After the Election: The Road Ahead?

Without saying it in so many words, The Wall Street Journal summarized the results of the November 8 mid-term election: The US electorate feared the Republicans more than they disliked the Democrats.

Historically, a major party with an incumbent president overseeing a painful economy and with the President polling negatively receives a big hit from the electorate. That didn’t happen this year.

As the WSJ puts it more diplomatically:

Voters were in a sour mood that usually signals that they are ready for change in Washington and state capitals. But in many cases, they were not looking for the change that Republican candidates were offering.

Some of the movers-and-shakers in the social democratic movement seem to agree. Writing in Jacobin, they observe:

A major factor in Democrats’ stronger-than-expected showing nationally appears to be the rock-bottom expectations of their voters. An NBC exit poll captured a deep sigh of resignation at the ballot box, with Democrats winning among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Joe Biden’s job performance. Overall, more than seven in ten voters said they are “dissatisfied” or “angry,” according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research.

Such results suggest that Democratic voters weren’t inspired to vote for their candidates; they just couldn’t tolerate the alternatives.

And why would voters feel otherwise? They had just suffered through a vicious, but hollow campaign that raised and spent an obscene amount of money (supposedly a quarter of a billion dollars in Pennsylvania, over 30 dollars per person in Georgia on the respective Senate races). Republicans portrayed Democrats as socialists while Democrats responded by calling Republicans “fascists.” Neither side had the foggiest understanding of socialism or fascism.

Democrats were convinced that they could run on little more than the abortion issue and trashing ex-President Trump, even financially supporting Trump’s candidates in some primaries, convinced that they could more easily defeat them in the general election.

Republicans relied on their conventional toolbox of baiting-- crime, race, reds under the bed-- and economic management.

While Democratic candidates and spin doctors touched none of the most critical issues facing US voters-- a host of urgent matters like a failing, low-income economy, health care costs, exploding costs of food and housing, massive debt, ineffective and costly education, immigration reform, inequality, and, most importantly, an expanding US/NATO/Russia war in Ukraine-- they correctly gauged that many centrist voters were fed up with Trumpite rhetoric and bombast, and voters were enthusiastic about rejecting him.

Likewise, they were correct about alarm over the Supreme Court anti-abortion decision. The number of voters who thought that abortion was the most important issue grew three-fold to 10% from the last two elections.

The Democrats held their ground despite losing one of their most reliable allies in recent elections: suburban women.

Their cavalier presumption of Black and Latino voters continues to cost Democrats, especially among younger Black voters. The AP VoteCast survey shows that “Younger Black voters moved a substantial 22 percentage points toward Republicans in 2022.” How much longer can the Democratic leadership ignore the pressing needs of African Americans and other minorities and the widening inequalities that they suffer?

The five prominent progressive co-authors of the Jacobin article, Eight Lessons from the Midterm Election, correctly recognize the growing gap between the needs and desires of most US voters and the program that the Democratic Party leadership and its electoral machine will accept. Further, they argue that where Democrats put forth a more people-oriented program, they fare better.

True enough.

But the article’s authors fail to equally recognize that even on the rare occasion when the campaign promises are more progressive, they tend to evaporate after the election. And more often than not, Democratic “progressivism” is opportunism of the moment.

For example, Fetterman, the Senate winner in Pennsylvania, was a strong anti-fracker when that suited his audience, but a pro-fracker when it suited his political ambitions. His support for health care never took him to strong advocacy of Medicare for All, but left him in the rhetorical twilight zone of “healthcare is a human right”. And then there is the centerpiece of economic comparative advantage: marijuana production. His trajectory is not an uncommon story among Democratic Party “progressives” (I cringe when I remember how Reaganaut liberal-baiting made Democrats cravenly give up the word “liberal” for “progressive”).

It is challenging to imagine that this election will change much. With the presidency, the House of Representatives, and a very slim advantage in the Senate, the Democrats accomplished very little. And, as was true of the Obama years when they owned a super-majority for two years, they sought to do far less than they promised. Thus, in power for ten of the last fourteen years, the Democratic Party has clung to centrist policies that offered no serious opposition to corporate power.

