Bernie Sanders Is Actively Running for Labor Secretary

Coy before the election, the Vermont Senator is now rallying support to join the Biden administration cabinet


HAMILTON NOLAN NOVEMBER 10, 2020



https://inthesetimes.com/article/bernie-sanders-is-actively-running-for-labor-secretary




Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) is active­ly reach­ing out to allies in a bid to build sup­port for being picked as Sec­re­tary of Labor in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton source who spoke to Sanders directly.

Sanders’ inter­est in the posi­tion was report­ed by Politi­co in Octo­ber, pri­or to Biden’s vic­to­ry in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. At the time, Sanders said he was focused sole­ly on the elec­tion ahead. Last week, Axios report­ed that Biden’s team was ​“con­sid­er­ing an infor­mal ban on nam­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. sen­a­tors to the Cab­i­net if he wins,” which would pre­clude Sanders from being selected.

If that is the case, Sanders him­self is not let­ting it slow him down. This week, he has already begun mak­ing calls to allies in pol­i­tics and the labor world, say­ing that he wants to make a run at the posi­tion of Labor Secretary.

Phil Scott, the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of Ver­mont, said last month that he would appoint a replace­ment who would cau­cus with Democ­rats should Sanders leave the Sen­ate to join the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, a move that means Democ­rats would not be at risk of los­ing a valu­able Sen­ate vote. Still, the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that Biden’s abil­i­ty to get very pro­gres­sive cab­i­net sec­re­taries like Sanders con­firmed hinges on the Democ­rats tak­ing con­trol of the Sen­ate — an uncer­tain propo­si­tion that would require them win­ning two runoff elec­tions in Georgia.

Oth­er names float­ed recent­ly as pos­si­bil­i­ties for Biden’s Labor Sec­re­tary include for­mer Cal­i­for­nia Labor com­mis­sion­er Julie Su, AFL-CIO econ­o­mist Bill Sprig­gs, and Michi­gan con­gress­man Andy Levin — him­self a for­mer AFL-CIO offi­cial. Major unions have not come for­ward with for­mal endorse­ments, but all of the can­di­dates have their back­ers inside orga­nized labor. (Levin has already received the pub­lic sup­port of Chris Shel­ton, the head of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca.) Though Biden’s record is not as pro­gres­sive on labor issues as Sanders, he ran as a vocal ally of unions, and his choice for Labor Sec­re­tary will be expect­ed to have strong pro-union bona fides.

The news that Sanders is still try­ing for the posi­tion is sure to ener­gize pro­gres­sives who believe that they are owed sig­nif­i­cant rewards for their sup­port of Biden dur­ing the cam­paign. After Biden won the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, he formed a task force with sup­port­ers of both him and Sanders, which issued a set of rec­om­men­da­tions wide­ly seen as a tool to pull Biden to the left. Hav­ing Bernie Sanders as Labor Sec­re­tary would give him an inside perch from which to launch efforts to put those rec­om­men­da­tions into prac­tice inside the administration.

Today, Biden’s tran­si­tion team announced the mem­bers of its Agency Review teams, which are tasked with prepar­ing each fed­er­al agency for the new admin­is­tra­tion. Among the 23 mem­bers assigned to review the Depart­ment of Labor is Josh Orton, a senior advi­sor to Bernie Sanders. Orton declined to com­ment on Sanders’ pur­suit of the agency’s top job. A spokesper­son for Sanders’ office also declined to comment.

Meet Garbage Person Behind The Electoral College

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsGYvIwqFo&ab_channel=TheDamageReport

With Biden in Power, Beware the Neoliberal Backlash

Grassroots organizers and Black voters led Biden to victory. Our concerns and demands must be taken seriously.


BARBARA RANSBY NOVEMBER 11, 2020



https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-victory-grassroots-organizers-black-voters-neoliberal-backlash-democrats







Amer­i­can vot­ers have giv­en the for­mer slum­lord Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an evic­tion notice to vacate 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue. He will not leave with­out a fight, but he will even­tu­al­ly leave. For many of us, the past four years have been a hell­ish eter­ni­ty. So, we should allow our­selves a lit­tle cel­e­bra­to­ry relief.

