No matter the outcome, the election will not fix racism, police terror

By Monica Moorehead posted on November 2, 2020




https://www.workers.org/2020/11/52148/







Nov. 2 – CNN reports that a record 95 million-plus voters have already cast their ballot in the presidential race as of today. This number already represents at least 70% of the 139 million total votes cast during the 2016 election, all but guaranteeing there will be a record-setting number of votes by Nov. 3 and the highest percentage of eligible voters in more than a century.
Voters are traveling hundreds of miles and standing or sitting in long lines for hours, braving wind and rain, wearing masks and social distancing at polling places, hoping that their vote will be counted in a timely manner.

There is no doubt that an unprecedented number of those votes were cast by African-Americans, particularly in Georgia, North Carolina and other Southern states, and in urban areas, where Black people reside in large, disproportionate numbers. There are political and historical reasons why voting is taken so seriously by Black people.

The main social base for the Democratic Party has been African Americans, particularly since the Black masses in the South legally won – through mass struggle – the right to vote under the 1965 federally mandated Voting Rights Act. But there has been an ongoing threat to the exercise of this basic democratic right.

Not since the passage of the Great Compromise of 1877 – which violently stripped formerly enslaved Black people of any kind of democratic rights achieved under the radical period of Reconstruction after the Civil War – has voter suppression been so blatantly encouraged and instituted as it is now, with the vocal blessing of the Trump administration.

Those who have felony records have either lost their right to vote forever or have to go through many legal maneuvers to win it back. With Trump’s pro-cop, racist appeal to his base of armed, neofascist, rightwing militia working hand-in-hand with the police, Black people and others deemed to be supporters of the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket have been physically threatened or actually attacked for attempting to vote or to promote the vote.

These attacks are being reported around the country. For instance, in Graham, N.C., Black demonstrators, including children as young as three years old, were viciously attacked by police with pepper spray on Oct. 31 when, while marching to polling places, they stopped to protest in front of a Confederate monument. Some were arrested.

Police violence escalates

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has sent the National Guard to Philadelphia to impose a curfew in the aftermath of the police murder of a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace Jr., who was shot multiple times in front of his home. His mother had called for an ambulance for her son, who had a history of mental illness, but the police arrived instead and executed him in broad daylight. Wallace is the most recent addition to the tragic list of nearly one thousand people killed so far by the police in 2020.

Several hours after the Wallace shooting, a young mother, Rickia Young, had her car surrounded by Philadelphia police while attempting to leave an area where a protest was taking place. She and her teenaged nephew were then beaten by the police while her 2-year-old son sat in his car seat. Despite many arrests and now the calling in of the National Guard, community and political activists have kept a strong presence in the streets demanding justice for Walter Wallace, just days before the election.

Another disturbing sign of racist state repression in Philadelphia has been the completely unwarranted arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Ant Smith, a leader of the Philly REAL [Racial, Economic and Legal] Justice coalition. REAL Justice was formed to defend Black Lives Matter by fighting all forms of racist repression. There is a national call on social media and in the streets demanding the freedom of this dynamic Black activist and for all the false charges against him to be dropped.

It is very difficult to separate all these events in Philadelphia from the overall repressive atmosphere in the lead-up to the election.

An ongoing war against Black people

While white supremacy and police brutality have always been relied on to maintain capitalist rule, the lynching of George Floyd has caused the intensity of police brutality to be even more scrutinized. According to a study by Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture, at least 950 incidents of police violence against peaceful protests have been recorded over the past five months, including “more than 500 instances of police using less-lethal rounds, pepper spray and teargas; 60 incidents of officers using unlawful assembly to arrest protesters; 19 incidents of police being permissive to the far right and showing double standards when confronted with white supremacists; five attacks on medics; and 11 instances of kettling.” (Guardian, Oct. 29)

Misogyny, anti-LGBTQ2S+ bigotry, ableism, and other oppressions are also intensified under the white supremacy exhibited by Trump and his ilk.

The current crisis of police and neofascist violence, instigated by the White House, once again proves that the fight against the state is a key part of the Black struggle for self-determination. At the height of the Black Liberation struggles here and worldwide during the 1960s, Youth Against War and Fascism, a mass unit of Workers World Party, brought the slogan “Stop the War Against Black America” to the movement. This was to build broad solidarity between the antiwar movement and Black militant groups facing a brutal, state-sanctioned, FBI-led assault that included incarceration, intimidation, infiltration and assassination.

Over 50 years later, the same political message still applies. But now the Black Lives Matter movement is carrying forward the struggle for justice and equality with a broad multinational base. For over eight years, since the racist murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, the BLM movement has been on the front lines in battling police brutality in all its forms, embracing all political currents regardless of nationality, sexuality, genders, gender expressions, generations and abilities.

It has been acknowledged that BLM constitutes the largest mass movement in the history of the U.S., involving millions of people while gaining international supporters. This unprecedented resurgence of activism was mainly spurred on by the nearly nine-minute public execution of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on May 28. Since then, protests against the police have taken place in thousands of cities and in various forms, including spontaneous strikes by professional basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer athletes – despite the COVID-19 restrictions.

Only class struggle can resolve class contradictions

While it is understandable that millions of people will breathe a sigh of relief if the Biden/Harris team defeats the Trump/Pence administration, class relations will not fundamentally change. An election cannot rectify class contradictions, even though it serves as a barometer to test the political mood within society. Ultimately, the vote boils down to which representative from one of the two major capitalist parties – Republican and Democrat – will best administer the repressive capitalist state apparatus to keep the billionaire, corporate bosses and bankers in power so they can ruthlessly exploit the workers and oppressed.

In terms of U.S. foreign policy, while there may be various strategies and approaches, both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page when it comes to advancing the imperialist aims of expanding the U.S. empire for profits versus respecting a country’s right to sovereignty and self-determination. History has shown that the Democrats could very well start a war, as could the Republicans.

While it isn’t surprising that police unions have endorsed Trump, Biden has made it crystal clear that he is opposed to any BLM call to defund the police. Harris has faced criticism for being the “top cop” in California as state prosecutor before becoming senator.

The police have never been more isolated and unpopular, according to opinion polls. This has not kept their brutal tactics from being on full display in preparation for the coming struggles, including rebellions on the horizon as the economic crisis looms heavy over the coming months. This crisis will manifest itself with more massive unemployment, evictions, and hunger on top of the worsening surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democratic Party has shown itself to be ineffectual in pushing the Republicans to back a second stimulus package that could bring temporary economic relief to the hurting masses.

