Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Meet the New Yes Man on Trump’s COVID Task Force: Dr. Scott Atlas Wants U.S. to Adopt Herd Immunity
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/1/trump_coronavirus_scott_atlas_herd_immunity
As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States passes 6 million, with a death toll of over 183,000, the Trump administration is loosening coronavirus restrictions, fast-tracking vaccine approval and disregarding safety tests, and now one of Trump’s top medical advisers is pushing for the country to adopt a controversial “herd immunity” strategy, raising alarm among public health officials. Washington Post health reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb says Dr. Scott Atlas is not an epidemiologist and was brought on specifically because he would back President Trump’s position “about how the pandemic was going, that the threat was receding, that the country should reopen.” We also speak with Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who argues the U.S. is already following an “implicit” herd immunity policy. “They realize it’s politically toxic, so they don’t want to use the phrase, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck,” he says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States has topped 6 million, with a death toll of over 183,000. More than a million people tested positive over the past three weeks in the United States, and over 4,000 Americans died of COVID-19 just during last week’s Republican National Convention alone. That’s more than the total number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks.
This comes as the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of remdesivir for all patients hospitalized with COVID-19, despite a lack of published scientific support. Meanwhile, the FDA has ousted its top spokeswoman and a PR consultant, just days after FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn apologized for overstating the positive results of using blood plasma as a treatment for COVID-19. Under enormous pressure from President Trump, who called the FDA part of the “deep state,” the FDA recently gave emergency use authorization for the plasma treatment. The FDA chief is now admitting the agency may also consider emergency use approval for a COVID-19 vaccine before Phase 3 trials are complete.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly dropped its recommendation that people quarantine for 14 days after traveling from an area with a high rate of infection, even though public health experts say the move will undermine efforts to control the spread of the disease. The decision was reportedly made by the White House Coronavirus Task Force while top public health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci was undergoing surgery and recovering. The changes were backed by the task force’s newest member, Dr. Scott Atlas, a Fox News contributor and neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution with no expertise in epidemiology or infectious disease. Atlas is the focus of a damning new report by The Washington Post headlined “New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial 'herd immunity' strategy, worrying public health officials.”
For more, we’re joined by one of the lead authors, Yasmeen Abutaleb, national health reporter for The Washington Post. Also with us, professor Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of Public Health and co-director of the Global Health Justice Partnership.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Yasmeen, let’s begin with you. Why don’t you lay out what you found about the president’s new addition to the coronavirus task force, who he recently introduced. Tell us about Dr. Scott Atlas and what he’s pushing.
YASMEEN ABUTALEB: So, the president announced earlier in August that Scott Atlas was joining as a pandemic adviser. We know that he meets with the president almost every day. The administration brought him on because earlier this summer Trump had encouraged his advisers to look for a doctor or some sort of medical adviser with Ivy League or top university credentials who basically would argue what he wanted to hear about how the pandemic was going, that the threat was receding, that the country should reopen — basically, take the opposite tack of Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci, who are two of the top doctors on the task force and who have said the pandemic is a threat in every part of the country. They’ve urged partial lockdowns in areas experiencing surges. They’ve encouraged state mask mandates. And those aren’t things the president really wants to hear. So, Scott Atlas is more in line with what the president wants to do and wants to hear on the pandemic. So, he’s said things like kids don’t get COVID, which there is no evidence for, and that they don’t spread it. He’s said that schools should reopen no matter what, that college sports should resume.
He’s also pushing this herd immunity strategy, which basically says that you let the coronavirus spread through most of the population, and you protect the most vulnerable populations, so nursing homes, prisons, you know, tightly congregated places. That’s impractical, because vulnerable people live with healthy people. And there also — the science on coronavirus is still evolving, so there are plenty of young, healthy people who get coronavirus and die or who develop long-term complications. So almost every public health expert we spoke with very much argued against this strategy, saying it was dangerous, and some of the dangers could even be unknown.
AMY GOODMAN: During a COVID-19 news conference on Monday in Tampa Bay, Florida, Dr. Scott Atlas of the White House Coronavirus Task Force was asked about your report that he’s pushing the herd immunity strategy.
DR. SCOTT ATLAS: Twenty-five-plus percent of our young adults, 18 to 25, have contemplated suicide in the past 30 days. This has really got to end. And we know the president here has a strategic and appropriate policy, which is protecting the vulnerable. We know who’s at risk here. It’s not everybody. It’s not about all the cases that’s the most important metric. It’s about saving lives by protecting the vulnerable, by preventing hospital overcrowding — which we are really doing well — and by opening the economy, opening the schools, because American lives are being destroyed.
AMY GOODMAN: Yasmeen Abutaleb, if you could respond? That was him speaking on Fox News.
YASMEEN ABUTALEB: Yeah, I mean, he is essentially advocating a herd immunity strategy there. He’s maybe not saying it explicitly, but he’s saying, you know, plenty of people are not vulnerable to this, just protect the most vulnerable — you know, the elderly, people with underlying health conditions. So, he’s not saying it explicitly, but those are the tenets of the strategy, that it’s not a big deal if it gets into the general population, and you just sort of want to sequester off the most vulnerable people and make sure they are protected. He also talks about preventing hospital overcrowding, but that’s really difficult to do if you’re letting the virus spread unchecked through the population.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yasmeen Abutaleb, the issue here of herd immunity, I mean, Sweden is the biggest example that is held up in terms of a deliberate policy of a government to develop herd immunity. But could you talk about your understanding of how harmful it could be in the U.S., given the high percentage of Americans who have chronic conditions, whether it’s asthma, diabetes, obesity and so forth?
YASMEEN ABUTALEB: Right. I mean, I think one of the important things is Sweden has about a 10 million-person population, and the U.S. has 330 million people. The U.S. also has extraordinarily high rates of underlying health conditions that are known risk factors for coronavirus, so, like you laid out, obesity, heart disease, diabetes. All of these make people much more vulnerable for severe effects of coronavirus or more susceptible to dying from the disease. So, you know, this idea that you can separate the vulnerable from the healthy is just impractical. I mean, someone with diabetes lives in the same household as someone who’s otherwise healthy. Not every vulnerable person lives in a nursing home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms —
AMY GOODMAN: And, Gregg Gonsalves — oh, go ahead, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In terms of the CDC recommendation recently, the change against quarantining for 14 days if you’ve come from an area that has a high incidence rate of COVID-19?
YASMEEN ABUTALEB: Right. So, the CDC last week changed its testing guidance to say that asymptomatic people who come in contact with a confirmed infection don’t necessarily need to get tested. And we lay out in the article that there — you know, while the White House hasn’t formally embraced the strategy, there are policies that start to fall in line with the tenets of a herd immunity strategy.
So, unlike countries that are ramping up testing and contact tracing, and have been for some time, the U.S. seems to be moving in a direction of testing fewer people. So, this testing change last week saying you don’t need to test — or don’t necessarily need to test asymptomatic people who came into contact with a confirmed infection, the CDC estimates that up to 40% of cases are asymptomatic. And we know that the surge that we saw this summer in many parts of the country was largely driven by young, healthy people asymptomatically spreading the disease.
You know, we also laid out that they invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up tests to nursing homes, but you haven’t seen them significantly ramp up testing in other parts of the country, whether for schools, businesses, just the general population. So you already see this strategy of let’s test and aggressively test these vulnerable populations that we know are most at risk, and just sort of not worry as much about the more general population. And at a roundtable yesterday that Scott Atlas was at, he said young, healthy people don’t need to get tested. He was still reiterating aspects of this.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to that response of Scott Atlas, directly responding to your report, Yasmeen.
DR. SCOTT ATLAS: I was shocked to see the story, because they never asked me for a comment, first of all. That’s — you know, there’s news, there’s opinion, and then there’s overt lie. And that was never a strategy that was advocated by me and the administration. The president does not have a strategy like that. I’ve never advocated that strategy. So, that whole discussion in The Washington Post was just really sort of irresponsible to write an article like that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you respond, Yasmeen Abutaleb? Did you reach out to Scott Atlas?
YASMEEN ABUTALEB: We did, and we updated the article to include it. We reached out through the White House three different times to give him a chance to comment, to ask for an interview. I think it was August 21st, 28th and 29th, both through email and through phone. So there was plenty of time and plenty of opportunity to comment.
