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Category: Democratic Party

  • Graylan Hagler: Capitulation Masquerading As Political Thought

    One can only say that making such a dispensation is very generous of Rev. Graylan Hagler. It isn’t clear what he means by “emotionally understand” but the subtext is troubling. Is he insisting that a group whose people are victims of a genocide ought to support the perpetrators of the war crimes? If that is his stance it is not understandable, emotionally or in any other way. The statement encapsulates what is highly problematic about Hagler’s recent essay The Betrayal of the Black Community . Hagler’s 2,500 word screed is a muddled apologia to the Democratic Party after their ignominious defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, despite raising $1 billion in the effort to elect Kamala Harris.

    The post Graylan Hagler: Capitulation Masquerading As Political Thought appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Politico Plays With Polling to Manufacture ‘Trump-Resistance Fatigue’

     

    Politico: California voters have Trump-resistance fatigue, poll finds

    Politico (4/16/25) finds “a disconnect between political elites”—i.e., its own subscribers—”and the electorate.”

    A recent Politico article (4/16/25) gave readers an excellent lesson in how not to report on a poll—unless the goal is to push politicians to the right, rather than reflect how voters are truly feeling.

    “California Voters Have Trump-Resistance Fatigue, Poll Finds,” declared the headline. The subhead continued: “From taking on Trump to hot-button issues, voters writ large embraced a different approach—although Democrats are more ready to fight.”

    From the start, the piece framed its polling results as showing the California “political elite” are out of step with voters, who are apparently tired of all this “Trump resistance” being foisted upon them. Reporter Jeremy White explained that “the electorate is strikingly more likely to want a detente with the White House,” and that “voters are also more divided on issues like immigration and climate change.”

    But problems with this framing abound, from its wrong-headed comparison to its skewing of the results, revealing more about Politico‘s agenda than California voters’ preferences.

    ‘Driving the state’s agenda’

    First of all, the poll in question—which the article never links to—surveyed two samples of people: registered California voters and “political professionals who are driving the state’s agenda.” Those “influencers” are a sample taken from subscribers to three of Politico‘s California-focused newsletters, which, the article explained, “included lawmakers and staffers in the state legislature and the federal government.” Presumably that sample also included many journalists, lobbyists, advocates and others who closely follow state politics.

    But in a country where the political right has overwhelmingly rejected reality- and fact-based news in favor of a propaganda echo chamber, one can safely assume that subscribers to Politico, a centrist but generally reality-based media outlet, will include vanishingly few right-wingers. In contrast, in a state where 38% of voters cast a ballot for Trump in 2024, a representative sample of voters will necessarily include a significant number of Trump supporters. In other words, by sampling their own subscribers, Politico has selected out most right-wing respondents and created a group that is by definition going to poll farther to the left than the general voting public of California.

    On top of that, people subscribed to Politico‘s state-focused newsletters are highly informed about the policies being polled on. One of Politico‘s sources points this out, explaining that “they’re more aware of the factual landscape.”

    As polling expert David Moore (FAIR.org, 9/26/24) has explained, large segments of the voting public are disengaged and uninformed on most policy issues, so their opinions on survey questions that don’t provide a great deal of context are not terribly firm or meaningful. There’s very little reason, then, to compare policy opinions of California political professionals from Politico‘s subscription list with a cross-section of California voters, unless your purpose is to push lawmakers to the right.

    ‘Lower the temperature’

    And based on how they skew the polling numbers, that’s exactly what Politico appears to be trying to do here. Regarding the “Trump-resistance fatigue,” White wrote:

    The poll shows that while Democratic voters favor taking on Trump, the electorate broadly wants their representatives to lower the temperature. Forty-three percent of registered voters said leaders were “too confrontational”—a sentiment largely driven by Republicans and independents—compared to a third who found them “too passive.” A plurality of Democrats surveyed, 47%, wanted a more aggressive approach.

    This is what gives the piece its headline. But it conveniently leaves out all the voters who said state leaders’ level of confrontation was “about right”—a sizable 24%. In other words, 57%—a 14-point majority—either approve of their state leaders’ resistance to Trump, or want more of it, yet Politico manages to spin that into a headline about Trump-resistance fatigue.

    In general, how are California leaders engaging with Trump administration policies?

    The poll Politico didn’t link to.

    Turning to one of the “hot-button issues” the poll asked about, Politico told readers that “a plurality of voters is skeptical of legal immigration.”

    What the hell does that mean, you ask? White doesn’t say, except to note several paragraphs later that voters are “more likely to support reducing legal immigration” than the political elite are. Looking at the poll, it would appear to come from the question: “The US admits over a million legal immigrants a year. Do you think the number should be [increased, decreased, stay about the same]?”

    Forty-three percent of respondents said “decreased,” either “a lot” or “a little,” while 21% said “increased” and 36% said “stay about the same.” Technically, sure, a “plurality” want fewer legal immigrants (which isn’t exactly the same thing as being “skeptical” of legal immigration). But, just as with the “Trump-resistance fatigue” spin, this buries the majority opinion, which is not “skeptical,” being either fine with current levels of immigration or wanting to see more.

    On immigration, the article also reports:

    While a clear 60% of voters support the state’s “sanctuary” laws, which partition local law enforcement from federal immigration authorities, policy influencers were 20 points more likely to support that policy.

    Again, that Politico subscribers in California poll to the left of voters is to be expected. That voters still support sanctuary laws by 20 percentage points despite the relentless onslaught of fearmongering from the Trump administration, as well as both right-wing and centrist media, about immigrants? That seems like important news—that Politico would apparently prefer to bury.

    ACTION ALERT: Messages to Politico can be sent here (or via Bluesky @Politico.com). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

    Featured Image: Protesters gathered at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza to protest the Trump administration on April 5, one of 137 “Hands Off!” demonstrations across California that day (Creative Commons photo: Lynn Friedman).

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • How Trump Exploits Working Class Pain

    Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild is skeptical that Trump’s policies will actually benefit those in rural America. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America.

    In her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild visited Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.
    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson
    Donate today at Revealnews.org/more

    Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly

    Follow us on Instagram @revealnews

    Read: Farmers in Trump Country Banked on Clean Energy Grants. Then Things Changed. (Mother Jones)

    Read: Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly (Mother Jones)

    Listen: The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory (Reveal)

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Trump’s Education by Indoctrination Must Be Fought With Social Justice Unionism

    From the outset of his second term, President Donald Trump has fed the Constitution through a paper shredder. He has sought to strip away birthright citizenship — a constitutionally guaranteed right under the 14th Amendment — and declared, chillingly, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” He defied a federal judge’s order to halt a deportation flight, sending immigrants to a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cory Booker, Confused Liberals, Obama And The Dangers Of A Fake Movement

    What kind of protest has Nancy Pelosi as a featured speaker? One that is connected to the Democratic Party and that by definition isn’t protesting anything important, which is why Nancy Pelosi appeared at a Hands Off rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 5. She spoke predictably as a democratic member of congress would, saying that she wanted to protect the safety net , “Hands off our safety net. Hands off our medicaid. Hands off our medicare. Hands off our social security.” But those who have longer memories know that during the Obama administration she declared that social security was “on the table” for budget cut consideration.