A militarized, occupying police presence will only bring about more capitalist instability as the masses of people become more rebellious with want and need. And whoever occupies the White House for the next four years will not be able to contain the angry masses if they are in a fighting and desperate mood.

The masses, with the aid of political left forces, will have no other choice but to confront the ruling class’s racism and white supremacy and unite to fight and organize for immediate human needs – now more than ever during this pandemic crisis. This is why it is important to stay in the streets once the elections have come and gone – to fight for a socialist future.

Washington D.C. Public Schools halt reopening plans as teachers mount sickout strike

Nick Barrickman




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/dcps-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




On Monday, officials in the Washington D.C. Public School (DCPS) system announced a halt to their plans to reopen schools after hundreds of teachers began calling out sick. The sickout took place after a member-wide vote last week of the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) resulted in 93 percent of teachers declaring “no confidence” in Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser’s reopening plans, which had been slated to begin Nov. 9.

The WTU suggested teachers take a “mental health day” before Tuesday’s presidential election. “We are living in turbulent times and teachers are experiencing a great amount of fear and anxiety around the national elections as well as the District’s Return to School Plan,” declared WTU President Elizabeth Davis in an email to teachers Sunday. “While one day off may not by itself cure burnout, a mental health day can provide you with a much-needed and well-deserved break.”
The announcement comes after the Washington D.C. region has seen an increase of COVID-19 cases in its jurisdictions. The seven-day daily average of new cases recorded Monday for Maryland-DC-Virginia stood at 2,274. This exceeded the previous high of 2,218 set during May.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, 61,000 children caught COVID-19 in the United States last week. In all, over 853,635 children have caught the virus in the US, or nearly 11.1 percent of the total COVID-19 cases in the country, dispelling the myth promoted by Democrats and Republicans across the US that children are less susceptible to the virus and that schools can be reopened “safely.”

The WTU and DCPS officials have been at loggerheads over certain precautions in the district’s school reopening plan. The plan was to begin allowing 11 students per grade to attend what was being termed “CARE classrooms” starting Nov. 9.

Under the plan, nearly 7,000 of the district’s 47,000 students had been identified to resume in-person learning, ostensibly to remedy the loss of learning occurring among the most vulnerable and developmentally challenged students. This partial reopening is intended to create a wedge to fully reopen schools, in order to force working class parents back into unsafe factories and workplaces producing profit.

Last month, the Public Employees Relations Board ruled that the city’s reopening plan was illegal because it didn’t consult the WTU and others in formulating it. DCPS has maintained that it does not need to have union support for its plans and was prepared to continue with the reopening.

Teachers are demanding that they be given rights to refuse in-person instruction, while DCPS is insisting that only individuals with proven health risks or family members and dependents vulnerable to COVID-19 should be granted such rights. Teachers are also concerned that DCPS’s safety promises will not be met once schools open.

Last month, DCPS announced that they would be pulling middle and high school staff—who are currently maintaining distance learning programs for their students and were not set to return to classes until 2021—to help teach in-person elementary school students. This raised immediate concerns that distance learning would be undermined, as online students would be forced into massive “virtual” classes with a limited number of staff to run them.

In addition to the WTU’s promotion of the sickout, the Council of School Officers (CSO), a union overseeing school principals, sent a letter to Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee raising objections to the lottery system being used to award seats to students deemed to be most in need.

According to the CSO, the stated goal of partially reopening the school system—to serve students “furthest from opportunity”—is not being done under the current lottery formula. The letter states that the DCPS’s criteria for selecting the neediest students awards the same number of seats to students from wealthier schools as it does for those in poorer communities. In poorer schools, 11 seats per grade will hardly make a difference, the principals say. In addition, principals claim they are being cut out of the process of selecting the students who are most in need for in-person learning.

While currently at odds with DCPS on the fine print, the WTU and other associated organizations have sought to collaborate with the school system in its efforts to force a reopening as COVID-19 cases increase. In September, when Bowser announced plans to send children to class even before November, the WTU sought to help identify teachers willing to return.

Last month, CTU president Davis told the Washington Post, “We do know that there are extenuating circumstances in regards to [DCPS’] budget and what they can do [to provide safety precautions]. We want to be reasonable in our asks, and we made concessions.”

The WTU’s blog post on Sunday states: “While many elements of an agreement have been reached, the Union believes that plans should be revised to ensure greater equity across the city to ensure that students furthest from opportunity have access to additional in-person learning opportunities and that no educator should be required to return to in-person learning if they don’t believe adequate protections for themselves, their students and the community are in place.”

As the pandemic deepens and Trump erects barricades around the White House in anticipation of massive Election Day protests, there is mounting anger among teachers and the broader working class in Washington D.C. In order to contain a social explosion on the eve of the US presidential elections, the WTU and DCPS have opted to pull back from having a direct confrontation with teachers through reopening of schools.

Weighing the possible outcomes of the US elections, the WTU and DCPS calculate that the effort to herd teachers back to classrooms can be better carried out under a potential Democratic Biden presidency than amid popular protests against a threatened Trump putsch to defy the election results and stay in office.

A teacher in nearby Anne Arundel County, Maryland, told the World Socialist Web Site, “This is a political calculation,” in reference to the decision to keep classes online for elementary school students. They added that the WTU and DCPS are “playing their cards and waiting for another day” to introduce in-person learning.

The teacher noted that in his district teachers are being forced to report to class on schedule next week, stating, “They are not following the science.”

Rather than mobilizing the working class in mass opposition to the homicidal herd immunity policies of the capitalist class and the threat of a Trump dictatorship, the teachers unions and the Democratic Party are seeking to divide and restrain the working class in order to better carry out the policies of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus.

It is essential that teachers in the Washington, DC area and throughout the US take matters into their own hands and form independent rank-and-file safety committees controlled by and answerable to the teachers themselves in order to fight off the threat to their health, safety and democratic rights.

We encourage all teachers in DCPS to join the national Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee and take the crucial step of forming a local committee in Washington, DC. Contact us today and we will do everything in our power to help you build a committee and coordinate your struggles with educators and workers throughout the region, across the US and internationally.

Teachers strike across France against first day of deadly school reopenings

Will Morrow




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/fran-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws





As schools reopened across France yesterday after the holidays, mass opposition among students and teachers at the Macron administration’s deadly school reopening policy is growing. Assemblies of teachers met at schools yesterday morning and resolved to strike against the lack of safe conditions to prevent the spread of the virus. Images are being widely shared online showing students crammed like sardines into hallways, classes and cafeterias.