But after the par­ty, we have to pre­pare for a neolib­er­al back­lash. The cor­po­rate Democ­rats are already talk­ing ​“rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” and ​“nor­mal­iza­tion” at the expense of the Left and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment. Rather than thank­ing grass­roots groups and Black women vot­ers for show­ing up in large num­bers, the cen­trists with­in the par­ty (backed by lib­er­al media pun­dits) are blam­ing the Left for short­falls in down-bal­lot races.

In a con­tentious three-hour phone call among House Democ­rats on Novem­ber 5, for­mer CIA offi­cer Rep. Abi­gail Span­berg­er (Va.) and South Carolina’s king­mak­er Rep. James Clyburn blamed ​“defund the police” and ​“social­ism” for the lack­lus­ter show­ing in House races across the coun­try. A les­son for the Left: No mat­ter how much you help them and com­pro­mise, you can­not please cen­trist lib­er­als unless you shut up and disappear.

We will not shut up or dis­ap­pear, and pro­gres­sive orga­niz­ers have no apolo­gies to make in this elec­toral sea­son. Rep. Rashi­da Tlaib (Mich.) indi­cat­ed as much on the call when she said, ​“Don’t blame myself and oth­ers who are fight­ing for issues that mat­ter to our communities.”

The fact is that a mas­sive get-out-the-vote effort, fueled by pro­gres­sives and BIPOC orga­niz­ers, cre­at­ed the largest vot­er turnout in his­to­ry, despite a weak Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee and a wors­en­ing pan­dem­ic. Groups such as The Front­line, Pro­tect the Vote, Unit­ed We Dream and the Fight Back Table waged prag­mat­ic, strate­gic and relent­less cam­paigns to suc­cess­ful­ly oust Trump. Biden must know he owes his vic­to­ry to the Left and Black vot­ers, and as such, we will not be silenced or rel­e­gat­ed to the margins.

Despite the Left’s instru­men­tal role in Biden’s vic­to­ry, cen­trists and lib­er­al media are call­ing for Biden to reach out, instead, to the Right.

In his vic­to­ry speech Novem­ber 7, Biden fore­ground­ed the impor­tance of uni­ty and reach­ing across the aisle — but that ​“aisle” is now an alli­ga­tor-filled moat, and Biden is more like­ly to throw left forces and mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties to the alli­ga­tors than give us a seat at the table. It would not be sur­pris­ing if Biden starts build­ing a pro­file as ​“tough on the rad­i­cal Left” with a con­cil­ia­to­ry tone toward the anti-Trump, so-called main­stream of the GOP.

CNN hosts Van Jones and Repub­li­can Rick San­to­rum said as much on a post-elec­tion round­table. ​“I think Joe Biden wants us to reset,” and ​“sit down at the same table,” Jones said. Biden-sup­port­ing Repub­li­can poster boy John Kasich went fur­ther, say­ing the ​“far Left … almost cost [Biden] this elec­tion” and call­ing for Biden to reject the Left and embrace the cen­ter (i.e. the Right). His­to­ri­an Mark Upde­grove, speak­ing on ABC, made the out­ra­geous asser­tion that Biden should mod­el him­self after Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln, who extend­ed his hand to for­mer Con­fed­er­ates after the Civ­il War. Lin­coln ​“set so many pres­i­den­tial stan­dards,” Upde­grove said. ​“He reached out to the van­quished South, to the for­mer Con­fed­er­ates … with mal­ice toward none, with char­i­ty for all … and brought them back into the fold.” (Trans­la­tion: Lincoln’s first impulse was to make amends with those who kid­napped, enslaved and ter­ror­ized Black peo­ple through­out the South from 1619 to 1865 and fought a bloody war try­ing to pre­serve their priv­i­lege to do so. What would the 21st-cen­tu­ry ver­sion of that lead­er­ship look like?)