And we know from several sources that he’s pushing this strategy. And if you just look at the public statements, I mean, he advocated a herd immunity strategy in an appearance on Fox that we also quoted in the article. At that event yesterday in Florida, he was also advocating tenets of a herd immunity strategy. So, you know, there was plenty of time to comment. He did comment after the fact. So, you know, that’s just not true that we didn’t reach out. And I think the policies and his public position speak for themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Gregg Gonsalves into this conversation, with the Yale School of Public Health. Professor Gonsalves, if you can respond to this issue of herd immunity and then go on to all the messages that are being changed right now, and then particularly talk about what Dr. Hahn, the head of the FDA, has just floated, the idea that the vaccine Phase 3 trial will not be done before they move ahead with making it available to the public? What’s happening here?
GREGG GONSALVES: So, a couple of things on herd immunity. I think Yasmeen’s article in The Washington Post deserves a Pulitzer. It was meticulously researched, thoroughly documented. And any attempt to suggest that it was filled with any kind of falsehood is not true.
I mean, many people in the public health community have watched this with horror, the sort of implicit herd immunity strategy, downplaying asymptomatic testing, now the withdrawal of the 14-day quarantine period for people moving from one part of the country to the other, which might be a red zone or hot zone, the still sort of inability to get the amount of PPE we need for our healthcare workers, let alone teachers and others who are going to be in high contact, close contact, high-frequency interactions with people.
So, herd immunity is the implicit policy of the United States. And I think they realize it’s politically toxic, and so they don’t want to use the phrase, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. And this is essentially a herd immunity strategy.
And it’s entirely risky for many of the reasons you mentioned. One is because we have many more people with underlying conditions in the United States. We also don’t have the social safety net or the healthcare infrastructure that many of the Nordic countries have. So, we won’t even be able to deal with the sort of impact of the deaths and suffering we’d see by a continuation of the White House’s strategy.
What Dr. Hahn has been doing at the FDA, first with the hydroxychloroquine emergency use authorization, now with the convalescent plasma emergency use authorization, is to do the bidding of the White House based on scanty data about treatments for coronavirus.
The danger about the vaccine EUA before Phase 3 trial results are out is much more dire, because we give treatments to the sick and, in this case, to many people who are hospitalized. Vaccines go to millions of people. We depend on them to be effective, so people don’t get the wrong impression about what they should be doing in terms of social distancing and other behavior because they’re vaccinated. And we depend on them to be safe. A vaccine is going to be an important long-term way to control the virus, and we need a public confidence in vaccines. Remember, pre-COVID, half of Americans don’t get vaccinated against seasonal flu. We’ve had outbreaks of measles and diphtheria and other childhood diseases because we have pockets of people who have skepticism about vaccines. And Dr. Hahn’s sort of willingness to play fast and loose with the data, when vaccine developers, researchers, immunologists, virologists are terrified that they’re going to sort of get out ahead of the data, again, because the president wants something by the end of October so he can bring it into the election week with him hoping for victory.
But, you know, this is three strikes for the FDA: hydroxychloroquine, convalescent plasma and a potential vaccine EUA. Harold Varmus, former NIH director, today, and Rajiv Shah, who’s head of the Rockefeller Foundation, have said, “Stop listening to the CDC,” because of their asymptomatic testing language, because of the stuff about quarantines. Now what are we going to do about the FDA? They’re not giving us reliable information about the things we put in our bodies, drugs and vaccines. It’s their basic statutory mandate, and they’re failing us right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Gonsalves, what about this whole issue that even countries that did practice sharp lockdowns early on in the pandemic, like Spain, are now seeing a second wave of increasing infections? Your assessment of what should be the right policy here in the United States?
GREGG GONSALVES: So, one is, nobody said there was never going to be a second wave. And, in fact, many people, like Marc Lipsitch at Harvard and others, have talked about how this is going to sort of be a rolling pandemic around the world. Remember, Spain and Italy were later to lock down than some other countries in Europe and had very, very substantial epidemics.
The point is, we need to scale up testing. And as Yasmeen is saying, asymptomatics are key to that. Of course we’re going to diagnose people who are sick in the hospitals, but we need to know where the virus is spreading in communities. And then we can think about targeted lockdowns.
If we had done this in March and April, so lock down as we were supposed to, provide social and economic support so people could isolate at home without economic fears and without social fears, and scale up testing, contact tracing and isolation, we would be in a situation today where we wouldn’t be saying, “God, should I send my kids to school? Is there going to be an outbreak there?” Or I’m sitting at a university campus. Are we worrying about an outbreak of 100, 200, 500 student here on campus?
We never did the right thing. We can still turn around, but it really means scaling up testing among asymptomatics; getting this third relief bill out of Congress, and not a skinny bill, as Mitch McConnell is suggesting, but one that really provides support for the local and state governments, economic and social support for individuals to isolate and to social distance if they can; and a rapid scale-up of testing and PPE, and the things that we’ve been talking about left and right. You know, Scott Gottlieb is no flaming liberal. He has talked about this explicitly since March. People like Andy Slavitt, sort of on the liberal side, have done the same. This is not a bipartisan — this is a bipartisan sort of strategy that’s been articulated really since March and April. And the White House keeps turning a blind eye to it, sort of adopting conspiracy theories, finding people who will tell them what they want to hear rather than what really needs to be done.
AMY GOODMAN: Gregg Gonsalves, in one of a long series of tweets Monday, you wrote, “Dr. Atlas, a radiologist, has no training or expertise in infectious diseases, but what he does have are the words the President wants to hear: you can let the virus spread widely throughout the US if you just try to keep the elderly safe, open up everything and let ’er rip.” Talk more about who Scott Atlas is, why he’s now got the ear of the president, meeting with him almost every day, as Dr. Fauci is recovering from throat surgery, and what this means at a time — especially the asymptomatic issue. For so long we’ve been told people must be tested because asymptomatics can spread COVID-19. Kids are now gathering together all over the country to go to school. And this is exactly the point when the testing is becoming more and more difficult to get, and when he is talking about opening things up. Talk about who he is.
GREGG GONSALVES: So, look, Dr. Atlas has medical training. He’s a neuroradiologist. There are plenty of people who have general medical expertise who have been fine public health and agency leaders in the United States. You don’t have to be an infectious disease clinician or an infectious disease epidemiologist to do the right thing, but you should know when you’re getting out ahead of your skis.
And, you know, Dr. Atlas’s comments are so far from the mainstream of thinking in public health and clinical medicine on infectious diseases, it’s astounding. You know, he could have engaged experts, tried to figure out what the consensus view was, what we needed to do, and to advise the president in that way. But what he’s done instead is to sort of think about what the president wants to hear: “We’re doing great. We don’t need to do more tests. We can open up the economy, open up businesses, open up schools, open up universities. And we can sort of get through the epidemic in that way.”
And so, because of his appearances on Fox News, he caught the president’s and the White House’s attention, and that’s why he’s sitting in the place that he is, not because he has any specific expertise. He’s not edgy. He’s not contrarian. He’s just simply wrong, foolish and dangerous.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you if you could put yourself in the shoes of a political leader in the United States or some of these other countries that are dealing with this situation and are finding small but significant portions of their populations actively resisting basic public health suggestions or recommendations by their governments about how to prevent the spread of the disease. What do you do with these folks that are — in Germany, for instance, there was a protest outside the German parliament of right-wing folks who are opposed to the lockdown measures in Germany. Could you talk about what you recommend political leaders do in this situation?
GREGG GONSALVES: Well, first of all, people like Angela Merkel have been actually pretty good at sort of rallying their country to do the right thing around social distancing, around understanding the risks presented by the pandemic. And so, her and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand have been very good about rallying their countries around a sort of united, comprehensive response.
Of course there are always going to be people who don’t believe what they’re being told by their governments or, for some other reason, don’t want to comply with public health recommendations. Think, again, back to vaccination, about childhood vaccinations and what we see. And what you have to do is not to shame them and not to go after them in that way. You need to meet them where they’re at, try to figure out what’s going on. You need to build incentives into the system that helps them get to a better place than they were yesterday.
And so, yeah, I think there’s always going to be a minority of people in any given country who are resisting public health orders, who see public health as sort of an imposition on their sort of liberties. But even in the United States, remember, we did some great things this spring. We did beat down the virus in many places in this country because we took care of each other. We all stayed at home. We all social distanced. And so, we’ve shown alive that generosity and solidarity, that we even saw in this country, even though the president would be loath to admit it.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much, Gregg Gonsalves, for joining us, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, an epidemiologist. And thank you to Yasmeen Abutaleb, The Washington Post reporter who broke the story on Dr. Scott Atlas, the new adviser to President Trump on the coronavirus task force.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, President Trump heads to Kenosha, Wisconsin, today, despite fierce opposition from the Wisconsin leadership. We’re going to look at a case that implicates the very local authorities who will be dealing with the Jacob Blake case. Stay with us.
