I was a no vote, even though I
enthusiastically support Bernie in his campaign for the presidency in 2020. But
I also support Elizabeth Warren (and would have supported Sherrod Brown, had he
run). And & and I would have supported Barbara Lee over any of them had my
former Congressperson decided to run. But I felt that the either/or choice
posed by the DSA election – Bernie yes
or no – was way too simplistic, an effort really on the part of the Bernie
campaign to contain Warren’s support early in the contest. And I think
socialists have a responsibility to do things better.
There several important realities
at play here. One is that Bernie and Warren both represent the left and
represent the left well. A second one is that representation matters. One
reason that the Democrats lost in 2016 was the ticket-so-white team of Clinton
& Kaine told many voters of color that their interests were not being taken
seriously. Clinton got support roughly comparable to that of Obama’s 2012
re-election campaign in terms of percentages, but the urban turnout declined
and was more than offset by a resurgent rural rightwing vote. Cisgender white
males may play well with the pundit class – which itself leans in that
direction[i]
– but frankly should have higher barriers to endorsement from the left. This is
true for Sanders, Biden and O’Rourke, as well as for several of the vanity
candidates for the 2020 nomination. A power play aimed primarily at precluding
DSA support for Elizabeth Warren is itself a pretty traditional male privilege
strategy, and it is depressing to think that DSA has responded without more
critical depth.
Another reality is that no centrist
campaign has captured the presidency since 1996. Obama beat Clinton in 2008 by
running to her left and his tragedy will always be his failure to govern
accordingly. Now, to be honest, both Gore and Clinton did win the popular vote,
but as the Vlad the vote-counter could tell you, the electoral college was the
first gerrymander. Sadly, I think the run-left, govern center strategy is
exactly what we can anticipate from the Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gilliland and
Corey Booker campaigns, and outright centrist candidates (Biden, O’Rourke, and
most of the vanity challengers) may well adopt the same strategy once they
realize that the center-right has not held in the old Wall Street-Democratic
Leadership Conference coalition. No question, the voters who wanted a left
alternative to Clinton in 2008 are impatient – they are insisting on a progressive candidate this
time who actually is progressive. There were tells, as poker players would say,
with Obama early on, Bob Casey signing up as one of his first and most ardent
supporters, but that kind of red flag will get noticed this time around.
Harris, for example, is already having to run away from her record as DA and
Attorney General.
To be honest, I would vote for any Democrat as an alternative to Trump, and if I thought
that a centrist candidate would expand the Democratic Party vote, I would be
more open to the Beltway/Wall Street whinging about how the base will push the
party too far to the left. But that is a patently false argument – Trump and
Pence offered the most unhinged reactionary extremism a major party has ever
put up for election, got 48 percent of the vote, and still has 88 percent GOP
support even after having been exposed to be an incompetent small-potatoes
crime family with Russian Mafia support, if not outright direction.
This doesn’t mean that it’s a done
deal that the Democrats are going to win in 2020. I still think this race is Trump’s to lose but I see
no sign that it will be well run, even though well-funded. If Trump does
something smart, like dumps Pence for someone like Nikki Haley, who could mute
the Dem’s POC support, then it will be almost impossible to defeat him.
Fortunately, betting on Trump to do anything smart is a longshot at best. But
articles that his campaign is as well organized as his clown car administration
is not frankly scare me.
The pro-Bernie DSA argument is
pretty straightforward. Sanders has been willing to use the S word going back
to at least his days as the mayor of Burlington. Warren still talks around the
question. AOC she is not. And Warren has
not always been as far to the progressive side as she has evolved into over the
past 15 years. But Bernie has never played well with others and is still
technically an independent, and up until the past few weeks he has been tone
deaf on issues impacting people of color. Cultural politics has never been his
thing, to the degree that it has become part of the brand, the charm of the
Grumpy Grandpa persona.
But but but – we are over 18 months
from election day and you & I both
know that whoever is the front runner in this campaign is going to be
hammered long and hard, with the full electoral arsenal of corporate capital and the Kremlin. In ought 8, Clinton,
Obama & everyone else knew that coming out of Iowa the race was going to
telescope down into Hillary and the Anyone-but-Hillary candidate. Clinton was
ready to shine against any white male she might find herself up against. There
was only one problem with that strategy – against Obama she no longer looked
like change, like the promise of new politics. Indeed, she looked like round 3
of a very problematic center-right Democratic administration.