The government is reopening schools despite a second wave of the pandemic that its own scientific council has warned will likely be larger than the first, which killed more than 30,000 people in France and 200,000 across Europe. More than 37,000 people have now died from the virus in France, with another 416 deaths reported on Monday.
Despite the government’s cynical claims that it is determined to protect students’ psychological well-being, the school reopening is driven by entirely different concerns: to ensure that parents can continue to work, and that the corporations can continue to obtain profits throughout the pandemic, regardless of how many lives are lost as a result.

A Twitter account reporting on opposition among teachers to the Macron government reported dozens of local strikes by teachers organised in assemblies at schools across France on Monday morning.

At the Balzac de Mitry-Mory school, 24 teachers organised to strike at 8 a.m. yesterday. At the Romain Rolland school in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris, another 22 teachers voted to strike. In the Feyder school in Epinay-sur-Seine near Paris, 47 teachers voted by 100 percent to strike at 8 a.m. Classes were held for 60 students out of 1,600 enrolled. At the Berthelot school in Pantin, north of Paris, 28 teachers resolved to strike against the demand that they return to classes “as though nothing was happening.”

At Bachelard school in Chelles, 20 staff lodged their “right to strike” with the direction due to unsafe conditions caused by the pandemic and “non-respect of the health protocol.”

At the Jean Jaurès school in Clichy, teachers walked out, and the administration told families that the school may be forced to close. At Von Donghen school in Lagny, classes were cancelled after teachers threatened to strike. At the Flora Tristan school north of Paris, half of teachers supported a strike at 8:30 a.m. At the Joliot-Curie school in Nanterre, teachers voted 53-3 for a strike at midday. At the Olympe de Gouges school in Noisy-le-Sec, over 30 teachers voted to strike in the morning. At the Eugène Hénaff school in Bagnolet, 18 teachers voted to strike.

At the Alice Guy school in Lyon, the student body reportedly refused to enter classes, and there were reports of further strike action by teachers in Montpellier and Marseille, as well.

Safety protocols inside schools are essentially non-existent. One teacher writing into Le Monde stated: “I feel humiliated. While in the media there are grandiloquent statements to support our teachers, in reality there is nothing. … The health protocol is the same as before the holidays! The students continue to change between classes, with 30 crammed into a class. We have not received disposable masks since the beginning of the confinement! We have the right to only two masks on Sundays!”

Existing protocols state that social distancing must be respected “to the extent that it is possible.” Given the overcrowding of schools, this simply means they do not apply anywhere. Parents are advised to “take the temperature of their children before they go to school” and to “keep them home” if they have a temperature of over 38 degrees. Since it is well known that many cases are asymptomatic or exhibit symptoms after they have already been contagious, this will do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus in schools.

The protocols state that “social distancing is not required for students in the same group (class or year level) either in closed spaces or the exterior.”

Students aged over six are being made to wear masks, contradicting the government’s earlier lies that young students were neither contagious nor in danger from the virus.

“It will be very difficult for them to stay six hours a day with a mask, while on the street, they don’t have to wear one,” Haydée Leblanc, a primary teacher in Abbeville, told France3. “Then they will spend their time touching the mask! Before, we were told that wearing the mask for young children was counter-productive, because they could actually spread the virus faster with their hands. Apparently the doctrine has changed.” Noting that it was a public relations stunt, she stated, “it’s above all to add something to the health protocol to reassure families.”

The Macron administration is pursuing a policy that it knows will cause thousands of additional cases and deaths. Schools will act as vectors for the transmission of the virus, countless children will become infected, and will infect their family members and friends.

The school reopening takes place as reports by the government’s own scientific advisory bodies make clear that the partial confinement of the population, while keeping non-essential business and schools, will not significantly cut the spread of the virus. The Pasteur Institute estimated that the partial confinement would bring the rate of reproduction of the virus to 0.9, with the “pessimistic scenario” that it would be brought down to only 1.2 by the government’s measures, meaning a continuing exponential spread of the virus.
Children will also fall sick and die. Official claims that youth are not in danger from the virus are lies. French health authorities report that 170 people aged under 19 are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, of which 23 are in urgent reanimation care. The long-term health impacts of the virus on youth are still unknown.

France’s corrupt union bureaucracies are hostile to a struggle against school reopenings. They have been in continuous discussions with the Macron administration on its reopening policy, and have done nothing to mobilize the mass opposition among teachers and students. On October 30, the unions cynically published a notice authorising strike action between November 2 and 7. But its aim was only to provide some means of maintaining control over the growing opposition among teachers.

The growing strike movement among teachers and students must be unified and organized. For that, teachers need their own organizations, rank-and-file school safety committees, independent from the trade unions.

The struggle to close non-essential industries and let workers and youth safely confine at home requires the mobilization of teachers and broader layers of workers in mass strike action. The best allies of teachers and students in France are their counterparts in Germany, Britain, and across Europe and beyond. These forces can fight to prepare and mobilize workers for a European general strike and a struggle for the working class to take state power and impose a scientific policy against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The socialist perspective in the 2020 US elections

Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president
14 hours ago

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/kish-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




This report was delivered on November 1 to the final meeting of the Socialist Equality Party’s 2020 election campaign, titled “On the eve of the Civil War Election.”

The United States elections are being held under conditions of unprecedented social, economic and political crisis. Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks, there is no going back to the status quo. The alternative confronting workers in the United States and indeed internationally is socialist revolution or capitalist barbarism.

As the election comes to an end, the coronavirus pandemic is spiraling out of control. The Socialist Equality Party has defined the global coronavirus pandemic as a “trigger event,” that is, an event that is accelerating and bringing to a head all the underlying contradictions of American and world capitalism.

The virus is natural in origin, but its effects are bound up with the society in which it has emerged. It is exposing the consequences of decades of social reaction and the endless diversion of resources into the financial markets and the instruments of militarism and war. It is revealing the nature of capitalist society, a society dominated by a financial oligarchy whose control is no longer compatible with democratic forms of rule. And it is propelling millions of workers and youth into social and political struggle.

The average number of daily new cases globally is approaching half a million. The average daily death toll, according to official figures, is above 6,000. Already, nearly 1.2 million people have died. After a drop in the summer months, new cases throughout Europe are at record levels. In France, new cases average over 40,000, nearly ten times higher than the previous peak in early April. In the UK, new cases are above 20,000. In Italy, new cases peaked on Friday at over 30,000, more than five times the level in late March, when the explosion of deaths forced the shutdown of the entire country.