But this stance should be no sur­prise, giv­en this country’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dents. In the heat­ed and con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1876, (for­mer Con­fed­er­ate) Democ­rats agreed to sup­port abo­li­tion­ist Repub­li­can Ruther­ford B. Hayes over their nom­i­nee, Samuel Tilden — on the con­di­tion that the last ves­tiges of Recon­struc­tion be aban­doned. U.S. troops, pro­tect­ing a frag­ile Black free­dom, would soon be pulled out of the South. Essen­tial­ly, Black peo­ple were not thrown under a bus so much as in front of a fast-mov­ing train. That sce­nario is what a lib­er­al-con­ser­v­a­tive com­pro­mise looked like in the 19th cen­tu­ry. Let’s make sure we are not the sac­ri­fi­cial lambs in the 21st.

Juan Williams insist­ed right­ly on Fox News that the Democ­rats have elect­ed a mod­er­ate, not a pro­gres­sive. And it’s true: Biden opposed bussing for school deseg­re­ga­tion, rejects Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, defends the envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive prac­tice of frack­ing and boasts of his rela­tion­ship with Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tive seg­re­ga­tion­ist col­leagues in the Sen­ate. These mark­ers reveal the per­son Biden is. Biden is also a per­son who humil­i­at­ed Ani­ta Hill when she stepped for­ward with sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions against Clarence Thomas, who sup­port­ed the racist 1994 crime bill, who helped ush­er in the dis­as­trous war in Iraq, and who told Black peo­ple we ​“ain’t” Black if we don’t sup­port him. And he was still the bet­ter candidate.

But Biden was not elect­ed to make friends with the spine­less Repub­li­cans who took our coun­try to the brink of fas­cism, and embrac­ing oli­garchs and white nation­al­ists is not ​“uni­ty.” Remem­ber the vile­ness of Trump’s hard­core sup­port­ers — those who plot­ted to kid­nap a gov­er­nor, who killed Black Lives Mat­ter pro­test­ers in Kenosha and Char­lotte, who sup­port Steve Ban­non call­ing for infec­tious dis­ease expert Antho­ny Fau­ci to be behead­ed. There is no kum­baya moment with peo­ple like that.

Biden was elect­ed to undo as much dam­age from the Trump régime as pos­si­ble and pave a new way. Oba­ma squan­dered too much of his time in office try­ing to get racist Repub­li­cans to love him, which they nev­er did. Biden has to be pres­sured to use the pow­er of the office immediately.

What we need is an aggres­sive racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice agen­da that rights long­stand­ing wrongs, dethrones the bil­lion­aires, spreads the wealth, cre­ates a stur­dier nation­al infra­struc­ture and revers­es our dan­ger­ous cli­mate poli­cies. Biden’s cab­i­net appoint­ments should be bold, not the usu­al insid­er crony­ism. We have to push for tough and com­mit­ted move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, not politi­cians inclined to suck up to House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi (Calif.) to advance their careers.

Closed-door nego­ti­a­tions will not press Biden to do the right thing, but unre­lent­ing orga­niz­ing could: march­es, vig­ils, direct action and labor strikes. Police reform and account­abil­i­ty is on the front burn­er of munic­i­pal­i­ties across the coun­try because a mass move­ment put it there, forc­ing politi­cians to respond. Trump’s four-year reign has led to enor­mous pain and suf­fer­ing, with more than 238,000 U.S. deaths from a virus that could have been bet­ter con­tained, immi­grant chil­dren locked in cages (who may nev­er see their fam­i­lies again because of inhu­mane bor­der poli­cies) and an evis­cer­a­tion of key gov­ern­ment depart­ments and pro­grams designed to pro­tect and serve the pub­lic good, such as the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health and Low Income Ener­gy Assis­tance Pro­gram. Trump and his accom­plices need to be put on tri­al for their reck­less and harm­ful actions, rather than embraced.

So, what do our move­ment orga­ni­za­tions need to do? First, we must con­tin­ue the work to defeat Trump­ism. The seeds of ani­mus and racism Trump has sown are still grow­ing, and he is now like­ly to take his vile and ven­om on the road, albeit with­out the weight of state power.

Sec­ond, we must aggres­sive­ly push Biden to enact as pro­gres­sive an agen­da as pos­si­ble, with clear-eyed under­stand­ing that his incli­na­tion will instead be to pla­cate the Repub­li­cans who jumped off the sink­ing GOP ship to sup­port him.