This time around, I think we’re in
for a long bruising series of elimination bouts. I think that Kamala Harris has
some serious advantages in the faux-progressive lane, an intelligent, well-spoken
woman who is both Asian and black and a
former prosecutor. California will give her a big victory on Super Tuesday
in March. And if the race should telescope down to just two candidates, she’s a
more reliable bet to be one of them than is Sanders.
Which is why I want Elizabeth
Warren still in the race all the way. And having the largest socialist
organization in the past half-century double down on Bernie doesn’t advance his
own campaign very much except insofar as it hurts hers. And that hurts us all.
We do need to keep the S word up
front and center in 2020. There is no better or quicker method for spelling out
the dramatic changes this country must have if it is going to turn this Titanic
state away from several potential disasters before it becomes too late. It’s
not that socialism is going to happen overnight, or even in under half a
century, but its unrelenting critique of capital is the one widely available
diagnosis not only as to what is wrong with the world, but as to which
principles need to be put forward to change the rapidly worsening status quo.
EVERY – repeat EVERY – major social problem of our time can in one way or
another be tracked back to its roots in an economic model that privileges power
and competition, demands ever expanding markets in the face of fixed natural
resources and fundamentally divides one group of humans from others in order to
accomplish its goals. That all has to change, and to change now.
The entire purpose of walls is to prevent
any distribution of resources from becoming equal. The invention of race – a
sociohistorical reality rather than a biological one – has everything to do
keeping the conditions between groups different. As with white privilege, so
too with male privilege, straight t privilege, Christian privilege, etc, etc. A
pseudo-liberal Democratic party that “plays nice” with Wall Street and the tech
billionaires – Clinton’s neoliberal sellout – does so at the expense of the
lives of the vast majority of citizens. Even when a billionaire gives away the
bulk of his wealth – Bill Gates is a case in point – doing so through
philanthropy removes that altruism from the clear light of review and
prioritization. Obama may well have reduced the number of troops engaged in
Bush’s wars abroad, but he failed to initiate the national discussion we need
to have about how to walk away from global imperialism before the rest of the
world pulls us under out of its own self-defense. Every empire fails – it is what they do, and usually they
impoverish the very nations that to enrich themselves by casting their nets of
power to the far corners of the globe. It’s a lesson China will be learning
down the road, but we have to act far sooner.
Thus we have to talk about capitalism, what it has done to this world, what it is still
doing. And the best, surest, quickest way to connect ALL the dots from Putin’s
kleptocracy to that of Wells Fargo and Mark Zuckerberg, from the suppression of
Islamic tribes in western China to the sale of slots at Ivy League academies,
from the cost of healthcare to the immiseration of the Palestinian people, is
to throw the S word in everyone’s face. Further, as I think Representative
Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated repeatedly, I think we are ready for it. A
centrist will lose to Trump. A socialist will ultimately have a far better
chance. Therefore I want Bernie AND Elizabeth Warren to lead the debate toward
2020, not to have the race collapse in a simple Biden vs. Bernie vs. Kamala
Harris three-way King of the Mountain. Because that I think sets Bernie up to
be roped off and contained. And I don’t think we can wait until 2024 or 2028 to
have the serious discussion we need. Otherwise we won’t be discussing who lost
Afghanistan or Iraq in those later races, but rather who lost Manhattan and
Miami Beach.
[i]
Consider that MSNBC floods the final seven hours of its news day with six white
men and Rachel Maddow. And while Chris Hays and Lawrence O’Donnell are among
the finest commentators on television, Ari Melber’s faux hipness, Chuck Todd’s
fawning incorporation of rightwing commentators posed as “balance,” Chris
Matthews’ interruption of every single answer to any question he ever poses,
and Brian Williams’ servile superlatives toward any guest willing to stay up
long enough to still be wearing clothes during his time spot, is not precisely
a ringing endorsement of available talent. And that’s just MSNBC.