No country, however, has proven more incapable of safeguarding public health than the United States, which has four percent of the world’s population but nearly a quarter of deaths from COVID-19. More than 236,000 people have died from the coronavirus, and 1,000 more are added to this horrific toll every day. The number of infections is approaching ten million, increasing by more than ten percent in the past two weeks alone. The virus is spreading without restraint throughout the country, and hospitals in Texas, Wisconsin and other states are reaching or have surpassed capacity.

The pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it have created a social crisis in the United States unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. According to official figures, 13 million people are unemployed in the United States, seven million more than before the pandemic hit. Two and a half million people have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, and this figure is increasing at a faster rate than at any point in recorded history. The number of people in poverty has increased by eight million since May, and ten percent of the adult population reports that they cannot buy enough food. Amidst a deadly pandemic, nearly one fifth of households report that they are not getting medical care because of the cost, while nearly half report that they are struggling to cover basic expenses and bills.

Mass layoffs are accelerating, as the ruling class uses the conditions of the pandemic to implement far-reaching changes aimed at boosting profitability. The economic consequences of the pandemic are having a permanent and devastating impact on an entire generation of young workers, predominantly employed in the gig and service sectors.

This catastrophe is the product of definite policies pursued by the ruling class over the past ten months. The financial oligarchy is implementing a policy of mass death and social devastation. After first downplaying the danger, the pandemic was utilized to organize the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in world history, far surpassing even what was done following the 2008 financial collapse.

The printing presses of the Federal Reserve have been turned over to Wall Street, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Bank profits have surged. Morgan Stanley announced last month that its profits have risen 25 percent compared to a year ago. Goldman Sachs is doing even better, with quarterly profits at $3.6 billion, nearly double from a year ago. The wealth of the corporate and financial oligarchy has soared to new heights. Since the end of February, Jeff Bezos has increased his net worth by close to $80 billion.
The pandemic and the crisis of American democracy

It is impossible to understand the political situation in the United States on the eve of the elections outside of this social reality.

The final weeks of the election campaign have made clear: Trump is not running for president; he is running for führer. The White House is the center of a conspiracy to ignore the results of the election, stoke fascistic violence, and utilize the courts to overturn the popular vote.

It is less than one month since the initial exposure of a fascistic plot to kidnap and murder the governors of Michigan and Virginia, plots that were encouraged and incited by the highest levels of the state. The plots grew out of the anti-lockdown demonstrations in April and May, following the bailout of Wall Street, as the ruling class was implementing its back-to-work campaign. They were encouraged by Trump’s calls to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and other states from any restraints on the spread of the coronavirus. Far-right organizations are being mobilized in order to implement and enforce a homicidal policy of the ruling elites.

In the final days of the election, Trump is doing everything he can to delegitimize the results. If the results are not known by the evening of November 3, he said in Pennsylvania yesterday, “you’re going to have bedlam in our country.” He denounced two recent Supreme Court decisions at least temporarily allowing the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. “Somebody’s going to play games, and they just got an extension. What’s the extension all about? Wouldn’t you like to hear, Nov. 3, we win, we lose?” There is, in fact, nothing in the Constitution that requires a result of the election on November 3. The winner of the election is determined after all the ballots are counted.

Pennsylvania, a battleground state, is a particular target. “Are they going to mysteriously find more ballots” after polls close, Trump asked yesterday. “Strange things have been known to happen, especially in Philadelphia.” National Guard troops have been deployed to Philadelphia, where they will remain until after the election, following the eruption of protests over the latest incident of police murder.

Whatever happens over the coming weeks, Trump is building up a fascistic movement based on extreme nationalism, anti-socialism and authoritarianism.

Trump’s fascistic politics are directly connected to the ruling class’ policy of “herd immunity” in relation to the pandemic. In his campaign rallies, accompanied to chants of “Superman,” Trump is doing everything he can to downplay the threat to the lives of millions of people and encourage the spread of the coronavirus. In recent days, he has claimed that doctors are deliberately falsifying the cause of deaths due to COVID-19 in order to make more money. Trump’s son, Donald Jr., declared in a recent interview that deaths from the virus are “almost nothing,” echoing Trump’s earlier comment that the coronavirus affects “virtually nobody.”
The Democratic Party and the bankruptcy of “lesser evilism”

While Trump is attempting to steal the election, the Democrats are doing everything they can to cover up the threat to the most fundamental democratic rights.

At his own campaign events, Democratic candidate Joe Biden makes no mention of the election coup, the plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other governors, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, or anything else related to the threat to democratic rights in the election. Indeed, the Democratic Party played a central role in the ramming through of the nomination of Barrett by refusing to do anything to stop it.

The Democrats’ cowardice in response to Trump’s conspiracies is entirely bound up with their own opposition to any policies to address the spreading pandemic or the devastating social crisis. Beyond talking about masks, the Democrats have nothing to propose, as they reject any measures that threaten the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

The Democratic Party is terrified of anything that will spark mass unrest, which would threaten to develop into a movement against not just Trump, but the entire capitalist system.

The Democratic Party and the various pseudo-left organizations that surround it insist that in these elections all the energy of workers and youth must be directed toward the election of Joe Biden. Only in this way, they claim, can there be a return to “normalcy” and an end to the disaster that has been produced by Trump.

Completely absent from these arguments is any actual analysis of what the Democratic Party is and the class interests that it represents, or the social and political conditions that have produced Trump.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military. Indeed, as the election approaches, Biden’s fundraising in the third quarter has benefited from an influx of money from the finance industry. For the past four years, the opposition of the Democratic Party to Trump has focused not on his fascistic politics, but on the demand of dominant sections of the military and intelligence agencies for a more militarist foreign policy against Russia and in the Middle East, which culminated in the impeachment fiasco.

Biden has the support of some of the leading war criminals of American imperialism, who have wreaked havoc on populations throughout the world: John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to Honduras during the US-backed war against the Sandinistas, former ambassador to Iraq and former Director of National Intelligence; Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA implicated in constructing “black site” torture centers under Bush; Colin Powell, one of the leading architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and countless others.

The policy of a Democratic administration will be one not of social reform, as the apologists for Biden claim, but brutal austerity. The eight years of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, saw a massive transfer of wealth to the rich following the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Indeed, it was the legacy of Obama, along with the right-wing and militarist character of the Hillary Clinton campaign, that allowed Trump to posture demagogically as an opponent of the status quo.