And third, we must build a strong, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly ground­ed mass left move­ment — and pos­si­bly left par­ty — that includes elec­toral work but extends beyond that, such as stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Move­ment for Black Lives and work­ing close­ly with orga­niz­ers and activists to build work­ing-class coali­tions. With a Biden admin­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton and a few strong left voic­es in Con­gress (and Repub­li­cans poten­tial­ly los­ing con­trol of the Sen­ate), pro­gres­sives need to embrace an inside-out­side strat­e­gy — which looks like move­ment peo­ple doing some of their work inside gov­ern­ment and the elec­toral are­na (not as a career but in ser­vice to the cause). I am talk­ing about a more coor­di­nat­ed, over­all left strat­e­gy — not a dog­mat­ic par­ty line — to advance our move­ment goals through par­ty pol­i­tics as well as move­ment building.

We should cel­e­brate Trump’s defeat. We should also acknowl­edge the lim­its and pit­falls of Biden’s vic­to­ry. As Guinean rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amil­car Cabral reminds us: ​“Tell no lies. … Claim no easy [even if hard-fought] vic­to­ries.” Our work continues.

"Biden World" BLAMES Progressives for Their Losses

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-uY7AxHpEg&t=159s&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

Keep Rahm Emanuel As Far Away As Possible From the Biden Administration

Neoliberal architect Rahm Emanuel is reportedly being considered for a top spot in Biden’s cabinet. That idea needs to be immediately thrown in the trash.


MILES KAMPF-LASSIN NOVEMBER 9, 2020



https://inthesetimes.com/article/rahm-emanuel-joe-biden-cabinet-aoc-administration-2020




On Novem­ber 6, 2008, just two days after win­ning the pres­i­den­cy on a cam­paign pow­ered by mes­sages of ​“hope” and ​“change,” Barack Oba­ma set the tone for his new admin­is­tra­tion by announc­ing his incom­ing chief of staff. ​“No one I know is bet­ter at get­ting things done than Rahm Emanuel,” he said.

Among the ​“things” Emanuel had gained a rep­u­ta­tion for get­ting done were cor­po­rate-friend­ly poli­cies that dev­as­tat­ed work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, while also cham­pi­oning a stale cen­trist polit­i­cal doc­trine that shut out pro­gres­sive voic­es while ele­vat­ing a rich donor class to set the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty agenda.

Today, anoth­er new­ly-elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent is set to take pow­er, and, again, neolib­er­al stan­dard-bear­er Rahm Emanuel is appar­ent­ly being con­sid­ered for a top spot in the admin­is­tra­tion. Accord­ing to reports from Politi­co and the New York Times, Emanuel is among the con­tenders for a top cab­i­net posi­tion under Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden, poten­tial­ly head­ing the Trans­porta­tion or Hous­ing departments.

In 2008, Obama’s selec­tion of Emanuel pro­voked out­rage from the Democ­rats’ left flank and pre­saged an era of timid, elite-dri­ven pol­i­cy mak­ing. Now, Biden’s con­sid­er­a­tion of the ​“Third Way” arche­type should be met with absolute oppo­si­tion, as any hopes for a pro­gres­sive shift in U.S. pol­i­cy hinge on keep­ing cor­po­rate toad­ies like Emanuel tram­meled from the levers of Amer­i­can power.

Emanuel’s first stint at the White House came not under Oba­ma, but rather in Bill Clinton’s admin­is­tra­tion in the 1990s. There, he served as an archi­tect of the NAF­TA ​“free trade” deal that dec­i­mat­ed orga­nized labor, sent jobs over­seas, destroyed much of U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing and helped lead to a mas­sive flow of mon­ey to the top of the country’s income brack­et while Amer­i­can work­ers saw their wages flat line. He sim­i­lar­ly helped push through wel­fare reform which led to an enor­mous growth in extreme pover­ty, and worked to pass the 1994 crime bill, a direct cause of the mass incar­cer­a­tion and crim­i­nal injus­tice crises that con­tin­ue to beset the Unit­ed States.