    The post Cory Booker, Confused Liberals, Obama And The Dangers Of A Fake Movement appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • NYT: Trump Unstoppable, Opposition Futile 

     

    NYT: This Is Who We Are Now

    Michelle Goldberg (New York Times, 11/6/24): “Gone will be the hope of vindicating the country from Trumpism…. What’s left is the more modest work of trying to ameliorate the suffering his government is going to visit on us.”

    The New York Times editorial board (2/8/25) this month urged readers not to get “distracted,” “overwhelmed,” “paralyzed” or “pulled into [Donald Trump’s] chaos”—in short, don’t “tune out.” But what good is staying informed unless there are concrete actions Trump’s opponents can take to rein him in?

    Right after the election, in a column headlined, “My Manifesto for Despairing Democrats,” Times columnist Nick Kristof (11/6/24) suggested readers “hug a lawyer,” get a dog, and/or remain “alert” to “gender nastiness.”

    Michelle Goldberg (11/6/24) used her post-election column, “This Is Who We Are Now,” to castigate the voters who “chose” Trump, “knowing exactly who [he] is.”  “This is…who we are [as a country],” she added mournfully, despite the fact that less than 30 percent of US adults voted for Trump. She did not mention the nearly 90 million Americans who were eligible to vote but didn’t, or explore why they were so alienated from politics. Her own instinct, she wrote, was to turn inward, and she predicted the next few months would be “a period of mourning rather than defiance.”

    Although she saw “no point” in protesting Trump’s inauguration, she did express a vague hope that people would “take to the streets if [Trump’s] forces come into our neighborhoods to drag migrant families away,” and that they would “strengthen the networks that help women in red states get abortions.” The work of the next four years, she concluded, would be “saving what we can” and “trying to imagine a tolerable future.” But, for the moment, all she could do was “grieve.”

    Even in a column headlined “Stop Feeling Stunned and Wounded, Liberals. It’s Time to Fight Back,” the Times‘ Charles Blow (1/29/25) presented fighting back as a strangely inactive process: “People, especially young people, are simply not built to passively absorb oppression,” he wrote; they will, at some point, “inevitably react and resist.” Yet he offered few suggestions for how they might do this, defaulting instead to vague proclamations like “Confidence has to be rebuilt” and “Power and possibility have to be reclaimed.” Finally, he noted, “resistance must be expressed in opinion polls and at the cash registers,” because “the people’s next formal participation in our national politics won’t come until the 2026 midterms.”

    Reinforcing disarray

    New York Times: ‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump

    Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein (New York Times, 2/2/25): “Elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided…. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.”

    While counseling patience, discipline and self-care, the paper runs several headlines per month painting opposition to Trump as pointless, ineffective, disorganized and/or pusillanimous. It is both fair and necessary to report critically on efforts to oppose Trump, and the New York Times has done that to some extent. But in headlines, framing and content, the paper often goes from reporting on Democratic disarray to reinforcing it.

    Days after the election, the Times (11/7/24) began a story headlined “Devastated Democrats Play the Blame Game, and Stare at a Dark Future” as follows: “A depressed and demoralized Democratic Party is beginning the painful slog into a largely powerless future.” According to a photo caption in the story, “Many Democrats are left considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Mr. Trump from enacting a sweeping right-wing agenda.”

    From more recent stories like “‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump” (2/2/25), “Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash” (2/16/25) and “Democrats Fear They Are Missing the Moment to Remake the Party” (2/17/25), we learn that Trump’s opposition is “demoralized,” plagued by “second-guessing” and “fretting.”

    It’s true that many Democratic voters are furious at the Democratic Party. But other reporting suggests that a functional opposition exists. Democrats’ legal strategy is slowing Trump down. His approval ratings have notably declined. A broad majority of Americans feel the president isn’t doing enough to address the high prices of everyday goods, and a slim majority (52%) say he’s gone too far in using his presidential power. This has spurred a fed-up public to lead dozens of mass protests throughout the country. And Bernie Sanders recently held massive rallies in Omaha and Iowa City to pressure the area’s Republican representatives to vote against Trump’s federal budget in March, drawing overflow crowds of more than 2,500 in Omaha and 1,175 in Iowa City.

    ‘I think of socialism’

    NYT: Democrats Fear They Are Missing the Moment to Remake the Party

    Shane Goldmacher (New York Times, 2/17/25): “For disillusioned Democrats…what is needed is a deeper discussion of whether the party’s policies and priorities are repelling voters.”

    Because the New York Times treats the complaints of mega-wealthy donors as more legitimate than the fury of the Democratic base, it often presents money as the best and/or only means of affecting policy. “Prominent” Democrats have “lost faith in the party’s resolve to pinpoint its problems, let alone solve them” (2/17/25), and rich donors are “furious” over “Democrats’ tactical missteps and wasteful spending”—so they’re withholding their money accordingly (2/16/25).

    The Times  (2/17/25) quotes wealthy donors who blame progressives for the party’s losses at length, like personal-injury lawyer John Morgan,  a “major Democratic contributor…who has often backed more moderate candidates”:

    When I think “progressive,” I think of the Squad…. And when I think of the Squad, I think of socialism, and when I think of socialism, I think of Communism, and when I think of Communism, I think of the downfall of countries.

    The needs and policy preferences of rank-and-file voters don’t get similar attention.

    Though it framed the findings differently, the Times  (2/17/25) mentioned a poll that showed a slender majority of Democratic voters—six points more than the share who favor more moderation—want the party to become more liberal or stay the same, and one which shows that a large majority of Democrats across all demographics want the party to focus on economic issues like wages and jobs (63%) rather than cultural debates (31%). These views are strikingly different from those wealthy donors typically express, with different implications than the polls’ headlines suggest.

    When it comes to identifying what went wrong, Democrats are more aligned than the Times has indicated. Two weeks after asserting that “leaderless, rudderless and divided” elected Democrats have “no shared understanding of why they lost the election” (2/2/25), the paper reported that there is, in fact, “almost universal agreement on a diagnosis of the party’s problem with the working class” (2/17/25). And despite the fact that far more Americans didn’t vote in 2024 than voted for Trump or Harris, the Times has expanded its coverage of undecided and Trump voters, while demonstrating scant interest in the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home.

    ‘No parallel in history’

    NYT: For Trump, a Vindication for the Man and His Movement

    Peter Baker (New York Times, 1/20/25): “Trump…opened an immediate blitz of actions to begin drastically changing the course of the country and usher in a new ‘golden age of America.’”