And it is remarkable that as Trump engages in his fascistic plots, the layers around the Democratic Party have dedicated themselves in an extended effort aimed at attacking the democratic foundations of the United States and attacking the legacy of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The center of this campaign is the Times' 1619 Project, a work of historical falsification which presents all of American history as a conflict between races, aimed at promoting the Democratic Party’s politics of racial division.

As for Bernie Sanders, what has become of his so-called “political revolution”? The central aim of Sanders’ campaigns, both in 2016 and 2020, has been to contain mass social anger and opposition to both parties, to contain it within the framework of the Democratic Party, and to ensure that it finds no genuine progressive expression. He is performing that role now as a leading campaigner for Joe Biden.

To rely on the Democratic Party to defend democratic rights would be suicidal.
The social and political roots of the breakdown of American democracy

Moreover, nowhere in the media and political establishment is there any serious analysis of social and political conditions that have produced an unprecedented crisis and breakdown of American democracy. Trump is presented as some sort of demon from hell. To paraphrase Trotsky in writing about Hitler, they claim that if it were not for Trump, American democracy would blossom like a garden. What a contemptible lie! Trump is an expression of a far deeper disease.

For decades, the ruling class has been engaged in a single-minded pursuit transferring wealth to the rich. Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, the ruling elites launched an offensive to destroy all the gains won by workers through bitter struggle. Endless resources have been channeled into the financial markets through deindustrialization and the ripping up of social infrastructure.

Social inequality has reached levels not seen since before the Great Depression. With the crucial assistance of the trade unions, working class opposition to this social counterrevolution was suppressed. As a result, the national income share for the bottom half of the population fell from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in 2014, while the income share for the top 1 percent rose from 12 percent to 20 percent. Wealth and income are even more heavily concentrated in the top 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the population.

The American ruling class responded to the dissolution of the USSR with an orgy of militarism. The terrorist attacks of September 11 were seized on to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. More than one million people were killed in the “war on terror.” Torture was instituted as official government policy. NSA spying on the population became a central element of conspiracy against democratic rights. The persecution of Julian Assange, supported by the entire political establishment and in fact spearheaded by the Democratic Party, was used as a test case for the criminalization of opposition to war.

All of this, all the crimes of American capitalism, all the inequality, all the violence at home and aboard—all of this is coming to a head. Historians will look back at the 2020 elections as both a continuation and a new stage in the protracted crisis of American democracy.
The socialist strategy in 2020 and beyond

There are various scenarios for what will play out over the next several days, on Election Day and after. What can be ruled out, however, is that somehow the political crisis in the United States is going to be resolved peacefully. Whether or not Trump is in the White House come January, the mobilization of fascistic organizations is now a fact of American political life. The pandemic will continue to rage, and there is no faction of the ruling class that proposes anything that will stop it.

What happens, however, cannot be separated from the development of the class struggle. The working class will not and cannot remain a bystander in events. It must prepare to respond through its own independent initiative.

Any attempt by Trump to steal the election in defiance of the popular vote will certainly be met with mass demonstrations. The working class must intervene through the method of class struggle. It must oppose Trump’s coup plotting and the incitement of fascistic violence through strike action, including preparation for a political general strike. Opposition to Trump’s conspiracies must be connected to the independent interference of the working class on the basis of a program that represents its own interests.

The working class requires a perspective not just for November 3, but for November 4 and beyond.

At the beginning of this year, we published a statement on the World Socialist Web Site, “ The decade of socialist revolution begins .” Before the pandemic had emerged as a global crisis, we called attention to the essential characteristics of the world situation that had developed over the previous decade—the institutionalization of unending military conflict and the growing danger of world war; the breakdown of democracy and the rise of the far-right internationally; the degradation of the environment and the growing danger of climate change; and the extreme growth of social inequality, particularly following the 2008 economic crisis.

We wrote: “The objective conditions for socialist revolution emerge out of the global crisis. The approach of social revolution has already been foreshadowed in the mass demonstrations and strikes that swept across the globe in 2019: in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, France, Spain, Algeria, Britain, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, India and Hong Kong. The United States, where the entire political structure is directed toward the suppression of class struggle, witnessed the first national strike by auto workers in more than forty years.”

The dominant and most revolutionary feature of the development of the class struggle, we explained, was its global character. The working class is an international class that has grown enormously over the past two decades and is united like never before through the processes of production and advances in communications.

“The growth of the working class and the emergence of class struggle on an international scale are the objective basis for revolution,” we explained. “However, the spontaneous struggles of workers and their instinctive striving for socialism are, by themselves, inadequate. The transformation of the class struggle into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of political leadership.”

When we launched the Socialist Equality Party election campaign at the end of January, we explained that its central task was to fight for a socialist program and perspective for the working class, not only in the United States but throughout the world.

Then the global pandemic hit. As with everything else, the pandemic had a significant impact on our campaign. We decided very early on to cancel all of our in-person election meetings and our travel plans, in the US and internationally. We also decided that we could not petition to get on the ballot, as attempting to meet the already anti-democratic restrictions in the US—requiring the gathering of thousands and thousands of signatures just to get on the ballot—would have deadly consequences in the midst of a pandemic.

The courts and Democratic Party state governments defended these restrictions. Whitmer, the target of the fascistic coup plot, even referenced the anti-lockdown rallies in the spring to argue that we should have gathered signatures, while the judge in the case complained of gyms being shut down—the same complaint of the militiamen.

While the form of our campaign changed as a result of the pandemic, the essential content remained. Indeed, the pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it has demonstrated that the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, and only the Socialist Equality Party, is the way forward for the working class.

We say to workers and youth who are listening in on this meeting: The central conclusion that must be drawn from the experiences of this year is to join the SEP. You know what is happening in your plants and workplaces. The ruling class is using the pandemic to carry out a massive restructuring of class relations. The capitalist class has contempt for the lives of workers, forcing you to choose between starvation or sacrificing your lives for profit.

You see what Trump is doing. You see the conspiracies that are being carried out, which are directed above all at the opposition of workers. You know that there is growing anger over inequality, exploitation, unemployment, police violence, the attack on democratic rights, and endless war.

The struggles of workers cannot be advanced unless a socialist leadership is built. A political movement must be developed that takes direct aim at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system.

The fight against the pandemic must be waged on the basis of a program for the massive redistribution of wealth. The ill-gotten gains of the oligarchs must be seized in order to finance universal health care and other critically needed social infrastructure. Non-essential production must be shut down until the pandemic is under control, and all workers must receive full income and be protected from eviction. Where production is essential to the functioning of society, workplaces must be made safe, with conditions overseen by the workers themselves, in consultation with health care professionals.