After serv­ing under Clin­ton, Emanuel tran­si­tioned to the finan­cial indus­try where he made $16 mil­lion in just a few years before win­ning a seat in Con­gress in 2002. In 2006, he head­ed the pow­er­ful Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (DCCC), where he engi­neered a strat­e­gy of recruit­ing con­ser­v­a­tive ​“Blue Dog” Democ­rats to run in swing districts.

While he received many acco­lades for Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ries in that year’s midterm elec­tions, as jour­nal­ist Ryan Grim recounts in his book We’ve Got Peo­ple: From Jesse Jack­son to Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, the End of Big Mon­ey and the Rise of a Move­ment, Emanuel’s strat­e­gy actu­al­ly ​“cost Democ­rats seats in a num­ber of races, and cer­tain­ly had elec­toral costs down the road — as Rahm’s class of new mem­bers watered down and opposed Obama’s agen­da, help­ing slow the econ­o­my and make health­care reform less pop­u­lar, ulti­mate­ly feed­ing lat­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic loss­es.” Indeed, in the decade that fol­lowed, Democ­rats lost near­ly 1,000 seats across the coun­try, hem­or­rhag­ing majori­ties in state leg­is­la­tures and relin­quish­ing pow­er to Repub­li­cans dead-set on revers­ing all the gains made under Demo­c­ra­t­ic leadership.

Once pro­mot­ed into Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion, Emanuel made a name for him­self by resist­ing all efforts to pur­sue the kind of bold approach the new pres­i­dent had broad­cast on the cam­paign trail.

For his open­ing gam­bit, he fought tooth-and-nail to deflate the lev­el of stim­u­lus fund­ing that Obama’s eco­nom­ic advis­ers were encour­ag­ing, argu­ing that the gov­ern­ment response need­ed to be mut­ed in order to ben­e­fit mod­er­ates in the par­ty. Emanuel was suc­cess­ful, and the reduced stim­u­lus was lat­er cit­ed by many experts as ensur­ing a slug­gish eco­nom­ic recov­ery, which haunt­ed the admin­is­tra­tion for years, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly wreak­ing hav­oc on the lives of work­ing people.

Emanuel would go on to advise Oba­ma against pur­su­ing both a com­pre­hen­sive health­care plan (a fight he ulti­mate­ly lost) and quick action on immi­gra­tion reform (a rec­om­men­da­tion that was heed­ed, as Oba­ma wait­ed years to push for such action before fail­ing to reach the fin­ish line). Emanuel also threw union work­ers under the bus dur­ing the administration’s nego­ti­a­tions to help save the U.S. auto indus­try in 2010, as summed up by his infa­mous quote: ​“Fuck the UAW.”

Emanuel then left the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to mount a suc­cess­ful cam­paign for Chica­go may­or, where he served from 2011 until leav­ing office in a mias­ma of con­tro­ver­sy and dis­grace in 2019. Dur­ing that peri­od, he took the ideas of mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism and aus­ter­i­ty that he advo­cat­ed under Clin­ton and Oba­ma and car­ried them out on a city-wide scale.

Soon after assum­ing office, he shut down half of the city’s pub­lic men­tal health cen­ters and lat­er car­ried out the largest mass pub­lic school clos­ings in U.S. his­to­ry, open­ing the door for pri­vate, for-prof­it char­ters to fill the vac­u­um. He also bat­tled the city’s labor move­ment, slash­ing pub­lic-sec­tor union jobs and pro­vok­ing a his­toric (and suc­cess­ful) strike by the pow­er­ful Chica­go Teach­ers Union. At the same time, he cut and pri­va­tized pub­lic ser­vices, raised regres­sive fines and fees for every­day Chicagoans, hand­ed out tax break to the cor­po­rate class, over­saw trau­ma­tiz­ing lev­els of gun vio­lence and police abuse, and refused to give any seat at the table to the city’s tapes­try of pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty organizations.

When it comes to trans­porta­tion and hous­ing, the two areas where he’s report­ed­ly being dis­cussed for a role in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, Emanuel boasts a sim­i­lar­ly trou­bling record.