    The New York Times’ emphasis on Democratic weakness stands in stark contrast to its treatment of Trump. While the Democratic Party struggles to define “what it stands for, what issues to prioritize and how to confront a Trump administration,” Trump is “carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed” (2/2/25).

    After years of dismissing Trump as an amateurish reality television star (6/16/15, 12/22/15, 9/16/16)—in 2015, the paper couldn’t come up with a single reason why he might win the GOP nomination, despite having “really tried” (6/16/15)—the Times now sees him as forceful and decisive, if reckless; a born leader fulfilling his mandate with impressive speed and strength. He has engineered a “remarkable political comeback” and an “audacious and stunningly successful legal strategy that could allow him to evade accountability.” He has “redefined the limits of presidential power,” his “success in using his campaign as a protective shield has no parallel in legal or political history” (11/6/24), and he has “little reason to fear impeachment, which he has already survived twice” (2/5/25).

    Compared to its headlines about Democrats, the Times’ headlines about Trump could just as easily have been written by the man himself: “With Political Victory, Trump Fights Off Legal Charges” (11/6/24),  “For Trump, a Vindication for the Man and His Movement” (1/20/25), ” “A Determined Trump Vows Not to Be Thwarted at Home or Abroad” (1/20/25), “Trump’s New Line of Attack Against the Media Gains Momentum” (2/7/25) and “Trump Targets a Growing List of Those He Sees as Disloyal” (2/17/25).

    The overall message is that Trump is virtually unstoppable, and even high-ranking congressional Democrats and billionaire donors, let alone ordinary Americans, have no idea how to stop him. The Times has answered its own question, “Resisting Trump: What Can Be Done?” (2/10/25) with a resounding very little, aside from responding to opinion polls and meekly waiting to vote in the 2026 midterms.

    Acknowledging Trump’s political savvy is partly a business decision—as the Times (1/13/25) has noted, “many reporters, editors and media lawyers are taking [Trump’s threats against the media] seriously…. He is altering how the press is operating.” Some would rather stay proximate to power than take on a vindictive, litigious and power-drunk president. It’s also a mea culpa of sorts; chastened by criticisms from both left and right, elite journalists and editors have spent years thinking maybe they were too quick to dismiss Trump’s appeal and too late to understand it.

    Fighting Trump’s agenda

    NYT: Montana Lawmakers Reject Bid to Restrict Bathroom Use for Trans Legislators

    The New York Times‘ Jacey Fortin (12/3/24) covered successful resistance to a culture-war bogeyman in Republican-dominated Montana.

    Whatever the reasoning, it does not serve readers to present Trump as a force of nature, and avenues for resistance as minimal, especially when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Ordinary people are fighting Trump’s agenda through long-term political and labor organizing.

    And the New York Times has covered elected leaders who have taken effective stands against anti-democratic bullies. When Montana Republicans barred her from the House floor in 2023 for “attempting to shame” them in a debate, state legislator Zooey Zephyr fought back to defend both “democracy itself” and the transgender community to which she belongs (New York Times, 4/26/23).

    Her courage paid off. Zephyr was reelected, and in December she joined colleagues in defeating a GOP proposal to restrict which bathrooms lawmakers could use in the Montana State Capitol (New York Times, 12/3/24).

    Weeks earlier, Tennessee legislators expelled two Democrats from the state House after they joined constituents in demanding stricter gun laws. An attempt to expel a third Democrat who joined the protest failed by one vote (New York Times, 4/6/23).

    After being expelled, state legislators Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were quickly but temporarily reinstated, reelected several months later, and have “risen in national prominence” (New York Times, 2/2/24). Their colleague, Rep. Gloria Johnson, who survived the attempt to expel her, won Tennessee’s 2024 Democratic primary for US Senate. Johnson lost the Senate race to GOP incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn in November, but voters reelected her to the Tennessee House.

    Even when efforts to prevent the passage of anti-democratic laws and policies ultimately fail, as they did when Texas Democrats fled the state to block voting restrictions in 2021, they inspire people to engage in politics and fight for their communities. The New York Times has a responsibility not to scold its readers for their supposed apathy, but to show them how to take on corrupt and lawless leaders like Trump. Hector a person for tuning out, and they’ll read the news for a day; show them how to use power, and they’ll civically engage for a lifetime.

    You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Democratic Party Collusion, Race Baiting, And Death By Austerity

    “You’re watching the Super Bowl next week. Wait till Trump’s tariffs raise your pizza prices.” – Senator Chuck Schumer , leader of the Democratic Party opposition

    President Donald Trump is certainly a man of his authoritarian word. As he promised on the campaign trail he is very serious about changing the nature of the U.S. government, the U.S. role in the world, and promoting white nationalist sentiment. While he carries out unconstitutional and possibly illegal acts, Democratic Party leaders have been AWOL, stunned into silence as Trump has thus far chosen not to utilize the back room deal making they are accustomed to and moves ahead unilaterally with budget cuts, personnel cuts, and the elimination of entire agencies, circumventing congressional prerogatives as he goes.

    The post Democratic Party Collusion, Race Baiting, And Death By Austerity appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Congressman seeks to impeach Trump over Gaza – but what about Biden?

    US congressman Al Green has announced his intention to impeach president Donald Trump. And he did so as he insisted that:

    ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke—especially when it emanates from the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world.

    Al Green: impeach Trump over Gaza

    Al Green stressed that “ethnic cleansing has always been a crime against humanity”. Then, he quoted Martin Luther King, asserting that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

    He’s absolutely right. But Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden presided over 15 months of genocide in Gaza. And genocide sits alongside ethnic cleansing as one of the “four mass atrocity crimes“, with some calling it “the most serious war crime“. So the question is, where’s the movement to impeach both Trump and Biden at the same time?

    There have been some calls from citizens to impeach Biden over his administration’s participation in Israel’s genocide. But the only impeachment talk in congress against Biden over Gaza seems to be from people arguing he wasn’t supporting Israel quickly enough.

    So it appears Democrats like Al Green who want to hold Trump to account for supporting Israel’s crimes were fine with Biden backing genocide and ethnic cleansing because his government pretended to care about Palestinians while sending billions of dollars in military aid to the war criminals murdering them, and because it asked Israel to be ‘a bit more careful’ while it was destroying people’s lives.

    Resist Trump, but don’t let Biden off the hook

    Al Green was very active in efforts to impeach Trump in his first presidential term. But his allegiance to the Democratic Party likely played a key role in avoiding similar efforts against Biden.

    He’s also far from perfect on Palestine. He backed Israel’s brutal 2014 assault on Gaza, for example, and has supported sending US funds to Israel. Additionally, he has received a comparatively small amount of money from pro-Israel lobbyists in the past.