To organize society on the basis of social need, not private profit, the giant banks and corporations must be turned into public utilities. World economy must be restructured on the basis of a scientific and rational plan. To carry out this program, the working class must take power in its own hands, to establish a government of, by and for the workers.

To organize the struggles of the working class, the Socialist Equality Party is spearheading the fight for the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independent of the corporatist trade unions. It fights to unify the working class, in opposition to all efforts to divide workers along racial, gender and national lines.

There is no national solution to the global pandemic, as there is no national solution to any of the great problems confronting the working class—inequality, exploitation, war, environmental degradation. The building of a mass socialist movement in the American working class must be connected to the mobilization of the billions of workers throughout the world, the massive social force that can chart a new way forward for mankind.

The meet these challenges posed before the working class, a new movement must be built, a political movement based not on pragmatic and empty hopes, but on a scientific analysis of the nature of capitalist society. It must be a movement that is based on an assimilation of the great lessons of history. A movement that understands that to the crisis of capitalism the working class must respond with the perspective of socialist revolution.

The leadership of this movement is the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

I encourage all of you to vote for the Socialist Equality Party candidates, Norissa Santa Cruz and myself. But most importantly, make the decision to join the SEP and take up an active fight for the building of a socialist leadership.

America’s Panic Attack Could Soon Be Over — But It’s Just The Beginning

Whatever happens in the election, progressives will be either blamed or shamed. Don’t be surprised — be ready for the fight of our lives.

 
David Sirota
Nov 3




This is the second of a two-part Daily Poster series being released just before the election. You can read the first part here.

I woke up at 4am this morning to a panic attack. I get them from time to time ever since living in Washington through 9/11, the anthrax attack and the D.C. sniper. My usual trick is to sit on the floor with my dog, Monty, but that didn’t help so I went for a long walk.

Panic attacks aren’t only about the thing happening when you have them. For me, they tend to be triggered by something — like, say, a really important election — but also an expression of built up anxieties that I’ve white knuckled through but can no longer keep at bay. Eventually, the brain’s motherboard shuts down and demands a reset of the mind’s CPU. It’s not pleasant.

I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one who woke up this morning with the shakes, the palpitations, the sweat and the feeling that the walls are closing in. We’ve all been white knuckling through the last 4 years, and if we’re really honest about it, much longer than that.

In the span of two decades we’ve had 9/11, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the Great Recession and a global pandemic. We’ve experienced these horrors while the meager social safety net has been weakened at the same time our economy mints billionaires. Politics has so normalized avarice that our policy debate over health care is about whether or not to let insurance companies discriminate against sick people during the outbreak of a lethal virus.

We are surrounded by COVID death and climate destruction, and our government tells us everyday in so many ways that we are all alone — a feeling made worse by the physical isolation of quarantine.

This is a new “normal” — but it isn’t actually normal. It is obscene, it is unacceptable — and it is why our country has been having one giant panic attack for the last 4 years.
The Left Will Be Blamed Or Shamed

During my walk, I kept trying to come up with ways to make myself feel like I know what is about to happen in the election. But, of course, I don’t. Nobody does, including the pundits who are paid to prognosticate about polls. We’re all just going to have to try to keep calm, knowing that nothing is under control.

One thing I can predict with certainty is that no matter the results, the left will be blamed or shamed.

If Biden (godforbid) loses, we will be told that he went too far to the left, which alienated swing voters, but still did not generate enough enthusiasm from disaffected Bernie Sanders voters who can’t get over the outcome of the Democratic primary. If that fantastical tale sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it was the bullshit story told after Hillary Clinton lost the most winnable presidential contest in history.

And yes — it was bullshit then and would be bullshit now.

On everything from climate change to health care to corporate power, Biden is if anything more conservative than the general population. This is a guy who literally promised his donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” and was nonetheless enthusiastically boosted by every wing of the Democratic Party, including progressives. Indeed, while third-party voting was a minuscule phenomenon in 2016, it looks to be even more infinitesimal in 2020.

Though we’re not supposed to admit it aloud, we all know Biden didn’t really earn the lockstep support of Democratic voters with any of his policy proposals. He originally won the nomination mostly because past vice presidents almost always win their party’s presidential nominations. In the general, Biden has been backed by nearly every left-of-center group, but that’s really only because Trump represents an existential threat to the survival of our democracy and the planet’s ecosystem.

An inanimate object should be able to beat this out of control and brazenly corrupt president who has wildly mismanaged a lethal pandemic — and if Biden still somehow manages to lose, he has nobody to blame but himself. Almost everybody looked at his problematic record and his uninspired campaign and nonetheless sucked it up and fell in line for him because we understood the stakes — so if he still somehow manages to shit the bed, it’s on him.

If Biden (hopefully) wins, the narrative will be the opposite — we will be told that he won because he refused to fully embrace a progressive economic agenda. In this mythology, voters were supposedly desperate for a return to the kind of corporatism, incrementalism and neoliberalism that defined the Obama era and that continues to define Beltway Democratic culture amid the economic, public health and climate crises.

It is certainly true that Biden has repeatedly refused to support Medicare for All, promised not to ban fracking and repeatedly boasted about how he defeated democratic socialist Bernie Sanders in the primary. Those were all attempts to contrast himself with the progressive base of his own party — which is what he has tried to do periodically throughout his long political career, and which already has neoconservative Republicans praising his campaign.

However, Biden would win in spite of that triangulation, not because of it.

As millions of Americans lost their private health insurance during the pandemic, a Morning Consult survey showed support for Medicare for All has surged. While the Kaiser Family Foundation’s survey shows that most Americans do not want the Supreme Court to end protections for preexisting conditions, the same group’s survey showed support for the Affordable Care Act has remained relatively weak.

In fact, at key moments during the COVID outbreak, the ACA has actually lost support among the middle-aged, who may have suddenly discovered that Obamacare doesn’t protect them from higher premiums and the loss of job-based medical insurance in an economic downturn.

Similarly, polls show surging support for bold climate action as America has been ravaged by wildfires, droughts and hurricanes. In the battleground state of Pennsylvania — where Biden’s fracking position has been cast as a positive — polls show the majority of the state’s voters oppose the fossil fuel extraction process.

And for all of Biden’s gratuitous football-spiking about beating Sanders in the primary, the Vermont senator remains one of America’s most popular politicians, and more popular than Biden himself, according to YouGov data.

