XPost: talk.politics.libertarian, alt.president.clinton.penis.intern, alt.beer XPost: alt.bidon
With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate of
Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As
was to be expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-
wing candidates to run the most right-wing campaign possible.
There is a certain inevitability to the choice of Harris. In
July of last year, the World Socialist Web Site—based on a
survey of who would be the worst, most reactionary and at the
same time most suitable choice for second spot on the Democratic
Party ticket—predicted that Harris would most likely be named
the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the
nomination. She had all the ruthlessness, narcissism and
careerism requisite for the job, plus the ethnic background to
suit the Democrats’ obsession with racial and gender identity.
Kamala Harris is a dyed-in-the wool political reactionary.
This year has seen mass demonstrations throughout the country in
response to the police murder of George Floyd. As a direct
result of the policies of the ruling class, nearly 170,000
people have died to date in the coronavirus pandemic, with the
daily death toll now at more than 1,000. There is growing anger
in workplaces over the homicidal back-to-work campaign and broad
opposition among teachers to the efforts to reopen the schools.
Tens of millions of people are unemployed, and they have been
cut off from federal benefits and face being evicted from their
homes.
In the midst of this monumental political, economic and social
crisis, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the
American people are to be offered the “choice” between the
fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic
Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-
prosecutor from California. This says everything about the
degraded state of American politics.
Following the announcement by Biden on Tuesday, the media leapt
into action with its nauseating effusion of state propaganda.
The selection of Harris has been universally proclaimed to be
“historic,” a watershed moment.
In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing “historic”
about Harris. As district attorney in San Francisco (2004-2011),
attorney general in California (2011-2017), and, finally, US
senator (2017 to the present), Harris has compiled a track
record of backing the police, locking up workers and immigrants,
covering up for the banks and supporting militarism and war.
Wall Street is certainly happy with the choice. “A VP pick that
big business can back,” ran a headline on the inside pages of
the New York Times. As for the military, its main concern is
what will happen if the aging Biden doesn’t make it through a
full term. Since the beginning of the Trump administration,
opposition from the Democratic Party has been focused on issues
of foreign policy. Harris, who has no other agenda than her own
self-promotion, will be silly putty in the hands of the military-
intelligence apparatus.
The “historic” character of the Harris nomination is premised
entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-
American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice
president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is
the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats
or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in
the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a
Democratic Party administration.
As if any of this makes a bit of difference for workers,
whatever their race, gender or ethnicity. As if, moreover, the
world has not already had the example of Obama, not to mention
Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton
and many others.
The selection of Harris exposes the utterly reactionary
character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and
other forms of identity—anything but class. In response to the
eruption of protests against police violence, the Democrats did
everything they could to obscure the class issues, promote
racial divisions and propagate the lie that the violence of the
police is an expression of the oppression of “black America” by
“white America.” The outcome of this racialist campaign is the
selection as their vice-presidential candidate of a right-wing
ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent
man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from
their parents.
Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the
bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris “historic.” Ibram
Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist and one of the chief
inspirers of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, wrote on Twitter
that “the Democrats now have a presidential ticket that reflects
the American people better than the GOP ticket and every
presidential ticket in US history.”
According to Kendi, politicians “reflect” the American people
not because of the socioeconomic forces they represent, but
solely by their racial and ethnic background and their gender.
Interests are determined by race. This is not progressive
politics, but right-wing and racialist politics, which shares
much in common with the fascistic politics of Donald Trump.
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote that he was
“incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU
[historically black colleges and universities] grad, chosen as a
vice presidential nominee.” This was, he added, the stuff
“dreams are made of.”
Commenters on Twitter quickly pointed to the contrast between
this statement and his declaration in November 2018 that he
would never support Biden or Harris because “they both helped
build & advance mass incarceration.”
Political principles have never been a strong suit of Democratic
Party hacks. They look forward to positions within the Biden
administration and other opportunities that will reap financial
rewards.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party primaries,
Sanders won widespread support for his attacks on social
inequality and his calls for a “political revolution” against
the establishment. On this basis, he emerged as the main
contender against Biden for the Democratic Party nomination. In
the end, however, the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party got
nothing.
This has not, however, stopped Sanders from praising the
outcome. Sanders tweeted that Harris “will make history as our
next vice president.”
Since packing in his campaign in mid-March, Sanders has assumed
his assigned role as principal cheerleader for the Biden
campaign, along with Elizabeth Warren, et. al. The more that
social anger grows, and the more the Democrats are exposed, the
more determined is his support for the Democratic Party.
What an exposure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA),
Jacobin magazine and other political agents of the Democratic
Party who claimed that Sanders was the path to the
transformation of American politics and even the realization of
socialism! They make fools of themselves every election. They
will tag along with the Democratic Party in one form or another,
no doubt accompanied by talk about how they are building a
“progressive movement” inside that party of American
imperialism, along with other varieties of political fraud.
Every four years, the same play is performed.
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the
whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural
collapse of American politics.
Certain conclusions must be drawn from this experience, not only
about Sanders, but about an entire type of pragmatic politics
that hopes for easy answers to the crisis confronting the
working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its
state apparatus.
The politics of the working class must begin with a serious
theoretical understanding, rooted in a Marxist and class
analysis. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. The politics of race and gender
identity, which it relentlessly promotes, gives expression to
the interests of layers of the upper-middle class, which employ
this right-wing ideology in their fight for positions of power
and privilege in the state, academia and corporate boardrooms.
The pseudo-left, including the DSA and associated organizations,
represent this social layer.
All of this is directed against the working class and the
development of a genuine movement for socialism. Objective
conditions, however, have created the conditions for a powerful
eruption of class struggle, in the United States and
internationally. The coronavirus pandemic, as the Socialist
Equality Party has explained, is a “trigger event in world
history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic,
social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.”
Nothing progressive will emerge except through the
intervention—the interference—of the working class. The
Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign are oriented
to the development of a socialist leadership in the working
class. Our campaign is the only campaign that raises critical
questions of perspective, exposing the reactionary promoters of
racial conflict and the cheerleaders of Sanders’ “political
revolution.”
The SEP is spearheading the organization of workers against the
homicidal policy of the ruling elite, in opposition to all
factions of the ruling class, on the basis of a revolutionary
program to put an end to inequality, war, dictatorship and the
capitalist system. This is the way forward.
To support our election campaign and join the SEP, visit
socialism2020.org.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/13/pers-a13.html
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