    However, Green has insisted on the importance of unilaterally recognising a Palestinian state. And in early 2024, he made a powerful speech regarding a letter he had sent to Biden, stressing that:

    on May 14, 1948, President Truman was the first world leader to recognize Israel as a state within Palestine—effectuating an imbalance of political influence in favor of Israel.

    Importantly, he added:

    This was done unilaterally. Without the consent of the Palestinians. Without their approval. The Palestinians did not approve of Israel becoming a state. It was done over their disapproval. Many of them were forcibly relocated.

    And he asserted:

    Mr. President, just as the Palestinians of 1948 were not allowed to thwart Israeli statehood, in the name of justice, we should not allow Israel to thwart Palestinian statehood…

    what President Truman did for Israel unilaterally in 1948, we can do unilaterally for Palestinians.

    “Our fingerprints are all over this tragedy”

    In the same speech, Al Green clarified why it was necessary for the US to unilaterally recognise Palestine. Because war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he emphasised, had long taken advantage of Hamas’s rule in Gaza “to maintain the pretense of a lack of a negotiating partner”. This, he said:

    was a means by which he could say the words “two-state solution,” but he didn’t mean it.

    He lamented that:

    Netanyahu feigned support for a two-state solution while enabling Israeli settlers to lay claim to land intended for a Palestinian state.

    But he stressed that:

    We don’t have to do it with the consent of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

    And he pointed out why it was only right that the US unilaterally recognise Palestine and “send tens of billions… of dollars in humanitarian aid to Palestine”. Referring to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, he insisted:

    our fingerprints are all over this tragedy.

    Our money made this possible.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

  • For Elite Media, ‘Oligarch’ Is Just a Partisan Claim

     

    NYT: If Democrats Attack Trump’s Rich Pals as ‘Oligarchs,’ Will It Stick?

    The New York Times‘ Jess Bidgood (1/17/25) suggests Democrats should be wary of criticizing Donald Trump’s wealthy friends, “given the popularity of some of those billionaires.” (Elon Musk, pictured, is viewed unfavorably by 52% of poll respondents, with 36% having a positive opinion.)

    Sometimes the headline says it all, as with the New York Times on January 17: “If Democrats Attack Trump’s Rich Pals as ‘Oligarchs,’ Will It Stick?”

    The piece presents Elon Musk’s influence on the new administration as something “Democrats…have suggested”; the role of Trump’s billionaire allies is something Democrats “plan to invoke” in the fight over tax cuts; and the idea that Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos might be front and center at the inauguration isn’t meaningful in itself, so much as something Democrats saw as “an irresistible opportunity to further highlight those connections.”

    Is it true that the Trump administration, slated to be the richest presidential administration in history, not even counting Elon Musk, represents “oligarchy“? Not the point. The important question is: Will such a charge (clearly defined as partisan) “stick”? What it means for a charge to “stick,” and what role media like themselves have in making it stick, are not things the Times would have you consider.

    For its part, AP went with the headline (1/20/25): “Trump, a Populist President, Is Flanked by Tech Billionaires at His Inauguration,” over a piece noting it as a “shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a champion of the working class.” Is it a wacky juxtaposition—or a sign that elite media see the story as, not whether Trump actually is a champion of the working class, but whether he characterizes himself that way?

    It would be work enough to counter the actual things actually happening without news media dedicating themselves to putting up a rhetorical scrim between us and the things we need to understand and resist.

    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Laken Riley Act: Democrats Cede More Power To Anti-Immigrant Right

    What does the Democratic Party stand for? That question has plagued Capitol Hill, and the voting public, for at least a decade. Now, in the wake of Kamala Harris’s crushing presidential defeat, as Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, the Democrats’ identity crisis shows no sign of abating. Thanks to a wall of support from Senate Democrats, the Laken Riley Act — a GOP-sponsored, anti-immigrant bill — is on track to be one of the first pieces of legislation Trump will sign into law when he takes office. This is, of course, after the Democratic Party tacked hard to the right on immigration in its 2024 platform, caved to right-wing myths about the border, rubber-stamped President Joe Biden’s crackdown on asylum seekers — and still lost the presidential election.

    The post Laken Riley Act: Democrats Cede More Power To Anti-Immigrant Right appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Sunrise Calls on Next DNC Chair to Curb Corporate Influence in Democratic Party

    As Democratic National Committee members prepare to vote on the next party chair in February, leading progressive advocacy groups on Tuesday launched an open letter to candidates to warn that Democratic leaders “must decisively show that the party is for the people — not billionaires or corporations.” To do that, said the Sunrise Movement and several allied organizations…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Upcoming DNC Election Will Set Democratic Party’s Course on Palestine and More

    The Democratic Party, still reeling from its resounding loss to Donald Trump and the Republicans, will try to set a new course for the party at the Democratic National Committee’s upcoming winter meeting. This will be no small task; the party just endured a chaotic presidential campaign that saw the sitting president opt not to run for reelection after considerable pressure from inside the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Know Your Enemy: Women vs. the System

    Matt and Sam welcome Dorothy Fortenberry back to the podcast to discuss gender, the 2024 election, and whether or not women can run against “the System.”

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • A Fractured Coalition

    A roundtable on the 2024 election.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • A Fractured Coalition

    A roundtable on the 2024 election.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • Did Trump and Musk actually STEAL the US presidential election?

    Since Donald Trump (and let’s be real, Elon Musk) won the 2024 US presidential election, people having been pushing back against the result from multiple angles. Amid suggestions of election interference, some are already gearing up to contest the results.

    The fine print on Kamala Harris’ fundraising page has suggested that her team will be gearing up for a recount:

    Clearly, the Democrats will not be walking away from this election too quickly. Over the last week, there has been much speculation on both X and TikTok over missing ballots. One woman’s burnt ballot turned back up at her house, after she had mailed it.

    @lilyyyolson♬ original sound – lil o

    Trump and Musk and the election: too many anomalies?

    Previously, the Justice Department charged Trump himself with election interference. This time around though, his friendship with Elon Musk has raised a lot of suspicions.

    Even Elon Musk’s own AI tool on X, Grok, called him out for election interference:

    Polling stations even used Starlink, and whilst there is no evidence supporting that theory, its not completely out of the realm of possibility given everything we know about both Trump and Musk. Trump even bragged about his and Musk’s ‘little secret’:

    @livenowfoxDonald Trump spoke about a “little secret” at his rally in Madison Square Garden in New York, mentioning it when he brought up winning congressional and senate races this election cycle♬ original sound – LiveNOW from FOX

    Musk also joked that ‘if we lose, I’m fucked’ and ‘how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be’ in a video shared by The Express Tribune on YouTube.