The point here is not merely that Biden is out of step with the public on specific issues — but that it would be patently ridiculous for anyone to depict a Democratic victory as a repudiation of the left.

The election has been an up-or-down vote on Trump, with Biden the recipient of the down vote. He is the quintessential generic Democrat in this race — indeed, a recent Pew poll showed that the majority of Biden voters support him simply because “he is not Trump,” not because of any particular position he has taken.




A new Morning Consult poll shows that almost half of Biden’s voters say they are supporting him more as “a vote against Donald Trump” than an affirmative vote for the Democratic ticket. At the same time, the public broadly supports a progressive economic agenda.

If Biden wins, those with a vested interest in preserving the status quo will try to obscure this reality — but it is a reality.
Darkest Before Dawn

I walked east from my home in southeast Denver — east toward the rising sun, because I know for me it is most difficult to think clearly in the night. It truly is darkest before the dawn — and we are all right now in that darkness, deciding whether or not to wallow or push ahead.

It is easy to succumb to nihilism. My inner voice of negativity is a Rahm Emanuel-esque asshole, and it spent all night screaming a million reasons to give up.

But as the sky turned red and then pink, I saw this little tent on the horizon at the local community center. Cars were driving up as people were dropping off ballots.

As my friend Naomi Klein said in The Daily Poster’s live chat last night, we are taught to see voting as the ultimate form of self-expression, but it isn’t. It is one limited way to participate in civic life. But voting itself is an act of — dare I say it — hope.

Even in a democracy as limited as America’s, we vote because we still believe in the idea of self-governance, and in the idea that things can change. And weirdly enough, in an election offering two of history’s most uninspired presidential choices, we have what could be the biggest opportunity for change in my own lifetime.

Think about it: If Biden wins, we will have a relatively weak thumb-in-the-wind Democratic president who does not command the kind of worshipful fandom that past Democratic presidents have engendered. At the same time there are engaged activists, organizations and movements that are not just going back to brunch when the election is over. From the Sunrise Movement to Demand Progress to the Revolving Door Project to Black Lives Matter, there is more infrastructure than ever ready to pressure a new president — and there are allied lawmakers in Congress ready to amplify their message.

The key thing to understand about this potential future is that Biden does not engender the kind of fawning that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama evoked when they were first elected president. He is rightly seen as a transactional and transitional politician — and that’s actually a good thing.

For too long, Democratic voters have seen their presidents as deities who should be immune from pressure and criticism. But it is far better for a democracy for a president to be perceived not as some pop culture idol or glorified instagram influencer, but instead as an administrator that is supposed to work for us, not the other way around.

Biden’s low-key image makes it much more likely that we will finally view the presidency in those far more healthy and realistic terms — and then confront that White House with pressure rather than genuflection.

Will the pressure work? It is hard to say. But Biden does appear to be making some rhetorical shifts already — in the last presidential debate, he made an argument for deficit spending. It was remarkable to see given that Biden has advocated for budget austerity for decades.

Then again, there’s a difference between words and deed and in recent years, the MSNBC-ization of politics and the rise of Brunch Liberalism means there hasn’t been much pressure on Democratic lawmakers to do much of anything -- other than simply not be Republicans. But with climate, health care and economic emergencies tearing apart our country, we need them to do far more than that. We need to force them to deliver in a way the party hasn’t delivered in more than a half century.

And here’s the thing to remember: Nothing will be given. Campaign promises will not be acted upon on their own — they will only be fulfilled if there is constant pressure. Indeed, to achieve even the most minimal and necessary reforms to prevent more mass casualties and pain, lawmakers will have to face enormous amounts of organizing and pressure and activism. The leaders of both parties in Washington have taught us over and over and over again that they will nonchalantly let us suffer and die — unless they are forced kicking and screaming to do something other than enrich their donors.

I walked back home thinking about how daunting a task this will all be. The pit in my stomach was still there from the panic attack, and thinking about how much work we must do made the pangs a bit worse.

But then I walked into the house and saw two kids — my 6-year-old daughter finishing up her french toast and masking up for first grade, and my 9-year-old son working on his 4th grade essay before yet another day of remote learning because his grades are on lockdown.

In their faces, I see the reason that despair and despondence cannot be our path.

Their lives and the lives of every kid is on the line right now — and our society is in a bad way. Our politics are deeply corrupt, our laws are driven by greed. The cultural and political panic unrest we’ve experienced over the last year is all a predictable result of that.

But with our democracy and our ecosystem on the brink, failure is not an option. Retreat is not an option.

We’ve had our panic attack — now, hopefully, we get one more chance to move forward.

Donald Trump Has Been Good for Democracy?

Election Day, November 3, 2020
Donald Trump Has Been Good for Democracy




Millions of Americans got engaged during this presidency. That’s a positive for the nation








First Ballot





The week before the inauguration in 2017, a group of women decided to sublimate their agitation into a show of strength. They turned out more people than the president did for his swearing-in. Many of the marchers joined chapters of an organization invented by two former legislative staffers who wrote a guide to using peaceful protest to change Congress. Frustrated with the party who enabled the rise of a demagogue, leftists got serious about electoral politics and started recruiting the first batch of ordinary people who could mount a challenge to the ossified Democratic leadership. A week after the inauguration, they all flocked to airports to demonstrate on behalf of foreigners they did not know, trying just to enter the country and reunite with loved ones.

This movement had many contours, many spokes in the wheel. It had its share of opportunists and grifters, as is par for the course in modern America. (The conservative movement, at its essence, is a sophisticated direct-mail targeting program to bilk nervous seniors so movement leaders can afford mansions in the D.C. suburbs.) But at the root, it had millions of ordinary people, white suburban moms and first-generation immigrants, practiced activists and novices who’d never contacted their member of Congress before, teachers and factory regulars standing up for their rights in the workplace, organizers and the organized, Black people tired of having the color of their skin be a direct threat to their existence, all of them using their voice, shouting, participating.

They would not be in these streets, not in these numbers, not with this intensity, if it weren’t for the occupant of the Oval Office. The rise of Donald Trump had an equal and opposite reaction, and it got millions of people acquainted with their democracy again. Tonight we will get the next set of results of that engagement. The process of not only protecting but improving this democracy doesn’t end, and that’s the next step for the movement sometimes called the Resistance. But I can tell you this: Trump’s presence, what it meant and what it signaled, activated this country, in bad ways but also in good ones. You absolutely can say that it restored our democracy for the challenges ahead.