What came of his much-hyped project to build an express bul­let train from down­town to O’Hare Air­port through a col­lab­o­ra­tion with tech mogul Elon Musk (who also hap­pened to donate over $55,000 to the Chica­go may­or)? It nev­er went any­where, leav­ing a gap­ing chasm under the city’s streets. Emanuel also aban­doned plans to improve tran­sit near Chicago’s Muse­um Cam­pus and failed to respond to rapid­ly declin­ing bus ridership.

Under Emanuel, the Chica­go Hous­ing Author­i­ty sat on hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars while the wait­list for pub­lic hous­ing sky­rock­et­ed, and the may­or did near noth­ing to pro­vide sup­port for strug­gling res­i­dents as the con­struc­tion of new afford­able hous­ing slowed down dra­mat­i­cal­ly. He also pushed through the biggest prop­er­ty tax increase in the city’s his­to­ry and shift­ed fund­ing for hous­ing to wealthy neigh­bor­hoods while dis­plac­ing long-term res­i­dents and starv­ing poor com­mu­ni­ties of much-need­ed resources.

But no account­ing of Emanuel’s ruinous record in Chica­go would be com­plete with­out acknowl­edg­ing his role in the scan­dal around the 2014 police mur­der of Black teenag­er Laquan McDon­ald. Ahead of Emanuel’s may­oral reelec­tion in 2015, the video show­ing police offi­cer Jason Van Dyke shoot­ing 16 bul­lets into McDon­ald was with­held from the pub­lic — an action many crit­ics claim was part of a larg­er cov­er-up around the mur­der. The release of the video led to waves of mass street protests and calls for Emanuel to resign, ramp­ing up polit­i­cal pres­sure on the incum­bent may­or before he even­tu­al­ly decid­ed in 2019 not to seek a third term in office.

In the midst of a nation­al reck­on­ing over racial injus­tice, with social move­ments demand­ing a redis­tri­b­u­tion of both wealth and pow­er in our soci­ety, the appoint­ment of a fig­ure as tox­ic as Rahm Emanuel would send a clear mes­sage from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to its vot­ers: ​“You put us into office, now sit qui­et­ly while we hand the reins over to the same fig­ures who gave rise to many of the crises that tor­ment your lives.”

New­ly-reelect­ed Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) summed it up well when she told the New York Times on Mon­day: ​“Some­one like Rahm Emanuel would be a pret­ty divi­sive pick. And it would sig­nal, I think, a hos­tile approach to the grass-roots and the pro­gres­sive wing of the party.”

Work­ing peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or won this elec­tion for Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris, and offer­ing a cab­i­net post to Rahm Emanuel would be a betray­al of these very vot­ing blocs. Worse, it would show that the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion doesn’t actu­al­ly plan to lis­ten to its base. That’s no way to start out a new term in office. Let’s keep Rahm Emanuel con­fined to the dust­bin of polit­i­cal his­to­ry — right where he belongs.

Wolff Responds: China - U.S. Conflict

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUQq4Hx26qg&ab_channel=RichardDWolff

Power Comes From Class War, Not Biden

The Left needs workers more than it needs the Democratic Party.
HAMILTON NOLAN NOVEMBER 10, 2020



https://inthesetimes.com/article/2020-election-labor-movement-joe-biden




It may have been the biggest mis­la­beled cel­e­bra­tion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. By mid­day Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 7, when the elec­tion was final­ly called, hordes of ecsta­t­ic peo­ple poured into the streets across the coun­try, honk­ing and cheer­ing and weep­ing with joy. This was wide­ly referred to as a cel­e­bra­tion of Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden. But it real­ly wasn’t about Biden at all.

I was in Philadel­phia when the news came, and a major Count Every Vote ral­ly host­ed by unions and com­mu­ni­ty groups instant­ly turned into a Thank God That’s Over ral­ly. There was a for­est of wav­ing signs pro­mot­ing unions, and the Green New Deal, and democ­ra­cy itself. Biden-Har­ris signs were rel­a­tive­ly hard to find. Because even Joe Biden’s own vic­to­ry par­ty was not about Joe Biden.