    Led By Donkeys, a UK based group released a nine minute video exposing all the ways Musk peddled right-wing conspiracy theories, gave a convicted sex offender a platform, and artificially inflated the numbers on his own tweets in the run up to the election:

    Election interference

    Back in 2018, the FBI released the names and photos of 12 Russian Military intelligence officers for their alleged roles in interfering with the 2016 US election. The charges against these individuals involved:

    a computer hacking conspiracy involving gaining unauthorized access into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, stealing documents from those computers, and staging releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The indictment also charges these defendants with aggravated identity theft, false registration of a domain name, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

    The FBI also charged two defendants with:

     a separate conspiracy to commit computer crimes, relating to hacking into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.

    Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russian interference operations against the US during the 2016 election were ‘vast and complex’.

    The FBI proved interference in the 2016 election – albeit two years too late. If there was interference eight years ago, why is it so unhinged to suggest the same now?

    Protecting Californians

    Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, announced that he was calling an emergency special session to ‘safeguard the fundamental freedoms we all hold dear’:

    As Politico reported:

    Newsom said state lawmakers would convene to take immediate legislative action to counter Trump’s expected attacks on abortion, electric vehicles, immigration and federal disaster aid.

    Moreover, as the outlet noted, he’s not the only blue state mobilising to protect their suite of more progressive policies.

    Right now, there’s a lot of unproven conspiracy theories flying round about this – such as the stolen 20 million ballots. Instead, it’s just that 20 million people simply decided not to vote for two parties that do not speak for them. Turns out, genocidal, right-leaning Democrats aren’t exactly popular.

    Of course, with a convicted felon who previously tried to overturn the result of the last election, and the history of Russian interference in 2016, it’s not out of the realms of possibility there was similar interference this time.

    And with Musk calling the shots on X, Trump had outsized influence too. Plus, we know Musk set about spreading election misinformation to help secure him the Whitehouse.

    So it’s not so farfetched that Trump (and Musk’s)  win – at least in part – may not have been all totally above board.

    Feature image via MSNBC/Youtube

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Chris Matthews Garbles It All for You

     

    Election Focus 2024MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews, once one of the most prominent pundits on cable TV, used his post-election appearance on Morning Joe (Mediaite, 11/6/24) to demonstrate just how unhelpful political commentary can be.

    Asked by host Willie Geist for his “morning after assessment of what happened,” Matthews fumed:

    Immigration has been a terrible decision for Democrats. I don’t know who they think they were playing to when they let millions of people come cruising through the border at their own will. Because of their own decisions, they came right running to that border, and they didn’t do a thing about it.

    And a lot of people are very angry about that. Working people, especially, feel betrayed. They feel that their country has been given away, and they don’t like it.

    And I don’t know who liked it. The Hispanics apparently didn’t like it. They want the law enforced. And so I’m not sure they were playing to anything that was smart here, in terms of an open border. And that’s what it is, an open border. And I think it’s a bad decision. I hope they learn from it.

    You could not hope for a more distorted picture of Biden administration immigration policy from Fox News or OAN. “They didn’t do a thing about it”? President Joe Biden deported, turned back or expelled more than 4 million immigrants and refugees through February 2024—more than President Donald Trump excluded during his entire first term (Migration Policy Institute, 6/27/24).

    Human Rights Watch (1/5/23) criticized Biden for continuing many of Trump’s brutal anti-asylum policies; the ACLU (6/12/24) called those restrictions unconstitutional. How can you have any kind of rational debate about what the nation’s approach to immigration should be when the supposedly liberal 24-hour news network is pretending such measures amount to an “open border”?

    ‘Democrats don’t know how people think’

    NBC Exit Poll: Most Important Issue

    In one brief segment, MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews (Morning Joe, 11/6/24) was able to mangle the most important issues of 42% of the electorate.

    “It’s all about immigration and the economy,” Matthews told Geist. Well, he got the economics just as wrong:

    I think you can talk all you want about the rates of inflation going down. What people do is they remember what the price of something was, whether it’s gas or anything, or cream cheese, or anything else, and they’ll say, “I remember when it was $2, and now it’s $7.” But they remember it in the last five years. That’s how people think. Democrats don’t know how people think anymore. They think about their country and they think about the cost of things.

    The suggestion here is that success in fighting inflation would not be bringing the rate of price increases down, but returning prices to what they were before the inflationary period. That’s called deflation, a phenomenon generally viewed as disastrous that policy makers make strenuous efforts to prevent.

    A decade ago, the Wall Street Journal (10/16/14) described “the specter of deflation” as “a worry that top policy makers thought they had beaten back”:

    A general fall in consumer prices emerged as a big concern after the 2008 financial crisis because it summoned memories of deep and lingering downturns like the Great Depression and two decades of lost growth in Japan. The world’s central banks in recent years have used a variety of easy-money policies to fight its debilitating effects.

    Paul Krugman (New York Times, 8/2/10) noted that

    in a deflationary economy, wages as well as prices often have to fall—and…in general economies don’t manage to have falling wages unless they also have mass unemployment, so that workers are desperate enough to accept those wage declines.

    It’s natural for ordinary consumers to think that if prices going up is bad, prices going down must be good. For someone like Matthews to think that, when he’s been covering national politics for more than three decades, is incompetence.

    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to MSNBC at MSNBCTVinfo@nbcuni.com.

    Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Exit Right

    Trump has remade Americans, and to defeat Trumpism requires nothing less than the left doing the same.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • Toward a Revival of Left Populism

    Progressives need to fight and organize for a politics that focuses on class inequality in a consistent and persuasive way.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • A Party Out of Touch

    Without confronting the economic conditions that gave rise to right-wing populism, the Harris campaign could not meaningfully address a deepening crisis of liberal democracy.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • Kamala Harris lost because representation politics couldn’t mask her terrible campaign

    As the dust settles after the US presidential election, liberals are rolling out the excuses for Kamala Harris’ defeat. Convicted felon Donald Trump won the majority of the electoral votes as Harris slumped to defeat.

    Much like the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss, liberals were adamant that the Democrats had done everything perfectly:

    Representation politics

    MSNBC’s Joy Reid said:

    I think it’s important to say that anyone who has experienced or been in the United States for any period of time and experienced this country’s history knows this, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of colour. Let’s just be clear. And nothing that was true yesterday about how flawlessly this campaign was run is not true now. This really was an historic, flawlessly run campaign.

    By definition, if a campaign is to be run flawlessly, surely the candidate in question must win?

    It’s understandably been a central part of Kamala’s campaign that had she won she would have been the first woman, the first woman of colour, and the first South Asian Jamaican to take the office.

    However, the thinking has often stopped there, and this is a symptom of representational politics.

    Culture wars across the US and the UK have seen right-wing commenters seize on identity politics as some kind of ‘gotcha’ moment. Media producers, charities, businesses, and government departments alike have been harangued into doing the absolute least to have Black and Brown faces in visible places. But, it’s always a good rule of thumb to consider that whenever capitalist and corporate entities adopt metrics intended to address racism, those same metrics never go far enough.