California Dems Give Up On New Oil Safety Regulations
Democrats killed legislation protecting California homes and schools from oil and gas operations after big campaign donations, industry-funded junkets.
Steve Horn
Sep 1
Editor’s note: We are proud to publish this major investigative report today from journalist Steve Horn. As you’ll see, California may be a blue state, but the fossil fuel industry still has enormous power in the state’s politics. — Sirota
This report was written by Steve Horn.
Big money from Big Oil and industry-tied unions has helped to kill a legislative effort to create environmental protections for communities living near oil and gas operations in California.
On August 5, a 5-4 Senate committee vote struck down consideration of legislation calling for consideration of a 2,500-foot setback between future oil wells and homes, schools and playgrounds. Only one of those votes came from a Republican.
It was the second time in as many years that the bill -- Assembly Bill 345 -- failed to pass, and it failed to do so even after several rounds of significant amendments had watered down the legislation. With that, a years-long activist-led legislative movement went up in smoke for 2020.
And then came the historically large wildfires. Within a matter of days, the state’s northern half caught fire at an epic scale, wildfires made worse from climate change and fueled by unfettered fossil fuel drilling. California oil is some of the dirtiest, from a climate change perspective, in the United States.
Drilling for oil in the state also has major public health repercussions, an impetus driving AB 345. Recent studies have linked oil drilling in California to health impacts, including low birth weight and small gestational age, as well as preterm births. Research has also linked higher levels of industrial pollution to higher contraction rates of COVID-19.
Despite these impacts, the bill attracted a core group of Democratic legislators who ultimately oversaw the bill’s demise. Three of those who spoke out the most strongly against AB 345 at the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water hearing on August 5 before voting against it -- Sen. Ben Hueso, Sen. Andreas Borgeas and Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg -- have received high dollar contributions and other support from oil interests that lobbied against AB 345.
The lobbying and influence campaign efforts waged by the oil industry and labor against AB 345 illustrates the difficulty in crafting climate policy and environmental protections -- even in a state with a super-majority Democratic Party legislature that bills itself as a global leader on fighting climate change.
A big part of the difficulty is the contradiction of the center of it all: California is the sixth biggest oil producer nationwide and the largest west coast oil refiner.
Exxon Backdoor?
When he spoke out on the Senate floor against AB 345 before voting it down, Hueso called the legislation a “waste of time” and “publicity stunt” by environmental justice groups. Termed out of the legislature after having served in both the Assembly and Senate, he is now running for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors District 1 seat.
Campaign financial disclosure data for that race shows that the East Los Angeles-area lobbying firm Urban Associates Inc. donated $90,000 before the March 3 primary to an independent expenditure committee supporting Hueso and a committee that opposed one of his primary opponents.
Prime Strategies, the firm that owns Urban Associates, has lobbied for ExxonMobil since 2017. ExxonMobil has accounted for roughly 60 percent of the firm’s California revenue. In the first quarter of 2020, Prime Strategies listed AB 345 as the sole piece of legislation on which it lobbied at the state-level.
“Urban Associates, Inc. is a longtime supporter of Senator Ben Hueso,” Katherine Hennigan, a spokesperson for the firm, said via email. “Our company believes he is a strong advocate for good paying, union jobs and working families. To suggest anything more than that is simply insulting and another example of politics at its worst.”
ExxonMobil spokeswoman Ashley Alemayehu told TMI the company had “no involvement in Sen. Hueso’s local campaign.”
Democrat Nora Vargas, Hueso’s general election opponent in the race, had sharp words on the vote.
“Instead of voting to protect California families and children from the health impacts of oil and gas drilling, Senator Hueso has once again failed our communities and the over 5 million Californians -- mostly black, indigenous, and people of color -- who live in a mile of drilling sites,” said Vargas.
During his state legislative career, Hueso has received $27,300 in campaign contributions from companies that lobbied against AB 345.
Hueso also has behested tens of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel industry throughout his political career, including $30,000 from the Western State Petroleum Association, $35,000 from Chevron, $15,000 from Phillips 66 and $1,000 from BP. Behesting is when California politicians raise money from outside groups or corporations and then donate it to other nonprofits, which some have described as another avenue of influence peddling.
Hueso’s legislative office and campaign team did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Labor-Oil Alliance
Urban Associates donated to another Democratic lawmaker who helped derail AB 345. Fellow San Diegan Lorena Gonzalez, who serves as Chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and Legislative Latino Caucus, received a $5,000 contribution from the firm on April 25 last year for her campaign for Secretary of State in 2022.
The donation came just three weeks before Gonzalez tabled AB 345 until the 2020 session and four days before the appropriations committee introduced heavy amendments into the legislation. The chair of the committee has unilateral power to table legislation for the second year of a session or kill it altogether.
A month after she tabled AB 345 for the 2019 session, Gonzalez received another $4,700 campaign contribution from Chevron for her 2020 Assembly race. About two weeks after killing the bill for 2019, Gonzalez received a $15,500 contribution for her Secretary of State race from the State Building & Construction Trades Council, which has formed an alliance with the oil industry to beat back AB 345.
Throughout her state legislative career, Gonzalez has received $74,000 in campaign contributions from the building trades. Near the end of the 2019 legislative session, Gonzalez received an additional $4,700 campaign contribution from Chevron, $2,000 from ExxonMobil, and $4,700 from Western States Petroleum Association.
Some pundits and insiders have floated Gonzalez’s name as someone under consideration for the U.S. Senate seat vacancy that would open if Kamala Harris successfully wins the vice presidency.
Dan Morain @DanielMorainWith Kamala Harris as Biden's VP pick, Newsom has a chance to appoint history-making senator latimes.com/california/sto…Smart story by @philwillon about possible replacements for Harris as Senator if Biden-Harris win in Nov. A name I heard today: Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.
With Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP pick, Newsom has a chance to appoint history-making senatorThe appointment promises to be one of the most consequential of his political career, both in California and in regard to any ambitions he may have for White House.latimes.comAugust 11th 20203 Retweets2 Likes
Gonzalez, for her Assembly race, has received $26,500 from donors in the oil and gas industry so far for the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to FollowTheMoney.org.
Overall, legislature Democrats have received $923,252 from the oil and gas industry donors since 2017, according to FollowTheMoney.org.
Industry-Funded Trips
Other senators who voted against AB 345 in committee took industry-funded trips convened by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy (CFEE) as the bill moved through its early legislative stage.
That foundation brings together industry lobbyists, some of the bigger establishment environmental groups, labor union officials, state legislators and a smaller array of environmental justice groups in one place for study trips abroad involving luxury hotel stays or to California-based business meetings.
Two Senate attendees of an April 2019 trip, Senate Majority Leader Hertzberg and Borgeas, voted against AB 345 at the August 5 committee hearing. Their trip took place in Switzerland and France and the agenda focused on the study of direct air capture of carbon dioxide and carbon capture and sequestration -- climate solutions pushed by the fossil fuel industry.
CFEE’s executive director is Jay Hansen, a former specialist assistant to Hertzberg when he served as assembly speaker and a former legislative and political director of the state building trades union. Hertzberg reported the trip as a $11,600 gift in disclosure forms, while Borgeas reported it as having a $10,800 value.
State law bans gifts above $500, but exempts trips like the ones convened by CFEE where 501(c)(3) nonprofits pay for lawmakers to travel and attend educational conferences or events.
CFEE is funded by its Board of Directors membess, including Chevron, Shell, Western States Petroleum Association, Marathon Petroleum and others.
Hertzberg also attended a March 2019 policy-focused meeting at a luxury resort in Napa, Calif., again hosted by CFEE. Topics on the agenda for the theme of “The Road to Carbon Neutrality” included a panel titled “Striking the Right Balance: What is the Oil and Gas Industry’s Role in a Carbon Neutral Future?” which tackled the issue of setbacks. Listed participants included 30 fossil fuel industry representatives, 11 members of the legislature and eight environmental representatives. Of those, only three represented environmental justice groups.
In a press release, Hertzberg said that “no taxpayer funds” were spent on the week-long trip to Europe. But trips funded by outside groups have faced criticism in recent years in California, with reformers saying gift-giving rules are in need of reform. On its website, CFEE touts its “legislative outcomes” achieved in California, including saying it helped get the state’s cap-and-trade program extended via AB 398 in the goal of getting to a “net zero carbon future.” Cap-and-trade is the state’s central climate program, and investigations have shown it has allowed the fossil fuel industry to continue polluting by writing off those emissions through the scheme.
