Donald Trump could use emergency powers to extend his term in the White House, a senior Democrat has said, as fears grow that the president may attempt to hold onto office should he lose November’s
The left needs to show Democrats that they will lose more votes than they gain if they run to the center instead of to the left. The left does need to communicate this to Dems, but I don't see the coordination necessary to do that effectively. Simply not voting isn't enough; that'll just be spun as "oh well the left is unreliable and never turns out to vote, that's why you always have to cater to the Ken Bones of the world rather than the people who are supposed to be your base."
Biden will do all the stuff Trump does, maybe worse, but libs will stop protesting it (and even start defending it) because now that the dang cheeto is out of the White House they can go back to brunch. I'd say this is 90% true, but the one thing Biden won't do is brazenly undemocratic shit like suggesting he might stay in office even if he loses an election. Yes, the bar could not be lower, and yes, we don't have a functioning democracy anyway. But there is a difference between a bourgeois democracy where all the key players still largely treat it as a democracy and open fascism with a leader who holds power until he dies or is violently expelled. I don't think anyone in the country has an answer for the latter, and I'm not sure we want to bet everything on figuring that one out on the fly.
Biden in 2020 will ensure a more competent fascist in 2024. Probably, but even in that worst-case scenario that still gives us four years to come up with a response, in contrast with trying to handle even Baby's First Fascism right now. Plus, as likely as Biden 2020/Cotton 2024 looks right now, a lot of shit can happen in four years. I can imagine a future where 2024 arrives in the middle of an even worse economy with the pandemic still firmly in everyone's memory. Maybe Medicare for All (a popular policy before the recession and the pandemic) is what the Democratic candidate runs on and naked, dead-eyed fascism isn't as appealing as Trump's circus. Maybe between extremism, demographic shifts, and the neocon/fascist split in the Republican intelligentsia the GOP can't figure out how to produce an appealing presidential candidate anymore (the party establishment failed spectacularly at this in 2016) and there's a narrow consensus against them for a few cycles.
In short, a better-organized left would want to accelerate things as much as possible, and would thus want Biden to lose. The American left is not in that position right now. Voting for Biden is still a shit option, of course; I'm just struggling to see any better one.
who was able to gain more during Obama’s presidency, the tea party or Occupy?
That's a fair concern. The differences I see here are:
Obama ran as a progressive and it took people a while to figure out that he wasn't overly serious about progressive causes (much less anything anti-capitalist). Most people don't think Biden is a progressive in the first place, and any thin "most progressive in history" veneer he builds up in the campaign won't last even a few months, as he has no actual progressive policies he wants to implement.
Speaking of anti-capitalism, direct critiques of capitalism were still far from the mainstream for most of the Obama years. Occupy was seen as radical; you didn't have polls showing significant numbers of Americans being open to socialism. Look at the few left-ish politicians we have today, and look at how many of them were in office during the Obama administration. Look at the budding leftist media ecosphere today, and look at how many of those outlets were around in 2012, or even 2015. Anti-capitalism is a much more powerful and comprehensive organizing tool than a lot of progressive talking points, and anti-capitalism is at least on the periphery of the mainstream today in a way it wasn't several years ago.
Back to Obama: he was charismatic as hell, young, and he had very little Washington baggage. That's all pretty appealing to the type of young, newly-political person leftist grassroots movements need to really take off, and Biden has none of that. There was never any chance Obama was going to get primaried or not run for a second term. There's a real chance Biden could do either.
Because Obama was so superficially appealing (especially in the wake of Bush), many ordinary young people bought in to him -- they campaigned for him, donated to him, had an Obama bumper sticker, etc. They would have needed to reject all that, i.e., admit they were wrong, to really buy into a leftist alternative. Admitting you were wrong is hard! No one is really buying into Biden this time around, especially young people, so moving on to an alternative will be easier.
Obama is black (no way!) and received an unending stream of racist attacks from the right. That made right-wing organizing against him easier, and Biden being white will make right-wing organizing harder. On the left, the simple fact of Obama's presidency was (justifiably) seen as an enormous achievement. Not only was a black man in the highest office of a white supremacist state (which is significant, even though the "more women drone pilots" critique certainly applies), but he was both a victory over the Bush-era neocons (literally some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth) and an alternative to the Clintons (sleaze, careerism, dynasty politics). That's a lot harder to attack from the left than Joe Fucking Biden.
Obama did plenty of bad shit, and Obamacare has many flaws, but Obamacare also does some legitimately good things and was a real, highly-publicized legislative achievement. Biden will have nothing similar to hang his hat on.
There was no Sanders campaign in the 2004 and 2008 primaries -- i.e., there was no genuine, popular, openly-leftist alternative to the centrist/neolib Democratic establishment. The (relative, not complete) success of Bernie's 2016 and 2020 campaigns showed voters that supporting a similar candidate in the future isn't unrealistic, and it opened up some space for leftist campaign staffers to gain some experience and have the possibility of a real career.
Maybe this is all too optimistic, but at very least there are some real differences between today and the Obama years that make direct comparisons difficult.
you can bet on liberals not wanting to join any resistance to Biden since they’re not paying attention now that Trumps gone just like they didn’t pay attention during Obama’s presidency.