    It’s part of the function of neoliberalism to adopt and subsume progressiveness whilst actually only enacting tokenistic change.

    What difference would it make to the millions of Americans who can’t afford healthcare that a woman of colour would be overseeing their poverty instead of a white man?

    Do we expect Palestinians to rejoice that an inclusive president is the one ripping their children apart with American-made bombs?

    Actual anti-race activists that aren’t embedded in bloated institutions have long moved on from using representational politics as any kind of yardstick of progress. It’s simply not good enough to tout Harris’s identity as proof of a flawless campaign worth celebrating.

    Harris and a lurch to the right

    Reid also cited celebrity endorsements, referring to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans:

    Queen Latifah never endorses anyone. She [Harris] had every prominent celebrity voice, she had the Swifties, she had the Bey-hive, you could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time, and I think that’s still true.

    It doesn’t take a political genius to point out that celebrity endorsements don’t matter one bit if the candidate doesn’t prevent a political vision that convinces voters.

    Just as Trump has famously promised to build a border wall with Mexico, Harris also promised to build a wall.

    She promised to continue to support Israel, and swerved talks of an arms embargo.

    She trotted out Bill Clinton to patronise and demean Muslim and Arab voters.

    She collected endorsements from Republican after Republican, including former president and warmonger Dick Cheney.

    In other words, she had every opportunity to present a vision of America that was anti-genocide, that wanted to stop children being bombed with American weapons, that would present a robust challenge to Trump. Instead, she pandered to the right and now has nothing to show for it.

    Amazingly, claims that Harris ran a flawless campaign abounded:

    Blame Harris

    Journalist Ben Norton compared Harris’ overall loss in Michigan with Rashida Tlaib’s win:

    Clearly, it’s possible to be a principled woman of colour, and clearly it’s also possible to both appeal to voters and be anti-genocide and pro-Palestine.

    Harris repeatedly scolded Palestinian activists for objecting to genocide. She famously interrupted protesters and said:

    I’m speaking now.

    These words and her dismissive attitude have come to haunt her, an Al Jazeera report carrying the headline “‘We warned you,’ Arab Americans in Michigan tell Kamala Harris” read:

    As the reality of another Trump presidency set off anger and sorrow from many Democratic commentators, at the Arab American gathering there was a sense of indifference – if not vindication.

    Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had ignored the community’s calls for reconsidering the unconditional US support for Israel. The vice president also continued to assert what she calls “Israel’s right to defend itself” despite the brutal atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

    Death machine

    Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda summed up the whole sorry situation:

    While Trump will behave bombastically, what’s the functional difference between him and Harris?

    Perhaps that Harris is more schooled in how Washington works, she’s more polite, and certainly more efficient in carrying out the death machine that is the United States.

    There are multiple marginalised people in America whose lives Trump will make significantly worse. There are also multiple marginalised people in America whose lives Joe Biden has made significantly worse. It doesn’t matter who’s at the helm of these butchers – unless the most marginalised in the US collectively start giving a fuck about the rest of the world which is dominated by the most powerful country in the world.

    Trump won because Americans chose him over Harris. Harris lost because she tried to pander to Trump voters, and failed. After all, why have right-wing-lite, when you can have the real thing?

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/CNN

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The reason for Trump’s victory is crystal clear. It’s right there in the exit polls.

    The exit polls for the 2024 US presidential election make it very clear why Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris. It was the economy. No amount of posturing around identity was going to tip the balance for Harris. The right-wing Democratic establishment was unwilling to offer ordinary people what they craved for – meaningful action to improve their material conditions. And that’s what tipped the election in Trump’s favour.

    People suffering economic hardship went overwhelmingly to Trump

    Looking at CNN’S exit poll data, we can see how much the economy mattered, and how much that impacted the Democratic Party candidate. 31% of exit poll respondents said the economy was the most important issue for them, and an overwhelming 79% of them voted for Trump.

    There are more interesting statistics that back up the point, too. CNN asked about the “condition of the nation’s economy”, and a massive 67% said it was “not good” or “poor”. Of those, a whopping 69% voted for Trump. And it was the same situation when voters spoke of their “family’s financial situation today”. 45% said it was “worse than 4 years ago”, and 80% of these people sided with Trump. Of the 75% of people whose families had suffered ‘severe or moderate hardship’ in the last year due to inflation, Trump was the clear victor. We can see a reflection of this in the fact that 72% of respondents were feeling “dissatisfied” or “angry” with “the way things are going”, and most of them went with Trump.

    Harris did well with the 24% of people who said the situation was “better than four years ago” or that they had experienced “no hardship”. But that small victory could never compete with the groundswell of people crying out for help and change.

    The rich voted for Harris, the poor voted for Trump

    The Republican Party is traditionally the party of the rich, of tax cuts, of corporate subsidies, and of deregulation. But the Democrats have long been competing for the support of the rich. And they’ve clearly got it. Because the numbers clearly show the Democrats were the party of the rich in this election.

    Trump won with the 60% of voters earning less than $100,000 a year. And Harris won with the people earning over that.

    In terms of the urban-rural divide, meanwhile, it was clear that city dwellers were firm Harris voters, but Trump won both in suburban areas and in rural areas, which represent 70% of voters. Harris was mostly in a wealthy urban bubble. Trump, on the other hand, managed to connect with people outside that bubble.

    Democracy and the possible threat to it under Donald Trump did matter. Indeed, 35% of exit poll respondents said the key issue for them was democracy, and they opted mostly for Harris. Of the 24% of people who admitted they were voting to stop their opponent rather than to support their own candidate, meanwhile, 61% chose Harris. But that simply wasn’t enough. Because it was the economy that really spoke to people. Most people saw that their material conditions were bad under the Biden-Harris administration, and didn’t trust Harris to change that in any meaningful way.

    Exit polls for Harris: worse than Biden and Clinton?

    CNN also compared Harris’s performance with the other two candidates the Democratic establishment had put up against Trump. And in a number of areas, she performed worse than both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. That included with young voters, Latino men (who actually went for Trump this time), Latina women, and Black men. While she performed better than Clinton in some areas, she performed consistently worse than Biden in most.

    In short, the 2024 US election was just as much about voters being sick of a Democratic establishment that doesn’t serve the interests of ordinary people as it was about people voting for Trump.

    Trump definitely serves the rich and powerful over everyone else, but he at least managed to give the impression that he offered change in this election. And to defeat his movement, his opponents desperately need to put together a programme to bring meaningful, transformative economic change to the masses of voters whom political elites have left behind for far too long.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Biden-Harris White House gets ratioed after disgusting Day Of The Dead tweet

    Between 1 and 2 November Mexico marks the Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Its focus is celebrating the memory of loved ones who are no longer with us. The tradition is a mixture of ancient Mesoamerican indigenous culture and the Catholicism of Spanish colonisers. This year, the Biden-Harris White House tweeted that it was celebrating the day.