Hertzberg and Borgeas have also received $28,100 and $21,000 respectively throughout their political careers from oil companies and organizations that lobbied against AB 345. Hertzberg also has received $34,800 from the building trades throughout his political career. Representatives from the legislative offices for Hertzberg and Borgeas did not respond to a request for comment.
Many of the donations to Hertzberg -- and the two trips he took sponsored by CFEE -- came in the aftermath of him signing the “No Fossil Fuel” pledge with the group Climate Hawks Vote, a public oath not to take financial contributions from the fossil fuel industry.
RL Miller @RL_MillerConsensual hug with @hertzieLA as he signs @NoFossilMoney @OilMoneyOut pledge. 
January 27th 20183 Retweets3 Likes
RL Miller, the founder of that group who took a picture next to Hertzberg when he signed that pledge, slammed him for not listening to the “pleas of Black and Latinx voices crying for relief” and said she was “appalled” that he has broken the pledge.
"He's termed out of the State Senate in 2022 and running for Controller,” said Miller, who is a DNC member. “But how can he be trusted with Californians' money when he breaks a money pledge?”
Back to Newsom
With AB 345 now history, the Newsom administration is currently considering its own setback rules through the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM). It is unclear how far that setback distance will be.
The proposed rule will be signed off on by California’s top oil regulator, Uduak-Joe Ntuk -- a former petroleum engineer for Chevron who worked at the Lost Hills Oil Field, according to his LinkedIn page. Newsom has yet to weigh in on the issue of AB 345 or setbacks directly. But in a press release announcing the start of the pre-rulemaking process, he said: “These are necessary steps to strengthen oversight of oil and gas extraction as we phase out our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on clean energy sources.”
Environmental justice advocates have pointed to that process, in which they have taken part already, as their next exclusive point of focus.
As the CalGEM process has played out, the state sued the Trump Administration in January for green-lighting fracking on public lands in many of the same counties in which oil drilling and fracking currently takes place in California.
“The risks to both people and the environment associated with fracking are simply too high to ignore,” Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a press release. “We won’t ignore the facts and science when it comes to protecting our people, economy, and environment -- and we’re taking the Trump Administration to court to prove it.”
Yet, even as that lawsuit continues in federal court, CalGEM has issued 7,474 drilling permits in many of those same counties, including 48 fracking permits in the 97% Latino company town of Lost Hills -- the most recent dozen to Chevron, Ntuk’s former employer.
Of those, 36 permits went to a company jointly owned by ExxonMobil and Shell, with lobbyists who are Newsom’s longtime political allies. Chevron also recently landed a permit to do solar-powered drilling in Lost Hills from the California Air Resources Board.
Newsom has also received donations from some of the forces opposed to AB 345. That includes a total of $112,800 from the building trades union before his successful 2018 gubernatorial bid and $500 from Eugene Litvinoff, International Counsel for Chevron. He also received $10,000 from Todd Stevens, CEO California Resources Corporation, and $8,500 from Sunset Exploration owner Robert Nunn.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Dump Trump and Vote Biden, or Vote Your Full Preference? The Dilemma for Many Left Voters
Collective 20
August 27, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/dump-trump-and-vote-biden-or-vote-your-full-preference-the-dilemma-for-many-left-voters/
https://citizentruth.org/dump-trump-and-vote-biden-or-vote-your-full-preference-the-dilemma-for-many-left-voters/
The U.S. presidential election has so far involved and will undoubtedly continue to involve a clash over voting strategy for the left. A significant array of left commentators, for example, Cornel West, AOC, Angela Davis, and Noam Chomsky have been and will likely continue urging all progressives to vote for Biden at least in swing states, even if they can’t stand his personal history and his stated and implied policies. Another array of left commentators, for example Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Krystal Ball, and Howie Hawkins, has been and will likely continue asserting that instead all progressives should vote their true preferences, for example for the Green candidate, or not vote, but in any event not vote for someone they despise, like Joe Biden.
While the two groups often seem too contrary to take each other seriously, they in fact each have a variety of claims they make in support of their favored approach. What are the claims made by each side? How well do they hold up when taken seriously on their own terms? Is the dispute about clashing principles or only about clashing perceptions? Since all involved desire a better future, is there some common ground that can be built upon?
Critics of voting for Biden hold that the United States is essentially a one-party state, the business party, with two factions, Democrats and Republicans. Those who urge voting for Biden in swing states agree that this characterization of the two parties has long been true, but argue that the situation has significantly changed. The Democrats and Republicans still certainly hide their intentions and deny the breadth of their unity. But the differences have nonetheless grown in various respects. The respected political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describe the modern Republican Party, increasingly since Newt Gingrich in the ’90s, as a “radical insurgency” that has virtually abandoned parliamentary politics. That has become still more evident and extreme under Mitch McConnell, more so in his alliance with Trump. McConnell’s Senate barely pretends to be a deliberative body. His stated goal under Obama was to block everything. Under Trump, the McConnell Senate is largely confined to pouring dollars into the pockets of the very rich and corporate sector, and packing the judiciary, top to bottom, with so many young ultra-right Federalist Society products that all mildly progressive legislation will be obstructed for a generation. In international comparisons, Republicans are ranked among the far-right European parties with neo-fascist origins.
In the current election, one side says we need to defeat Trump, which means we need to elect Biden, which means we need to vote for Biden at least in contested states where the outcome on Election Day is not foreordained—despite acknowledging Biden’s being from one wing of the business party and therefore fully wedded to society’s existing underlying relations. The rationale of this dump-Trump-by-electing-Biden position is that it is essential to defeat Trump for at least the following reasons: Trump is a dangerous authoritarian, if not a fascist, Trump is a white supremacist, Trump will dangerously increase prospects of nuclear war, and Trump will catastrophically escalate global warming.
Those who oppose voting for Biden under any circumstances advance many varied arguments. First, they point out that Biden is no friend of the people. He is, in fact, an agent of elites, as his long record makes clear. They add that to vote for him is to ratify elite rule. It is a slippery slope toward accepting injustice as inevitable.
Defeat Trump advocates reply that yes, Biden is indeed an agent of elites. But to vote for him, or rather against Trump where voting matters in contested states, is a vote against dramatically worse conditions, not a vote for maintaining existing conditions. Nor can it be assumed that Biden is a fixed agent of “elites” (a slippery concept), immune to outside pressures. If, instead, they argue, ongoing political activism can impact Biden (far more than Trump) then the vote that elects Biden is a vote to reduce resistance to change. With no follow-up, the defeat Trump advocates agree with the Biden critics that it is true that voting for Biden may slip-slide into accepting injustice as inevitable. But with follow-up, they note that his election, coupled with ongoing activism, can lead to ongoing gains. Sanders for one holds the latter view. He closed his independent run by saying that the campaign is over, but the movement is not: real politics continues. And since then Sanders and associates have been reshaping the party program, tilting it meaningfully to the left, and urging continued activist pressure—real politics—which will of course need to persist and enlarge. If elected, beat Trump advocates urge, Biden’s feet could be held to the fire by continued pressure but Trump’s feet would not even notice.
The critics of voting for Biden reply that voting for him means giving up on real system change since it seeks to elect an advocate of system maintenance. It draws potential system critics into being system maintainers.
Vote-Biden-to-defeat-Trump advocates agree that for some, voting for Biden will indeed mean they support system maintenance, but not for those who oppose Biden’s views and policies and commit to continuing to challenge Biden after his election. They wonder why anyone would think about themselves or about anyone else that pulling a lever for a few minutes to vote would have such a profound effect on a radicals’ consciousness as to reverse their overall commitments. They add that in any event fundamental system change is not an option in 2020 (no one believes that the Greens are going to win), and wouldn’t be even if Sanders had won the election with a congressional majority that allowed him to pursue his social-democratic program. What’s typically called a “revolution” in the United States, and is conceivable in the near term, is raising the country to the level of comparable nations with universal health care, free higher education, and other social justice measures. All left partisans in the debate over election 2020 tend to agree that beyond those immediate programmatic possibilities, steps toward true system change could and should certainly be pursued, but that such change will require developing a dedicated and informed mass popular base, a result that will require sustained work over the long term. That sustained work will be made easier, defeat Trump advocates argue, if Trump is beaten, and will not be harmed by the few minutes needed to cast a vote.