And yet the hardships facing the US people are far greater than they were when Obama took office in 2008. In the face of economic setbacks and burgeoning inequality, the Democrats have answered the call of monopoly capitalism while asking the people to sacrifice-- largesse for one class, austerity for the other.

It certainly seems that the urgent fight to overcome desperation, inequality, austerity, and war will now only come with masses in the streets, rather than in the voting booth.

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com

When “No” means “Yes” to War

At a time when divisions and confusion in the anti-war, anti-imperialist movement have made many activists bystanders to the war in Ukraine, CodePink has boldly led the way in denouncing the war and calling for negotiation. Unlike some groups that buried the war question in a laundry list of grievances, causes, and injustices, CodePink focuses laser-like on the danger of escalation and possibly nuclear war.

Thus, when I got an email from CodePink on October 25 with “Finally!” on the subject line, I fully expected to learn of a new and important development in the peace movement.

I wasn’t disappointed. 

The hard-working peace warriors of CodePink announced-- with some measure of pride-- that “After months of grassroots activism, 30 Democrats in Congress have signed on to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's letter to President Biden calling for a ceasefire and diplomatic settlement to the war in Ukraine.”  Thirty members of the House Democratic [self-styled] Progressive Caucus had signed on to-- an admittedly tepid-- statement departing from the Biden Administration’s rabid instigation of war in Ukraine. 

With a growing call for negotiation from unlikely public figures like Henry Kissinger, Jeffrey Sachs, and Elon Musk, with a mid-September Quincy Institute poll showing that most US citizens (57%) support negotiations to end the war, with 57 Republicans voting in May against an additional $40 billions of military aid to continue the war, and with Republican leadership suggesting that, should they win the interim election, they might not support further US military aid to continue the war, one would welcome “Progressive” Democrats seizing the opportunity to help bring this dangerous war to an end. 

Despite a complete and total lack of confidence in the Democratic Party and a belief in its limitless appetite for political opportunism, I decided to celebrate CodePink’s efforts by forwarding the group’s email to my comrades and friends in the Pittsburgh Anti War Committee; we had only recently staged demonstrations in Pittsburgh to call for an end to the war. Democrats breaking away from their party’s shameful role in sparking the war and fueling its escalation certainly deserved acknowledgement and praise.

But the celebration ended within 36 hours when the leadership of the “progressive” Caucus rescinded the letter. Caucus chair Jayapal and some who signed the letter unceremoniously and cravenly blamed staff members for releasing the letter while declaring continued loyalty to the Administration’s war huckstering.

I was compelled to apologize for misleading my comrades. It was not the first time I underestimated the spinelessness of the Democratic Party.

While the “progressive” Democrats shamed themselves, the Democratic Administration chose that moment to reveal their reckless nuclear policy. The Defense Department announced that the “Pentagon’s Strategy Won’t Rule Out Nuclear Use Against Non-Nuclear Threats,” as Bloomberg headlined. Further, Bloomberg writer Anthony Capaccio claimed that the “Defense strategy shuns limits on use once embraced by Biden.”

Earlier, the monopoly capitalist media vilified Putin for suggesting that Russia would use nuclear weapons under certain circumstances, a suggestion that Putin recently pulled back. Yet not a word of alarm or condemnation over an explicit policy of potentially using nuclear weapons when there is no counterpart nuclear threat, a serious escalation of the tension in Ukraine.  

With an approaching interim election, have the Democrats given the anti-imperialist left any reason to vote for them?

Margaret Kimberley-- writing in The Black Agenda Report– said this about the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s opportunism:

This fiasco is yet another reminder that the left in this country had better start speaking up for themselves. The democrats are the party of war and will not allow even a tiny expression of dissent. Some of the letter signatories have fallen on their swords, yelled loud mea culpas and joined in condemning themselves. Others are silent after having stepped out only to be stepped upon.

No one should think that help is coming from Washington. The U.S. involvement in Ukraine will end with negotiations or with a hot war. That determination will not be made by Pramila Jayapal or anyone else in congress who calls themselves progressive.

Democrats are welcome to join us, but we must cancel this war without relying on the Democratic Party leadership. They are the problem.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com