    Day Of The Dead

    But its tweet backfired, with award-winning journalist Aura Bogado responding:

    Indeed, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would likely need to fill the White House with altars in order to remember the hundreds of people who have died at the US-Mexican border under their administration’s watch.

    “Competing over who can appear tougher on immigration”, at the expense of human life

    In 2022, the number of refugees dying on the US border with Mexico reached a record high. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) confirmed that the frontier had become “the world’s deadliest land migration route”. Combining the number of deaths and disappearances, the Biden administration also has the worst statistics.

    As Human Rights Watch (HRW) explains, the US government has pushed a ‘Prevention Through Deterrence’ policy since 1994. The Border Patrol says there have been around 10,000 refugee deaths during that time. Human rights groups in the area, however, think there may have been up to 80,000. The idea of the policy was to make crossing the US-Mexican border “so dangerous that people are discouraged from even trying”. This strategy has “proven ineffective at reducing migration”, though.

    Nonetheless, Biden’s government has sought to appear tough on immigration. And Harris is no different, which she’s made crystal clear during her electoral match-up with Donald Trump. As HRW’s Vicki B. Gaubeca wrote in October, “both parties are competing to see who can keep propping up the same old failed myths about immigration”. In short, they’re “competing over who can appear tougher on immigration”. As DemocracyNow reported in July, Harris:

    defended her support for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border.

    She even boasted that:

    Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it.

    Why do people still try to get to the US?

    The US remains the world’s biggest economy. And in the Americas, most of the other countries suffer instability and immense inequality, largely as a result of US imperialism systematically terrorising their people for many decades. Whether that has been via Washington’s support for brutal right-wing dictators, devastating civil wars, or a combination of coups, terror, sanctions, and invasions, the US has provided people throughout the hemisphere with a very good reason to emigrate.

    Having the biggest economy on the planet, meanwhile, creates significant demand for workers. That’s why businessman Steven Kopits stressed in a 2017 CNBC article that immigration will continue as long as there is demand. Because the government provided “only about one third as many visas as needed by U.S. businesses”, despite them being “unable to find Americans to fill these jobs”, illegal immigration was bound to happen. Issuing enough visas, Kopits said, would help to cover domestic labour needs and make illegal immigration even less attractive.

    There are many benefits of welcoming immigrants, as academic research has shown. And the need for immigrants will only keep growing. Economists insisted earlier this year that the US economy, and in particular its Social Security system, “depend on a growing immigrant workforce”. This is partially to do with the growing number of people in retirement, and the falling number of births.

    The White House: a bastion of social murder

    In short, immigration is a complex issue. But both Democrats and Republicans continue to treat it simply as a propaganda tool to show how tough they are on some of the most vulnerable people in the region. And we should never stop holding them to account for the loss of human life that results from their inhumane policies.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Trump ‘bots’ posing as Harris campaign caught trying to trick US election voters

    In the lead up to the US Presidential election, bots opposing Kamala Harris appear to be sending text messages to potential Democrat or undecided voters. An X user first shared the Trump bots late on Sunday 3 November. At first glance they appeared to be from the Harris/Walz campaign:

    CNN also reported that:

    Ads running in Pennsylvania, where undecided Jewish voters could factor into the state’s outcome, highlight how she will “stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.” Meanwhile, ads targeted in Michigan, with its large Arab American population, highlight how “she will not be silent about the human suffering occurring in Gaza.”

    However, upon further reflection it seems that the messaging may be an attempt from an opponent to deter people from voting for Harris by using Trump bots:

    A long-term campaigns organiser spotted some oddities in the seeming Trump bot text message that set off a few alarm bells:

    But, sHe CAn cOuNT on YoUr SUpPorT, RiGHt?

    But is it any wonder when both Biden and Harris have been raging pro-Israel genocide cheerleaders? See: bombs, back-up military support, and the whole range of bullshit excuses they’ve made on Israel’s behalf:

    So, it very well may be some Republicans (or even Russians) up to some dirty democracy-undermining tricks via these Trump bots. Of course, it’d be entirely in-step with its convicted felon nominee who tried to overturn the result of the last election. It might that be a sign the Republicans are getting worried.

    Either way though, the false campaign texts aren’t really saying anything that isn’t true. Whether Harris or Trump wins this election, Palestinians lose. It doesn’t take a dodgy disinformation campaign to tell US voters who give a shit about Gaza that much.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • One tweet perfectly critiques this genocidal Harris-Trump election

    Satirising the awful 2024 US presidential election race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, poet Saul Williams suggested a new slogan for the US:

    Harris Trump: genocide should be a red line

    Genocide absolutely should be a red line for US voters. They should say ‘no more’ to the empty corporate horror show of an election cycle where elites treat voting for the lesser evil as if it’s democracy.

    There are, however, many pundits who say the US should vote for the lesser evil just one more time, just because of the awfulness of Donald Trump. Below are just a few reasons why voters absolutely shouldn’t give Democratic elites the satisfaction of winning yet another mass anti-Trump vote without giving anything meaningful in return.

    No empty promise or bigwig speech makes supporting genocide acceptable

    Kamala Harris has promised to ‘do everything in her power’ to end the bloodshed in Gaza. But that seems to be an empty promise on an issue she knows may cost her the election. Because she doesn’t only continue to deny it’s a genocide; she also has no interest in stopping the flow of US arms to Israel (despite an arms embargo being a vote winner). At the same time, she has treated Israeli deaths as ‘more tragic‘ than Palestinian deaths, while smearing people protesting against the genocide. Oh, and she’s received over $5m from pro-Israel lobbyists.

    Aware that Harris will struggle to beat Trump, Democratic elites have brought in big names like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and even Bernie Sanders. Obama sought to downplay the genocide or argue (fairly) that Trump would be worse. But he didn’t promise an end to US support for Israeli crimes. Clinton, meanwhile, bumbled in to insultingly insist that Hamas was making Israel kill Palestinian civilians (and that he ‘wasn’t keeping score‘ on how many Palestinian deaths would justify ending the genocide). For the record, there’s more evidence of Israel using human shields than Hamas. And as an Israeli genocide scholar has previously stressed, shifting blame for your crimes onto your enemy is reminiscent of Nazi soldiers’ logic in World War Two.

    Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has been weak on the Gaza genocide. And he continued this poor form recently, promising that “we will have in my view a much better chance of changing US policy with Kamala than with Trump” and emphasising that “as important as Gaza is, and as strongly as many of us feel about this issue, it is not the only issue in this election”. Harris, however, has made it crystal clear that she will mirror Biden’s stance if she wins.

    Continuity Biden is bad for the US and bad for the left

    While there’s maybe a slightly bigger gap between the Democratic and Republican candidates than in 2020, the Democratic Party remains, as Political Compass points out, “to the right of many European conservative parties”. Maybe that explains why Harris has so many Republican backers. She is the continuity candidate, and the rich and powerful know it.