But voting for Biden, say the advocates of not doing so, is voting out of fear, and champions of justice should not elevate fear to prominence in their motivations. Fear-mongering is not a worthy methodology for constructive strategy.
But being afraid, say those calling for a vote against Trump, makes very good sense. We ought to fear a Trump second term. It often makes total sense to act out of fear: We take vaccines because we fear disease; we wear seatbelts because we fear traffic accidents. In any event, voting against the worst candidate is an act of hope, not fear.
Critics of voting for Biden may acknowledge some of the above, but they go on to assert that Biden will demobilize many potential movement builders and as such, Biden in office would be more of an obstacle to real change than even a Trump reelection. They argue this was Obama’s effect, particularly on anti-war activism.
The Defeat Trump advocates reply, yes, that could conceivably happen. It is a real danger, but only if Biden voters choose to succumb. They add that a Biden presidency, by loosening somewhat the tools of repression and neoliberal dogma, can open space for movement building and come under its influence. Under Trump, there would be rock-solid opposition but activism would be largely a matter of struggles to try to preserve what we have. Under Biden, the struggle would be to make gains. That’s evident day by day, right before our eyes.
But, says the don’t vote Biden group, supporting Biden means not seeking fundamental change, not building movements for fundamental change, even though fundamental change and movements to win it are the only solution to ever-worsening crises.
If we accept that elections are the totality of politics, that is true, reply the Dump Trump advocates. If we forego activism after the election, that is true. But why can’t the left strategy be to take a few minutes from political work to vote against Trump—who, quite literally, poses serious threats to the survival of organized human life on earth and whose project will impose the ultra-reactionary Trump-McConnell program for a generation? After taking a few moments for that necessary act, why can’t we then return to political action, which means trying to bar the worst Trump horrors if he is elected or to pursue the enhanced movement-building and other progressive actions for which a Biden presidency would open a window?
Yes, agree Dump Trump advocates, if a leftist starts to proclaim nonexistent Biden virtues and to see a Biden victory as the ultimate goal, then the don’t vote Biden concern becomes valid. But, they add, why should leftists follow such a path? Couldn’t you hold your nose, vote for Biden, and then release your nose and work to force a Biden administration to do more than it would, itself, desire to do?
The Never Biden group argues that over a period of many years the Democrats have been moving steadily to the right. One reason they do this is that they know they can pick up voters to their right without risking the loss of voters to their left, because for too long the left has been duped into promising the Democrats their votes no matter how awful they are—since there’s always someone worse.
The Defeat Trump group first notes that the Obama administration was not further to the right than Clinton. But, in any event, popular activism since then, sometimes within the Sanders movement, sometimes not, has pressed the arena of discussion and choices in society and in the Democratic Party well to the left of either Clinton or Obama—or their predecessors for a long time. The donor class and the Clinton New Democrats don’t like it, but they have to accommodate it. That again is real politics, not elections, at work.
Never Biden advocates reply that when the Democrats and Biden go out of their way to tell us that they don’t give a damn about us and about our views—opposing the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and defunding police, with Biden saying he will not reverse the decision on the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem (despite having opposed it for years)—confronted with this sort of slap in the face—no one will take the left seriously if it says it’s going to vote for Biden anyway.
Defeat Trump advocates reply, yes, if the left were to vote for Biden to beat Trump and then pack up and go home like there is no more to do, this complaint would be correct. But if that is what we are made of, it would cripple all efforts at change. If the left says we are voting against Trump because he is horrendous, and we find Biden lacking in virtually every conceivable way and starting the minute he is in office we will oppose and challenge him and his administration from the left, then everyone will take the left seriously, and, more important, the left will be able to make serious gains.
Undaunted, the Never Biden group replies that the gains from boycotting the election altogether or from voting for a third-party candidate outweigh the risks of Trump for four more years. The former are greater than acknowledged. The latter are less than feared.
The dump Trump group asks, what benefits? Individual or collective? Individually, why does a leftist benefit from not voting for Biden in a contested state? Pulling the lever for Biden will not magically cause one to lose left inclinations. Nor will it decrease one’s understanding of the system, or of alternatives. And collectively what gain is there from some group not voting for Biden in a contested state? Imagine that a thousand folks who hate Trump, who would love to vote for Sanders, say, or for someone even more to their taste, decide not to vote for Biden. Does this make them more radical, more knowledgeable, more committed? Why can’t they vote for Biden and not become beholden to Biden the same way they can take medicine from pharmaceutical companies, and road repairs from the government, without becoming beholden to either—in fact, while being opposed to each?
And on the other side of this calculus, the dump Trump group asks how is the danger of Trump exaggerated? To mention only the most obvious danger, Trump’s dedicated assault on the environment may lead to irreversible tipping points within four years, and at the very least will make it far more difficult to deal with the huge challenge of environmental catastrophe within the brief period that remains for us to do so. In contrast, a Biden presidency (and Congress) would be susceptible to influence by real politics, organizing, and resistance, which could even lead to the implementation of some form of Green New Deal against Biden’s opposition, a prerequisite for survival. Already activism has been able to press Biden to announce a plan, backed by the Sunrise Movement, to invest $2 trillion in green jobs and infrastructure over the next four years, and to eliminate carbon pollution from the energy sector by 2035, instead of his previous pledge of 2050.
The Never Biden group contends that Trump has no ideology—calling him fascist, for example, misses that he is just a self-seeking fool. Movements can curb his excesses, perhaps easier than they can curb those of more genteel Democrats.
The Dump Trumpers reply: Trump is no fool. He is a skillful con man. He has a simple and clear ideology: amass as much power as possible in his own hands, serve his corporate masters abjectly, and keep control over the popular voting base that he is shafting at every turn, throwing them enough scraps of seeming support to keep them in line. So far, he’s been doing it quite skillfully. It’s certainly true that movements might pose limited barriers to some of his machinations, but it would mostly be defense instead of grasping and exploiting new opportunities as could be possible fighting a Biden administration.
Some who won’t vote Biden answer that while it’s true in many ways that Trump is awful, on some issues the Democrats are worse. Trump is less of a warmonger. He’s less committed to free trade deals.
Dump Trump advocates respond that in fact Trump is one of the most extreme warmongers in recent history. Canceling the Iran deal (the JCPOA) sharply increased the prospects of war in the volatile Middle East region. Tearing the arms control regime to shreds greatly enhances the prospects of nuclear war, along with his drive to develop still more destructive weapons, encouraging others to do the same, while blocking negotiations that may fend off terminal disaster—a matter of no concern to someone like Trump, a sociopath whose concern is to enrich military industry and the corporate sector in which it is embedded. Right now, he is sending an enormous military force to the South China Sea, daring China to respond. That complements his highly provocative actions on the Russian border.
And so-called “free trade deals” (which are not free trade deals) can’t just be waved as a slogan, for or against. The global economic system is not going to go away soon, if ever, and the left should be trying to restructure it in ways that benefit the general population, working people in particular.
Some Never Biden folks note that Trump’s approach has galvanized opposition, so his election will aid movement-building. Look at all the demonstrations. Look at all the activism. And, in any event, the best way to oppose Trump is to work for a Green New Deal, for sensible immigration policies, and against systemic racism, and so on. If we do our activism, then we are doing what is best.
The Dump Trump advocates reply that, yes, Trump will galvanize opposition, but those movements will be fighting for survival and watching their prospects diminish under court stacking, attacks on labor, and the general erosion of such democratic mechanisms as exist. And Dump Trump advocates then also agree on the priority of fighting for gains like the Green New Deal and sensible immigration policies and against atrocities like systemic racism, but add that when it comes time for the election, if there are contested states, then taking ten minutes to vote for Biden in those states will be just another step in that same process, since getting rid of Trump will enhance prospects for activists winning a Green New Deal and sane immigration practices while curbing and reversing racism, whereas Trump winning would further obstruct all such efforts.
But, says the Never Biden camp, oppositional movements do better under right-wing governments. DSA has never been stronger, Black Lives Matter protests have been unprecedented, the biggest anti-war mobilizations came under Nixon, Reagan (Central America), and Bush (Iraq).
Yes, say the Defeat Trumpers, opposition to 40 years of neoliberal savagery is growing all over the world, taking different forms. It’s true that anti-war movements grow under governments that carry out major wars. But by the logic of this argument, the left should be calling for the government to go to war against Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, which would arouse anti-war movements. Better to use a degree of peace to do what must ultimately be done in any event, build anti-war and peace movements that are against military spending, military threatening, military bases, etc., all of which could be better done under Biden than Trump.