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This movement has already proven victorious. It took the House of Representatives and won 40 seats, the largest gain for the Democratic Party since 1974. It has spilled over into a wave of labor action, awakening from a long slumber. It has turned sports leagues into activist collaboratives, downtowns into zones of defiance, and modest homes in the suburbs into organizing hubs. It finally had the strength to build a climate movement that knows how to energize people. It enabled women to lead and reflected America in all its diversity as well as any political movement in my lifetime.

Am I saying that this work would have been impossible in the absence of Donald Trump? I remember the previous eight years, the loss of thousands of legislative races, the insular way in which the Democratic Party operated. It’s not up to parties to build political movements of course, but the rank and file sleepwalked through the Obama years, assuming that their leaders would take care of things. Progressives couldn’t win a primary. Mainstream Democrats couldn’t win an election. And the culture did not reflect the urgency necessary in our politics, to force governance.

Under Trump, people got to work. It’s been hidden because of the pandemic, but I can confidently say that there was more voter mobilization in this election than there was in the very top-down, highly organized Obama year of 2008. We know that the fundraising at the grassroots level broke all records, in support of someone in Joe Biden who was last considered charismatic in 1973. Take a second today and visit mobilize.us, an aggregator for the digital organizing—virtual phonebanks, textbanks, friendbanks—that we’ve been consigned to this election year. There are hundreds of events, on top of the thousands or tens of thousands over the past couple months.








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You don’t get serious about democracy until you get the sense that it can be taken away. Whether you think that Trump represented a bumbling mistake, a rift in the space-time continuum or an approaching fascism, he concentrated the minds of the nation. He generated all the elements of resistance necessary for a show of political force. And it’s been healthy for all aspects of the left. The only way that real governing change will come to America is through a popular movement. And the only way that change will come at the level commensurate to face our challenges is with a vibrant left. Both have been byproducts of the Trump years.

For all the assaults on norms and expectations and the democratic process, ultimately 160 million or more Americans will vote in this election, shattering the old records. Millions more volunteered, marched, protested, organized, and fought for their rights. Democracy needs energy, and American democracy sorely needed it. Trump’s election provided it.

The hope is that once the switch is turned, once people are activated and engaged in democracy, that they don’t walk away. With the treacherous circumstances right now and the need for restoration, we absolutely cannot have an empty playing field left to a few to clean up after the election. Four years have taught us that democracy is worth fighting for. The future must continue that fight every day.








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An Election Retrospective





I’m extremely proud of our election coverage this year, and we decided to collect it together in a state-by-state roundup. We covered elections in 37 different states, which is quite incredible given our little staff and tiny budget. You can peruse our state-by-state roundup here, and it will get you up to date before the polls close. Thanks to our superlative writing staff and contributors for all of their work.

Also, the Prospect staff made its predictions on the outcome of the race. You’ll have to go to the link to get mine!






Days Until the Election






It’s today.







Support Independent, Fact-Checked Journalism






Today I Learned







Dixville Notch was a 5-0 sweep for Joe Biden, the first unanimous vote in the first-in-the-nation hamlet since 1960. (CNN)
It’s news that 127,000 cast ballots recorded under a process enacted months ago won’t be tossed in the trash... pending appeal! (Axios)
Educate the voting public and they learn: there are fewer spoiled absentee ballots this year. (New York Times)
Donald Trump has already lost today: he lost Deutsche Bank as a lender. (Reuters)
Turns out it’s boring to be a poll watcher so the Trumpers decided not to do it. (ProPublica)
My projected electoral map. (270 To Win)
Vote! (Vote)

'Nobody Should Fall For It': Sanders Condemns Trump's Reported Plan to Falsely Declare Victory on Election Night

"We will not allow that to happen. Every vote must and will be counted."


Jake Johnson, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/02/nobody-should-fall-it-sanders-condemns-trumps-reported-plan-falsely-declare-victory




In the wake of fresh reporting indicating that President Donald Trump is planning to prematurely claim victory if he has a lead Tuesday night and reject as illegitimate ballots counted after November 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders late Sunday characterized the news as "no surprise" given the president's repeated nods toward such a ploy and urged the public to be prepared for the false declaration.

"That has been his strategy for months, and nobody should fall for it," said the Vermont senator, who has been sounding the alarm about this potential "nightmare scenario" in interviews, speeches, and on the campaign trail. "It's why he is demonizing mail-in ballots and sabotaging the Postal Service."


"Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after November 3—a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats—are evidence of election fraud," according to Axios. "Many prognosticators say that on election night, Trump will likely appear ahead in Pennsylvania—though the state's final outcome could change substantially as mail-in ballots are counted over the following days."Axios reported Sunday that in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, Trump "has privately talked through this scenario in some detail... describing plans to walk up to a podium on Election Night and declare he has won."

While strategizing with his advisers behind the scenes, Trump has also been publicly laying the groundwork for the Election Night plan for months with his lie-filled attacks on the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and other state efforts to expand voting access amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans on the president's watch.

Trump's efforts to sow doubt about the election results, as well as his refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power, have sparked warnings that the president is emboldening the most dangerous elements of his base, increasing the likelihood of mass chaos on November 3 and the days that follow.

"As I have warned many times, Trump is very likely to declare himself the winner at a moment when a large portion Republican-leaning, in-person votes have been counted, but before a vast number of Democratic mail-in ballots are counted," Sanders said Sunday. "Then he will continue his lies about voter fraud in an attempt to suppress enough votes to win. We will not allow that to happen. Every vote must and will be counted."




Speaking to reporters Sunday evening, Trump dismissed Axios' reporting as "false" before launching into an attack on states that plan to continue counting legally submitted ballots after Election Day—a practice that, contrary to the president's repeated claims to the contrary, is completely normal.


As the New York Times noted Sunday, "Americans are accustomed to knowing who won on election night because news organizations project winners based on partial counts, not because the counting is actually completed that quickly."

With Trump reportedly planning to claim victory if he pulls ahead of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in early vote counts, news outlets and social media platforms are facing pressure to combat potential Election Night disinformation by the incumbent, who has repeatedly lied that the only way he can lose is if the race is "rigged" against him.

"The press has a crucial role if/when this happens: it's not partisan to condemn this behavior," tweeted Washington Post contributor Brian Klaas. "Nobody should equivocate about it. It's imperative that Americans unite against this authoritarian strategy."

As Common Dreams reported last week, a coalition of progressive advocacy groups is planning nearly 400 rallies across the nation to protest any effort by Trump to falsely claim victory or refuse to accept the election results.

"We think the likelihood of activation is high," the coalition said.