    Bernie Sanders and many on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have entered the trap of simply pushing Biden from within, which essentially means cheerleading for someone else’s team. Because while there have been some small achievements, Biden didn’t improve living standards for most people. In fact, over 40% of likely voters claim to be worse off financially than before Biden became president. And young voters, many of whom Sanders inspired previously, have seen little hope arise, with only a tenth seeing any benefit under Biden’s administration.

    On the international scene, as Middle East Eye outlines, the US has “fast-tracked weapons and armaments to Israel’s military and provided a diplomatic shield for Israel at the United Nations” during the genocide, all while giving Israel “$3.8bn in military aid each year”. Elsewhere, Biden refused to reverse Trump-era policies like leaving the Iran nuclear deal and adding Cuba to the US terror list.

    In short, Sanders submitted to the elite Democratic coup against him, but got little in return. And the party has been even bolder this time in suppressing democracy. Because after decades of elites hollowing the party out, they topped it off in 2024 by undemocratically anointing Kamala Harris as their candidate. She had previously demonstrated malleability and a tendency for power-seeking and authoritarian behaviour, and that sat comfortably with the Democratic establishment.

    People are tired of voting for the lesser evil, especially when that evil is genocide

    Voters dislike both Harris and Trump. 60% are unhappy about having to choose between those two options. And Harris supporters arguing that the Trumpist threat to democracy should make people vote for her means little. Because economic concerns are the biggest issue for 44% of people, while democracy is the main concern for only 3%. Indeed, why would people care about the current system if it has delivered them a worsening standard of life in recent years?

    Progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib is a lone voice in refusing to endorse Harris. She insists that “this election didn’t have to be close”, and that it’s “the Biden admin’s unconditional support for genocide is what got us here”. And she’s right. Because backing a genocide should have an impact on a government’s popularity, and it has. Among Muslim American voters in particular, 43% will support vocal genocide critic Jill Stein in the election.

    Some voters, meanwhile, are so intent on sending a clear message to Democratic elites that they’re planning to vote for Trump. The genocide, after all, has happened on Biden’s watch, not Trump’s. And Trump has cynically tried to court angry voters by promising peace, hoping they’ll forget his long history of Islamophobic comments and racist dog-whistling.

    Harris Trump: shun them both

    Trump and Harris are not the same. Harris is bad, but not as bad as Trump. However, the two-party corporate system will keep putting bad candidates forwards if voters keep allowing them to. A Harris loss would be the responsibility of the party elite, not voters. Because as Stein insists, the Democrats could make a small change with a big impact, but:

    they would rather lose the election than end the genocide

    If that’s not a good reason to shun both Trump and Harris this election, what is?

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Rebuilding the Democratic Coalition

    While some have argued that the Biden administration’s industrial policy offered too much to the private sector, these bills were designed to serve multiple constituencies.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Fury as Kamala Harris suggests Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians are ‘less tragic’

    A big issue for Democratic US presidential election nominee Kamala Harris is her party’s handling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Many argue that the US could end the suffering overnight by cutting off funding. The fact that the US continues to send money and weapons is seen as a clear endorsement of the situation. Given this, it’s a difficult topic for Harris to talk about, but that doesn’t explain how she could be foolish enough to phrase it like this:

    Harris: what’s ‘most tragic’?

    There’s seldom any benefit in comparing atrocities, but as Harris has decided to go down this route, here are some of the acts she’s chosen to minimise:

    Israel’s actions have led to harrowing scenes like that of displaced Palestinians burning alive in medical tents:

    Understandably, Harris’s response has provoked fury:

     

    Michigan

    It’s always been clear to anyone reading between the lines that Harris thinks more of Israeli lives than Palestinian ones. She’s such an incompetent politician, however, that she’s openly just stating this. In such a tight election, her inhuman stance could be enough to lose her the election.

    Harris was speaking in Michigan which has one of America’s largest Arab American populations. AP reported on Harris’s visit:

    Michigan is one of three “blue wall” states that, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will help decide the election on Nov. 5. Diverse voting blocs are key to winning virtually any swing state, but Michigan is unique with its significant Arab American population, which has been deeply frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

    Earlier in October, Rolling Stone reported:

    While Arab Americans voted nearly 60 percent for Joe Biden in 2020, with Donald Trump garnering just 35 percent of their support, the new poll finds Trump winning the Arab American vote 42 to 41 percent over Harris. The picture among likely voters is even worse, with Trump leading 46-42, pointing to a politically perilous enthusiasm gap.

    In the same piece, they interviewed James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. In an illustrative passage, he said:

    I remember going and seeing somebody at the White House early on, like two weeks into this. And he went on about the trauma of the Jewish people and what happened and how it was unforgivable. And I said, ‘I agree with you. I understand that.’ I grew up with a mother who made me read the Diary of Anne Frank. I had an uncle who was in the infantry in World War II and went into the camps, and told me the stories about what it was like, what he saw. The first time I ever got a headline in a newspaper was The Washington Post in the 70s. And the headline was: “Arab Speaker Chides Community About Antisemitism.”

    What I told him is that I grew up understanding this issue, and I do. I understand the trauma and what it evokes in terms of fear of pogroms and the Holocaust. I said: ‘And there’s another people in this conflict who also have fears and trauma, and what’s happening now is evoking for them, fears of the Nakba.’

    Well, he shot back at me, “What you say sounds like smacks of ‘whataboutism,’” he said, and “Don’t come here with that. It makes me so upset.” I was startled that this guy is advising the president and without an ounce of compassion for Palestinians. I was urging that there be compassion for both people who have suffering and fears. American policy needs to understand both, not prioritize one human life over another.

    Democrats are the ones who wrote in their platform about the equal worth of Palestinian and Israeli lives. Right? I didn’t write it. They wrote it. But when the body counts are 40-to-1, and we still don’t have equal compassion for both, then I’m stuck. I don’t know what to think, or how to operate in this realm.

    Oct. 7 was a horrific tragedy and an act of terror that is inexcusable, and Hamas committed crimes. But my God, the crimes committed afterwards, and the crimes committed before, have to be weighed in the balance. And no one in this crowd is willing or able — they don’t have the perspective to do that.

    The lesser candidate

    Trump’s rhetoric on the genocide is worse than Harris’s, with AP reporting that he said:

    Even as he reached out to disillusioned Arab American voters, Trump suggested he would end efforts to encourage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to restrain military operations that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

    Even though Biden “is trying to hold him back … he probably should be doing the opposite, actually,” Trump said.

    What Harris would do well to remember is that many voters don’t see it as their duty to vote for the lesser of two evils; they just stay home instead. Democrats can get as angry as they like about that, but their anger may do nothing to inspire the voters whose lives they say matter less.

    Featured image via Forbes

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

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    Source

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