The Never Biden advocates argue that Trump is so unpopular, anyone could win against him. He is way behind in the polls. Therefore, the dire predictions of what will follow from a Trump victory are just scare tactics, claiming that the sky is falling.
Dump Trump advocates reply that the polls are in fact, highly uncertain, and quite volatile, and Republicans—a minority party—are hard at work purging voters and developing other means to block voting by “the wrong people.” When the sky is falling—as it is—to acknowledge the danger is better than to join the far right and pretend nothing is happening.
Some Never Biden folks add that Trump is so unpopular, anyone could win against him. If Biden loses, it’s his and the Democrats’ fault.
Sure, dump Trump advocates reply, Biden should win regardless of abstentions by leftists refusing to vote for Biden in contested states. So what? If the Democrats have run poorly or otherwise been insufficiently aggressive, or industrious, or creative, or whatever, to win without left votes in contested states, then those votes become urgent, perhaps decisive. If the Democrats do well enough to win easily, no problem, there will be few if any contested states and in any event no loss from voting for him.
Those who reject voting for Biden claim that the impact of the left offering its few votes for an election that the Democrats should win easily will be small. But the impact of the left pushing the Green Party over the 5 percent mark needed for receiving matching funds, or for securing a ballot line, can make an actual difference.
The Dump Trump folks reply that the impact of the left offering its few votes to Biden could instead be decisive, again, as it could have been last election, in 2016. Has the Green Party having done better on the presidential vote than if its supporters had cast ballots for Clinton in contested states benefited Greens enough, since then, to have offset the grim effects of the wild reactionary policies of Trump on Black, Latinx, LGBTQ people, women, those dead from preventable COVID-19, and on and on? For that matter, did their votes for Stein instead of Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania benefit the Greens at all? To answer, suggests Dump Trump, consider the much greater growth of DSA in the period.
Never Biden advocates often suggest that every election people like Chomsky tell us that this is the most critical election in history, the future of the human race depends on the outcome. And guess what? We survive.
Actually, as “people like Chomsky” can testify, they have never said anything of the sort until now—when it happens to be true, have often not bothered to vote or have voted for third parties, and have sometimes chosen to vote against a major candidate for another during the brief period taken off from political work. And, yes, it’s a fact that we’ve survived, by a virtual miracle, as anyone who takes the trouble to look at the history of the nuclear era is well aware—and that threat is growing under Trump. Every year since Trump has been in office, the Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to midnight. Last January, the analysts abandoned minutes and moved to seconds: 100 seconds to midnight. Since January, Trump has escalated the threat of terminal nuclear war. But whether you think a Trump second term is apocalyptic or just wildly reactionary, in either case, casting a ballot against him for a few minutes—is that really going to derail one’s mind from critical thinking, is it really going to interrupt radical activism? Furthermore, the dire warnings are valid. Apart from far-right Republicans, the world is now becoming aware of the very severe and growing threat of environmental catastrophe. Trump is proudly taking the lead in racing to the abyss while virtually everyone else, apart from Trump clones like President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, is doing at least something to stave off disaster. The line “guess what, we’ve survived,” is borrowed from a happy gentleman who jumps off the roof of a skyscraper and waves cheerily to a friend on the 50th floor. Better to not jump.
So, having recounted various views of Never Biden partisans and various Defeat Trump replies we come to the hard part of this exercise. Is there a way forward that can unify the two positions?
Isn’t it to recognize that voting for Biden in a contested state to dump Trump doesn’t have to indicate or lead to aligning with Biden, or with elites at all, but can and should only say that Biden in office will be vastly better for diverse constituencies and for progressive and left agendas than a second term for Trump?
And, if so, isn’t the way to avoid the serious pitfalls and problems the Never Biden people rightly identify to steadfastly and clearly enunciate those pitfalls, and, far more so, to commit to joining in struggles against a Biden administration and in pursuit of a better world?
Maybe the two camps can come together behind a new slogan, “Dump Trump, then Combat Biden?” where the Never Biden camp acknowledges the need to take the ten minutes to vote for Biden in contested states and the Defeat Trump camp acknowledges the need to realize that a lesser evil is still evil.
While the two groups often seem too contrary to take each other seriously, they in fact each have a variety of claims they make in support of their favored approach. What are the claims made by each side? How well do they hold up when taken seriously on their own terms? Is the dispute about clashing principles or only about clashing perceptions? Since all involved desire a better future, is there some common ground that can be built upon?
Critics of voting for Biden hold that the United States is essentially a one-party state, the business party, with two factions, Democrats and Republicans. Those who urge voting for Biden in swing states agree that this characterization of the two parties has long been true, but argue that the situation has significantly changed. The Democrats and Republicans still certainly hide their intentions and deny the breadth of their unity. But the differences have nonetheless grown in various respects. The respected political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describe the modern Republican Party, increasingly since Newt Gingrich in the ’90s, as a “radical insurgency” that has virtually abandoned parliamentary politics. That has become still more evident and extreme under Mitch McConnell, more so in his alliance with Trump. McConnell’s Senate barely pretends to be a deliberative body. His stated goal under Obama was to block everything. Under Trump, the McConnell Senate is largely confined to pouring dollars into the pockets of the very rich and corporate sector, and packing the judiciary, top to bottom, with so many young ultra-right Federalist Society products that all mildly progressive legislation will be obstructed for a generation. In international comparisons, Republicans are ranked among the far-right European parties with neo-fascist origins.
In the current election, one side says we need to defeat Trump, which means we need to elect Biden, which means we need to vote for Biden at least in contested states where the outcome on Election Day is not foreordained—despite acknowledging Biden’s being from one wing of the business party and therefore fully wedded to society’s existing underlying relations. The rationale of this dump-Trump-by-electing-Biden position is that it is essential to defeat Trump for at least the following reasons: Trump is a dangerous authoritarian, if not a fascist, Trump is a white supremacist, Trump will dangerously increase prospects of nuclear war, and Trump will catastrophically escalate global warming.
Those who oppose voting for Biden under any circumstances advance many varied arguments. First, they point out that Biden is no friend of the people. He is, in fact, an agent of elites, as his long record makes clear. They add that to vote for him is to ratify elite rule. It is a slippery slope toward accepting injustice as inevitable.
Defeat Trump advocates reply that yes, Biden is indeed an agent of elites. But to vote for him, or rather against Trump where voting matters in contested states, is a vote against dramatically worse conditions, not a vote for maintaining existing conditions. Nor can it be assumed that Biden is a fixed agent of “elites” (a slippery concept), immune to outside pressures. If, instead, they argue, ongoing political activism can impact Biden (far more than Trump) then the vote that elects Biden is a vote to reduce resistance to change. With no follow-up, the defeat Trump advocates agree with the Biden critics that it is true that voting for Biden may slip-slide into accepting injustice as inevitable. But with follow-up, they note that his election, coupled with ongoing activism, can lead to ongoing gains. Sanders for one holds the latter view. He closed his independent run by saying that the campaign is over, but the movement is not: real politics continues. And since then Sanders and associates have been reshaping the party program, tilting it meaningfully to the left, and urging continued activist pressure—real politics—which will of course need to persist and enlarge. If elected, beat Trump advocates urge, Biden’s feet could be held to the fire by continued pressure but Trump’s feet would not even notice.
The critics of voting for Biden reply that voting for him means giving up on real system change since it seeks to elect an advocate of system maintenance. It draws potential system critics into being system maintainers.
Vote-Biden-to-defeat-Trump advocates agree that for some, voting for Biden will indeed mean they support system maintenance, but not for those who oppose Biden’s views and policies and commit to continuing to challenge Biden after his election. They wonder why anyone would think about themselves or about anyone else that pulling a lever for a few minutes to vote would have such a profound effect on a radicals’ consciousness as to reverse their overall commitments. They add that in any event fundamental system change is not an option in 2020 (no one believes that the Greens are going to win), and wouldn’t be even if Sanders had won the election with a congressional majority that allowed him to pursue his social-democratic program. What’s typically called a “revolution” in the United States, and is conceivable in the near term, is raising the country to the level of comparable nations with universal health care, free higher education, and other social justice measures. All left partisans in the debate over election 2020 tend to agree that beyond those immediate programmatic possibilities, steps toward true system change could and should certainly be pursued, but that such change will require developing a dedicated and informed mass popular base, a result that will require sustained work over the long term. That sustained work will be made easier, defeat Trump advocates argue, if Trump is beaten, and will not be harmed by the few minutes needed to cast a vote.