This is where I think the shift from a progressive left alternative to an anti-capitalist left alternative has the most power. I think it has greater potential to draw in people who don't ordinarily vote, and for the progressive liberals who just want to go to brunch without worrying about what the president tweets, an anti-capitalist alternative is a lot farther from Biden than any more progressive alternative would have been from Obama. There's more contrast when your framing is capitalism than when your framing is "does this guy talk the talk on moderate reforms."
Thank you for this, I agree that the dem party is a shithole barely left of center if at all, but I do not think that not voting and hoping trump gets elected will send the message a lot of people think it will send.
The new left coalition is going to build around Black Lives Matter.
Hell, it already is.
You got the doomer vibe.
The message is conveyed to The Dems by the protestors.
Those people across the country marching and organizing and standing against the police? They are demanding change, and they know voting Biden won’t give it.
The Democrats know, they just like to pretend. Because they don’t care about losing.
The more police violence there is, the more liberals go left.
The more stories about how people refuse to wear a mask? People go left.
The big problem the left has is a quick on-ramp of “wearing a mask to not spread a disease” to “capitalism refuses to let us prevent the virus spread, therefore it must end."
Framing the left from the basis of what's wrong with the world matters to help get people. Then getting them to a specific ideology is hard as there is a lot of reading and thinking in frameworks that Americans aren't primed for the way they are primed for fascism by capitalism (capitalism is about winners and losers, bosses and workers.. Don't you want to be the boss? Everyone like YOU gets to be in charge under fascism, we're the winning team.)
But right now, the wheels of capitalism and America are not running smoothly, people are more open to the idea of big changes.
The message is conveyed to The Dems by the protestors.
If Biden wins, the party line will be a mix of "they came out and voted for Biden like we told them to" and "we didn't need the anti-Biden leftists to win anyway, so fuck 'em." If Biden loses, the party line will be a mix of "the protesters didn't come out to vote/them not voting makes me question their intentions/#BlackLiveMatter and all but I don't really support the protesters anymore" and "Bernie Bros cost us two elections in a row!"
For not voting to have any prayer at producing a positive effect for the left the message needs to be (loudly and unambiguously): "Yes, we are willing to shoot the Democratic candidate in the head and hand the election to Trump if you nominate another neoliberal ghoul. Here is a compelling case why." You can make that case, but we're not, at least not in any organized or mainstream fashion. There's also a good argument that the time to make that case was during the primary, not after it. And of course, if the left makes that argument and Biden still wins, it backfires spectacularly.
The big arguments against voting for Biden are:
In short, a better-organized left would want to accelerate things as much as possible, and would thus want Biden to lose. The American left is not in that position right now. Voting for Biden is still a shit option, of course; I'm just struggling to see any better one.
Thanks a ton for posting this. A socdem friend of mine just hopped on the Biden train, might as well show her this.
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That's a fair concern. The differences I see here are:
Maybe this is all too optimistic, but at very least there are some real differences between today and the Obama years that make direct comparisons difficult.
This is where I think the shift from a progressive left alternative to an anti-capitalist left alternative has the most power. I think it has greater potential to draw in people who don't ordinarily vote, and for the progressive liberals who just want to go to brunch without worrying about what the president tweets, an anti-capitalist alternative is a lot farther from Biden than any more progressive alternative would have been from Obama. There's more contrast when your framing is capitalism than when your framing is "does this guy talk the talk on moderate reforms."
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I've gone back and forth on it a bunch myself. It's not an easy discussion because there are really no good options on the table.
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That's a good situation personally.
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Thank you for this, I agree that the dem party is a shithole barely left of center if at all, but I do not think that not voting and hoping trump gets elected will send the message a lot of people think it will send.
The new left coalition is going to build around Black Lives Matter.
Hell, it already is.
You got the doomer vibe.
The message is conveyed to The Dems by the protestors.
Those people across the country marching and organizing and standing against the police? They are demanding change, and they know voting Biden won’t give it.
The Democrats know, they just like to pretend. Because they don’t care about losing.
The more police violence there is, the more liberals go left. The more stories about how people refuse to wear a mask? People go left.
The big problem the left has is a quick on-ramp of “wearing a mask to not spread a disease” to “capitalism refuses to let us prevent the virus spread, therefore it must end."
Framing the left from the basis of what's wrong with the world matters to help get people. Then getting them to a specific ideology is hard as there is a lot of reading and thinking in frameworks that Americans aren't primed for the way they are primed for fascism by capitalism (capitalism is about winners and losers, bosses and workers.. Don't you want to be the boss? Everyone like YOU gets to be in charge under fascism, we're the winning team.)
But right now, the wheels of capitalism and America are not running smoothly, people are more open to the idea of big changes.
If Biden wins, the party line will be a mix of "they came out and voted for Biden like we told them to" and "we didn't need the anti-Biden leftists to win anyway, so fuck 'em." If Biden loses, the party line will be a mix of "the protesters didn't come out to vote/them not voting makes me question their intentions/#BlackLiveMatter and all but I don't really support the protesters anymore" and "Bernie Bros cost us two elections in a row!"
For not voting to have any prayer at producing a positive effect for the left the message needs to be (loudly and unambiguously): "Yes, we are willing to shoot the Democratic candidate in the head and hand the election to Trump if you nominate another neoliberal ghoul. Here is a compelling case why." You can make that case, but we're not, at least not in any organized or mainstream fashion. There's also a good argument that the time to make that case was during the primary, not after it. And of course, if the left makes that argument and Biden still wins, it backfires spectacularly.