and asked for voters to overlook this.  This is obviously a stark contradiction, which is made even stranger by the imperative to abandon such a politics the moment the election concluded.  The implicit (and sometimes explicit) ask by some in the pundit class to abandon the entirety of the "coalition" of voters that elected Trump is not only foolish and depoliticizing, but goes directly against the case you made to voters who care about Palestine.  The sooner Democrats understand and internalize that curiosity is generally more useful than contempt, the better.

“If you were able to overlook a genocide and cast a vote for Harris, you already understand how a conservative was able to overlook Trump’s extremism to vote for him.”

Historian Robin D.G. Kelley discusses Donald Trump's election victory and why the Democrats failed to mount a successful challenge. pic.twitter.com/DbQ5oO7BzO

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 7, 2024

7.

I made this point when the Dobbs decision came down and I'll make it again: Fascism, in its most American sense, is already here and has been for some time.  Trump does not represent a meaningful break from the American continuum but rather its most vulgar and dangerous expression.  And just like all other expressions of this fascist tendency, the most concrete way in which it will express itself is through the soldiers of capital.  Any genuine anti-fascist effort must understand this.

New 2022 body cam footage shows Atlanta PD cops manufacturing felonies to arrest Cop City protesters. When local officers say there were no felonies, APD Major says, "help us out…I know it's a reach." Those charges were then used for RICO charges against bail fund leaders.

[image or embed]

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) November 7, 2024 at 7:38 AM

8.

In the end, the "solution" to this, in a positive sense, is the same it's always been: Mass politics for the masses.  The elites of the Democratic Party have failed us again, so it's up to us to chart a different course—one that doesn't rely on the empty promises of Democrats or the false promises of Republicans, but on the true promise of the people, working together for our shared benefit.