But voting for Biden, say the advocates of not doing so, is voting out of fear, and champions of justice should not elevate fear to prominence in their motivations. Fear-mongering is not a worthy methodology for constructive strategy.
But being afraid, say those calling for a vote against Trump, makes very good sense. We ought to fear a Trump second term. It often makes total sense to act out of fear: We take vaccines because we fear disease; we wear seatbelts because we fear traffic accidents. In any event, voting against the worst candidate is an act of hope, not fear.
Critics of voting for Biden may acknowledge some of the above, but they go on to assert that Biden will demobilize many potential movement builders and as such, Biden in office would be more of an obstacle to real change than even a Trump reelection. They argue this was Obama’s effect, particularly on anti-war activism.
The Defeat Trump advocates reply, yes, that could conceivably happen. It is a real danger, but only if Biden voters choose to succumb. They add that a Biden presidency, by loosening somewhat the tools of repression and neoliberal dogma, can open space for movement building and come under its influence. Under Trump, there would be rock-solid opposition but activism would be largely a matter of struggles to try to preserve what we have. Under Biden, the struggle would be to make gains. That’s evident day by day, right before our eyes.
But, says the don’t vote Biden group, supporting Biden means not seeking fundamental change, not building movements for fundamental change, even though fundamental change and movements to win it are the only solution to ever-worsening crises.
If we accept that elections are the totality of politics, that is true, reply the Dump Trump advocates. If we forego activism after the election, that is true. But why can’t the left strategy be to take a few minutes from political work to vote against Trump—who, quite literally, poses serious threats to the survival of organized human life on earth and whose project will impose the ultra-reactionary Trump-McConnell program for a generation? After taking a few moments for that necessary act, why can’t we then return to political action, which means trying to bar the worst Trump horrors if he is elected or to pursue the enhanced movement-building and other progressive actions for which a Biden presidency would open a window?
Yes, agree Dump Trump advocates, if a leftist starts to proclaim nonexistent Biden virtues and to see a Biden victory as the ultimate goal, then the don’t vote Biden concern becomes valid. But, they add, why should leftists follow such a path? Couldn’t you hold your nose, vote for Biden, and then release your nose and work to force a Biden administration to do more than it would, itself, desire to do?
The Never Biden group argues that over a period of many years the Democrats have been moving steadily to the right. One reason they do this is that they know they can pick up voters to their right without risking the loss of voters to their left, because for too long the left has been duped into promising the Democrats their votes no matter how awful they are—since there’s always someone worse.
The Defeat Trump group first notes that the Obama administration was not further to the right than Clinton. But, in any event, popular activism since then, sometimes within the Sanders movement, sometimes not, has pressed the arena of discussion and choices in society and in the Democratic Party well to the left of either Clinton or Obama—or their predecessors for a long time. The donor class and the Clinton New Democrats don’t like it, but they have to accommodate it. That again is real politics, not elections, at work.
Never Biden advocates reply that when the Democrats and Biden go out of their way to tell us that they don’t give a damn about us and about our views—opposing the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and defunding police, with Biden saying he will not reverse the decision on the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem (despite having opposed it for years)—confronted with this sort of slap in the face—no one will take the left seriously if it says it’s going to vote for Biden anyway.
Defeat Trump advocates reply, yes, if the left were to vote for Biden to beat Trump and then pack up and go home like there is no more to do, this complaint would be correct. But if that is what we are made of, it would cripple all efforts at change. If the left says we are voting against Trump because he is horrendous, and we find Biden lacking in virtually every conceivable way and starting the minute he is in office we will oppose and challenge him and his administration from the left, then everyone will take the left seriously, and, more important, the left will be able to make serious gains.
Undaunted, the Never Biden group replies that the gains from boycotting the election altogether or from voting for a third-party candidate outweigh the risks of Trump for four more years. The former are greater than acknowledged. The latter are less than feared.
The dump Trump group asks, what benefits? Individual or collective? Individually, why does a leftist benefit from not voting for Biden in a contested state? Pulling the lever for Biden will not magically cause one to lose left inclinations. Nor will it decrease one’s understanding of the system, or of alternatives. And collectively what gain is there from some group not voting for Biden in a contested state? Imagine that a thousand folks who hate Trump, who would love to vote for Sanders, say, or for someone even more to their taste, decide not to vote for Biden. Does this make them more radical, more knowledgeable, more committed? Why can’t they vote for Biden and not become beholden to Biden the same way they can take medicine from pharmaceutical companies, and road repairs from the government, without becoming beholden to either—in fact, while being opposed to each?
And on the other side of this calculus, the dump Trump group asks how is the danger of Trump exaggerated? To mention only the most obvious danger, Trump’s dedicated assault on the environment may lead to irreversible tipping points within four years, and at the very least will make it far more difficult to deal with the huge challenge of environmental catastrophe within the brief period that remains for us to do so. In contrast, a Biden presidency (and Congress) would be susceptible to influence by real politics, organizing, and resistance, which could even lead to the implementation of some form of Green New Deal against Biden’s opposition, a prerequisite for survival. Already activism has been able to press Biden to announce a plan, backed by the Sunrise Movement, to invest $2 trillion in green jobs and infrastructure over the next four years, and to eliminate carbon pollution from the energy sector by 2035, instead of his previous pledge of 2050.
The Never Biden group contends that Trump has no ideology—calling him fascist, for example, misses that he is just a self-seeking fool. Movements can curb his excesses, perhaps easier than they can curb those of more genteel Democrats.
The Dump Trumpers reply: Trump is no fool. He is a skillful con man. He has a simple and clear ideology: amass as much power as possible in his own hands, serve his corporate masters abjectly, and keep control over the popular voting base that he is shafting at every turn, throwing them enough scraps of seeming support to keep them in line. So far, he’s been doing it quite skillfully. It’s certainly true that movements might pose limited barriers to some of his machinations, but it would mostly be defense instead of grasping and exploiting new opportunities as could be possible fighting a Biden administration.
Some who won’t vote Biden answer that while it’s true in many ways that Trump is awful, on some issues the Democrats are worse. Trump is less of a warmonger. He’s less committed to free trade deals.
Dump Trump advocates respond that in fact Trump is one of the most extreme warmongers in recent history. Canceling the Iran deal (the JCPOA) sharply increased the prospects of war in the volatile Middle East region. Tearing the arms control regime to shreds greatly enhances the prospects of nuclear war, along with his drive to develop still more destructive weapons, encouraging others to do the same, while blocking negotiations that may fend off terminal disaster—a matter of no concern to someone like Trump, a sociopath whose concern is to enrich military industry and the corporate sector in which it is embedded. Right now, he is sending an enormous military force to the South China Sea, daring China to respond. That complements his highly provocative actions on the Russian border.
And so-called “free trade deals” (which are not free trade deals) can’t just be waved as a slogan, for or against. The global economic system is not going to go away soon, if ever, and the left should be trying to restructure it in ways that benefit the general population, working people in particular.
Some Never Biden folks note that Trump’s approach has galvanized opposition, so his election will aid movement-building. Look at all the demonstrations. Look at all the activism. And, in any event, the best way to oppose Trump is to work for a Green New Deal, for sensible immigration policies, and against systemic racism, and so on. If we do our activism, then we are doing what is best.
The Dump Trump advocates reply that, yes, Trump will galvanize opposition, but those movements will be fighting for survival and watching their prospects diminish under court stacking, attacks on labor, and the general erosion of such democratic mechanisms as exist. And Dump Trump advocates then also agree on the priority of fighting for gains like the Green New Deal and sensible immigration policies and against atrocities like systemic racism, but add that when it comes time for the election, if there are contested states, then taking ten minutes to vote for Biden in those states will be just another step in that same process, since getting rid of Trump will enhance prospects for activists winning a Green New Deal and sane immigration practices while curbing and reversing racism, whereas Trump winning would further obstruct all such efforts.
But, says the Never Biden camp, oppositional movements do better under right-wing governments. DSA has never been stronger, Black Lives Matter protests have been unprecedented, the biggest anti-war mobilizations came under Nixon, Reagan (Central America), and Bush (Iraq).
Yes, say the Defeat Trumpers, opposition to 40 years of neoliberal savagery is growing all over the world, taking different forms. It’s true that anti-war movements grow under governments that carry out major wars. But by the logic of this argument, the left should be calling for the government to go to war against Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, which would arouse anti-war movements. Better to use a degree of peace to do what must ultimately be done in any event, build anti-war and peace movements that are against military spending, military threatening, military bases, etc., all of which could be better done under Biden than Trump.