It was, first, about the end of the Trump night­mare. And sec­ond, about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some­thing good hap­pen­ing again, one day. Biden him­self had lit­tle to do with it. No one has ever been excit­ed enough about Joe Biden to par­ty in the streets.

In fact, Biden’s entire cam­paign rest­ed on the idea of him not so much as a vision­ary leader but as a ves­sel into which an incred­i­bly broad spec­trum of Amer­i­cans could pour their hopes. After a fren­zied ear­ly pri­ma­ry surge by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the entire Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty seemed to coa­lesce around Biden overnight, based on the the­o­ry that the most mediocre can­di­date would be the safest bet against Trump. That bet paid off — with the help of the party’s left wing, whose activists did as much as any­one to elect Biden. When the eupho­ria of Trump’s down­fall wears off, the Left must wake up to one thing that will not have changed: The pres­i­dent-elect, like the sit­ting pres­i­dent, won by explic­it­ly run­ning against progressives.

For Trump, crazy car­i­ca­tures of social­ists and immi­grants served as his boo­gie man. For Biden, it was the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Their styles are dif­fer­ent, but both men won by cast­ing them­selves as walls to stop the tide of wild-eyed left­ists rush­ing in to take away your fos­sil fuels and your pri­vate health­care. Trump’s pitch came with racism. Biden’s came with over­ween­ing empa­thy. But both came with implic­it assur­ance that the left­ies would remain locked out­side the White House gates.

This real­i­ty is what the Left must face. Though infi­nite­ly bet­ter than the alter­na­tive of creep­ing fas­cism, the 2020 elec­tion — a close Biden vic­to­ry, like­ly with­out Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of Con­gress — is a poi­so­nous polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion for pro­gres­sive activists. They now find them­selves with­out Trump’s rad­i­cal­iz­ing influ­ence on the pub­lic and frozen out by a Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment that will cite the need to mod­er­ate their posi­tions to get any­thing passed.

When the Left shows up to be repaid for their work of get­ting Biden elect­ed, they will run into John Kasich and the dis­af­fect­ed Repub­li­cans who are there for the same rea­son. It is not hard to imag­ine that these groups will more or less can­cel each oth­er out, leav­ing the cen­trists to feast on their favorite food, the sta­tus quo.

For the mil­lionth time, the Left will see its polit­i­cal util­i­ty to the Democ­rats evap­o­rate after Elec­tion Day. Hope springs eter­nal, but the raw log­ic of our two-par­ty sys­tem dev­as­tates us anew, again and again. The way out of this trap is to build a pow­er cen­ter that is not locked into the elec­toral sys­tem, where it is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for the Left to con­sis­tent­ly win.

Where can such pow­er be built? The rich build it on Wall Street and in the cor­po­rate world. For the Left, it is the labor move­ment, the sole insti­tu­tion that enables work­ing peo­ple to build and exer­cise real eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er not behold­en to the veto of big com­pa­nies or politicians.

The arc of the moral uni­verse may bend toward jus­tice, but it is very, very long. Longer than a life­time. Pro­gres­sives — the class of peo­ple who are best able to diag­nose society’s prob­lems, but the least able to change them — will con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed until they turn the bulk of their atten­tion away from the inher­ent­ly hos­tile elec­toral sys­tem and toward build­ing unions, the only things able to make social­ism real with­out ask­ing for permission.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the estab­lish­ment of the union world has become just as mani­a­cal­ly focused on elec­toral pol­i­tics as the estab­lish­ment of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. It is not easy to orga­nize an enor­mous revi­tal­iza­tion of union pow­er when so many unions are them­selves more inter­est­ed in con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns than union campaigns.

But 2020 has brought us the most vital ingre­di­ent of all: an ener­gized and rad­i­cal­ized nation of work­ers in dire need, who are about to be dis­ap­point­ed by how the sys­tem deliv­ers on its big promises.

This elec­tion wasn’t about Joe Biden. It was about get­ting back to a base­line of nor­mal­cy. That nor­mal­cy means class war. If we focus on giv­ing the work­ing class an ade­quate weapon, we won’t be in for quite so much dis­ap­point­ment by 2024.