The Never Biden advocates argue that Trump is so unpopular, anyone could win against him. He is way behind in the polls. Therefore, the dire predictions of what will follow from a Trump victory are just scare tactics, claiming that the sky is falling.
Dump Trump advocates reply that the polls are in fact, highly uncertain, and quite volatile, and Republicans—a minority party—are hard at work purging voters and developing other means to block voting by “the wrong people.” When the sky is falling—as it is—to acknowledge the danger is better than to join the far right and pretend nothing is happening.
Some Never Biden folks add that Trump is so unpopular, anyone could win against him. If Biden loses, it’s his and the Democrats’ fault.
Sure, dump Trump advocates reply, Biden should win regardless of abstentions by leftists refusing to vote for Biden in contested states. So what? If the Democrats have run poorly or otherwise been insufficiently aggressive, or industrious, or creative, or whatever, to win without left votes in contested states, then those votes become urgent, perhaps decisive. If the Democrats do well enough to win easily, no problem, there will be few if any contested states and in any event no loss from voting for him.
Those who reject voting for Biden claim that the impact of the left offering its few votes for an election that the Democrats should win easily will be small. But the impact of the left pushing the Green Party over the 5 percent mark needed for receiving matching funds, or for securing a ballot line, can make an actual difference.
The Dump Trump folks reply that the impact of the left offering its few votes to Biden could instead be decisive, again, as it could have been last election, in 2016. Has the Green Party having done better on the presidential vote than if its supporters had cast ballots for Clinton in contested states benefited Greens enough, since then, to have offset the grim effects of the wild reactionary policies of Trump on Black, Latinx, LGBTQ people, women, those dead from preventable COVID-19, and on and on? For that matter, did their votes for Stein instead of Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania benefit the Greens at all? To answer, suggests Dump Trump, consider the much greater growth of DSA in the period.
Never Biden advocates often suggest that every election people like Chomsky tell us that this is the most critical election in history, the future of the human race depends on the outcome. And guess what? We survive.
Actually, as “people like Chomsky” can testify, they have never said anything of the sort until now—when it happens to be true, have often not bothered to vote or have voted for third parties, and have sometimes chosen to vote against a major candidate for another during the brief period taken off from political work. And, yes, it’s a fact that we’ve survived, by a virtual miracle, as anyone who takes the trouble to look at the history of the nuclear era is well aware—and that threat is growing under Trump. Every year since Trump has been in office, the Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to midnight. Last January, the analysts abandoned minutes and moved to seconds: 100 seconds to midnight. Since January, Trump has escalated the threat of terminal nuclear war. But whether you think a Trump second term is apocalyptic or just wildly reactionary, in either case, casting a ballot against him for a few minutes—is that really going to derail one’s mind from critical thinking, is it really going to interrupt radical activism? Furthermore, the dire warnings are valid. Apart from far-right Republicans, the world is now becoming aware of the very severe and growing threat of environmental catastrophe. Trump is proudly taking the lead in racing to the abyss while virtually everyone else, apart from Trump clones like President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, is doing at least something to stave off disaster. The line “guess what, we’ve survived,” is borrowed from a happy gentleman who jumps off the roof of a skyscraper and waves cheerily to a friend on the 50th floor. Better to not jump.
So, having recounted various views of Never Biden partisans and various Defeat Trump replies we come to the hard part of this exercise. Is there a way forward that can unify the two positions?
Isn’t it to recognize that voting for Biden in a contested state to dump Trump doesn’t have to indicate or lead to aligning with Biden, or with elites at all, but can and should only say that Biden in office will be vastly better for diverse constituencies and for progressive and left agendas than a second term for Trump?
And, if so, isn’t the way to avoid the serious pitfalls and problems the Never Biden people rightly identify to steadfastly and clearly enunciate those pitfalls, and, far more so, to commit to joining in struggles against a Biden administration and in pursuit of a better world?
Maybe the two camps can come together behind a new slogan, “Dump Trump, then Combat Biden?” where the Never Biden camp acknowledges the need to take the ten minutes to vote for Biden in contested states and the Defeat Trump camp acknowledges the need to realize that a lesser evil is still evil.
‘Wild and Timely’ Report Details Infiltration of Far-Right Militias and White Supremacist Groups in US Police Departments
https://citizentruth.org/wild-and-timely-report-details-infiltration-of-far-right-militias-and-white-supremacist-groups-in-us-police-departments/
The study comes amid unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the latest high-profile police shooting of a Black man and the shooting deaths of two protesters by an alleged far-right militia member.
(By: Julia Conley, Common Dreams) As law enforcement agencies and lawmakers respond to nationwide outrage over countless police shootings of Black Americans with pledges to address racial profiling and “implicit bias,” the Brennan Center for Justice released a report Thursday on what it called “an especially harmful form of bias, which remains entrenched within law enforcement: explicit racism.”
The presence of virulent racism within police ranks across the country has grown over the past two decades, Brennan Center fellow and former FBI special agent Michael German wrote in the report, as white supremacist and far-right militant groups have infiltrated law enforcement agencies.
“While it is widely acknowledged that racist officers subsist within police departments around the country, federal, state, and local governments are doing far too little to proactively identify them, report their behavior to prosecutors who might unwittingly rely on their testimony in criminal cases, or protect the diverse communities they are sworn to serve,” wrote German. “Efforts to address systemic and implicit biases in law enforcement are unlikely to be effective in reducing the racial disparities in the criminal justice system as long as explicit racism in law enforcement continues to endure. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that it does.”
According to the report, titled “Hidden in Plain Sight,” police officers with alleged ties to white supremacist groups or violent far-right militias have been identified in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
The report was called “wild and timely” by attorney and writer Madiba K. Dennie, as it was released two days after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin appeared to welcome the presence of armed militias at a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was left paralyzed.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, cell phone video showed police telling armed white people that they “appreciated them being there” and handing them bottled water. One of the people in the video appeared to be a 17-year-old gunman who allegedly shot three people at the protest, killing two.
Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed the victims for being at the protest after a city-wide curfew while defending the suspected gunman and other militia members for “exercising their constitutional rights.”
Footage of Kenosha Sheriff David Beth saying in 2018 that Black people who shoplift are “a cancer to our society” and “have to be warehoused” also surfaced on Wednesday, sparking alarm and outrage over the official’s open racism.
The ACLU on Thursday called for the immediate resignation of Beth and Miskinis.
The conduct of police in Kenosha offers only the most recent evidence that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have sympathy for if not direct ties to far-right militias and white supremacist groups, according to German’s report.
Police in states including California, Oregon, and Illinois are currently being investigated for their alleged connections to far-right groups that oppose the Black Lives Matter movement, with many law enforcement officers engaging “in overtly racist activities in public, on social media, or over law enforcement–only communication channels and internet chat rooms.”
Earlier this year, an officer in Salem, Oregon was caught on video asking “heavily armed white men dressed like militia to step inside a building or sit in their cars while the police arrested protesters.”
The officer said he made the request “so we don’t look like we’re playing favorites.”
Officials in Olympia, Washington opened an investigation into an officer who posed for a photograph with a heavily armed far-right militia group called Three Percent of Washington, allegedly after the officer thanked the group for guarding a shopping center.
The Brennan Center noted that few safeguards exist at the local and federal level to root out police officers who have ties to far-right militant groups or white supremacy.
The failure to respond to evidence of explicit racism among police officers “signals to white supremacists and far-right militants that their illegal acts enjoy government approval and authorization, making them all the more brazen and dangerous. Winning back public trust requires transparent and equal enforcement of the law, effective oversight, and public accountability that prioritizes targeted communities’ interests.”
In addition to working to end implicit bias in policing, German wrote, agencies must establish mitigation plans when overt racism is detected in their ranks.
“Mitigation plans could include referrals to internal affairs, local prosecutors, or the DOJ for investigation and prosecution; termination or other disciplinary action; limitations of assignments to reduce potentially problematic contact with the public; retraining; and intensified supervision and auditing,” German wrote.
The report also called on the FBI to determine whether its domestic terrorist investigations involving white supremacists uncover any connections to law enforcement, and whether police officers investigated for civil rights violations “have connections to violent white supremacist organizations or other far-right militant groups, have a record of discriminatory behavior, or have a history of posting explicitly racist commentary in public or on social media platforms.”
“The most effective way for law enforcement agencies to restore public trust and prevent racism from influencing law enforcement actions is to prohibit individuals who are members of white supremacist groups or who have a history of explicitly racist conduct from becoming law enforcement officers in the first place, or from remaining officers once bias is demonstrated,” German wrote.
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