What to do? What to do? This upcoming presidential election has me in a quandary. There are quite clear choices within our dominant two-party system. However, both choices pose some seemingly overwhelming problems.
Donald Trump
One candidate, Donald Trump, says he will gut the legal system as we have come to know it. All of this in an apparent need to get-even with those who have disagreed with his policies while he was president and those who have been trying to make him accountable for his actions as a businessman and as a president. He also wants to exonerate all who supported him in his attempts to override the last presidential election, keeping himself in office instead. The final result being to get rid of all of his political enemies and rule by fiat, a seeming end to democracy as we know it in this nation. His apparent goal is to change this nation into Corporation USA with him as CEO and all the tools of the presidency at his beck and call, like the divisions of that corporation, to be used to further his vision of a successful policy to make that corporation economically successful and dominant. What could possibly be worse?
Modern Democratic Party
In most situations that should be a no-brainer. But wait, we have underestimated the modern Democratic Party and its national leadership. Since the beginning of the 21st Century, the Democratic National Committee has bet the farm on becoming Republican Lite, relying on funding from big money rather than the support of the ordinary citizenry. In the process, they have turned their back on their primary constituency while expecting the continuing political support of that constituency at the polls, in a kind of blind obedience to the party. That betrayal has slowly eroded the base and made that base vulnerable to inroads by another leader who promises to attend to their needs and desires. There has been a genuine disenchantment with the current direction of the Democratic Party, while many continued to hope for a resurgence of the Democratic Party of the New Deal, “The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” as Paul Wellstone called it.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party continued its manipulative ways as good businessmen are wont to do. As a party, they put George Bush in office in the highly questionable 2000 election, leading to eight years of very questionable policies, tax cuts for the wealthy, wars, restrictive domestic policies, rampant corruption and eventually, a major financial debacle.
The 2008 Election
It was that financial debacle which affected nearly everyone, that put Barak Obama in office, in hopes of a return to more of the traditional, New Deal change, as FDR had done in response to a similar over-reach by Republican blind support of business with the 1929 Crash and the ensuing Depression. But people had forgotten about the seismic shift that had occurred within the Democratic Party leadership since the new millennium had begun, now willing to curry favor with the big money. So, the first move by Barak Obama was to put Wall Street and the big money leaders in charge of the economic recovery. That team bailed out banks and businesses and left the ordinary citizens to fend for themselves. The economy and Wall Street is restabilized and “the economy” appears to be healthy again, all on the backs of ordinary Americans. None of those responsible for that debacle suffered anything approaching disaster, much less punishment. Free-market capitalism was allowed to work out the details and the system continued on much as it had been before, and income inequality continued to grow. I might add that the larger income inequality grows, the less likely democracy can thrive since money begins to trump everything else. By the end of the Obama presidency the Congress had devolved into a body stuck in limbo, unable to act decisively while being so evenly split.
So now both parties had thrown in with big money, and the ordinary American voter had no real options and no longer had any real voice in the political process. This provided a constituency looking for a leader who might attend to them and restore their voice. This provides a real opportunity for someone to step up as a leader, to speak for them, or to simply exploit them.
The 2016 Election
Well, what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Bernie Sanders. Bernie saw that constituency as the people he had always spoken for, the ordinary Americans who relied on democracy to provide stability and justice for them. These were the folks who had been forgotten by both parties while those parties slavishly pursued the big money. Bernie, as anyone could guess, spoke their language and had instant appeal, especially to many disillusioned Democrats.
The national leaders of the Democratic Party assumed that no candidate could possibly succeed without the support of big-money and/or the attention of the national media. Well, to everyone’s surprise, he became very popular and eventually had to be attended to by the national media due to his popular success.
It was then that the national leaders had to make a choice; do we allow Bernie to become the candidate as a “voice of the people” and possibly give us a different candidate who might threaten some of our corporate support for the Democratic Party, or do we double down on our big-money, corporate Democrat bet. This seemed important since in the run-up to the election, Hilary had spent much of her time and energy quite openly finding corporate support and funding.
We all know how they chose. They chose to sabotaged Bernie’s candidacy, assuring Hillary Clinton’s candidacy under the assumption that, no matter what, people would not vote for Donald Trump.
There were many faulty assumptions that the national democratic leadership made. First was that, once they eliminated Bernie, democratic voters would flock back to Hilary, the corporate candidate, even after they came to realize they would still have no voice. Secondly, they assumed that the corporate democrat label would neither bother ordinary voters, nor bring up latent animosity toward the leadership of big money as the source of their no longer mattering much in the national conversations. But the ordinary people knew that Wall Street was far removed from Main Street, where they lived. The third assumption was that the Republican Party was nearly moribund, leaving the field to them, by choosing, what they supposed was no more than a clown, Donald Trump. And the faultiest of their assumptions was that the voiceless electorate would meekly support the Democratic candidate and would never respond to the siren calls of Donald Trump, the demagogic oligarch. Or that he would step into that void and give that leaderless constituency a voice and a focus for their anger and frustration.
We all know what happened, the “all-in” bet of the national democratic leaders failed catastrophically, losing not only the presidency, but turning most to the nation over to what had recently appeared to be a defunct Republican Party. All of those assumptions of the national democrats had been wrong, and the nation and the populace was going to pay the price for such arrogance.
But arrogance, apparently, has no limit. The domination of the national democratic leadership, could not acknowledge their errors, but continued to double down on their errors. They fought the growth of a fledgling progressive movement within the party. They got busy allotting blame to make it clear that they had been right all along and only outsider, and probably illegal forces, were at work to deny them their rightful win. It was the Bernie supporters, it was the Russians, it was Wikileaks, it was everyone and anyone but them. They were clearly right and needed to take none of the responsibility for the monumental losses.
In fact, rather than trying to find a better and clearer message for ordinary voters, or making any switch in basic direction or assumptions, they spent the years of the Trump Presidency, trying to prove that he should not have been elected and trying to get even with him, especially in the courts. Needless to say, it was not very effective and became a bit like a soap opera with claims and counter claims making little real progress, except in their own minds.
The 2020 Election
With the 2020 election the Democrats had another go at it, only this time with an entire litany of Trump errors and apparently illegal dealings. They rejected any real change candidate, again turning away from Bernie or anyone like him in favor, finally, of a Hilary clone, in the line of Obama and Hilary (corporate democrats), to pick Joe Biden, another corporate democrat and a compromise candidate at best.
The election was close, between two corporate candidates and although Trump lost, like a powerful CEO, he pulled out all the stops to deny the changeover, even including at attack on the Capital, much like an attempt at a hostile takeover of a corporation. We have watched that attempt at a hostile takeover play out over the last four years with Congress stuck in limbo, the Supreme Court undoing much of what had been the hard-won guidelines of a liberal democracy, and the legal system stumbling all over itself trying to avoid being labeled unfair or politically motivated.
So, where we find ourselves with this election looming has, in no small part, been exacerbated by the Democratic Party itself.
Joe Biden
Now, let’s look at the direction the Biden administration has taken this nation. He took on Covid and succeeded. He has helped the ordinary citizens by stabilizing the economy and in his support of the resurgence of the union movement. He has help with student loan repayment and has basically protected much of what we have come to consider to be the basics of democracy in America. However, income inequality has continued to grow even more, turning us into a nation of powerful billionaires, with its negative influence on basic democratic values. I might add that his renewal of a Cold War with Russia and China and our role as the arms dealer for the world, has pumped money into the corporate economy with its minimal tax role in our national funding. Weapons and war are a major boon to the top 1%.
Our International Reputation
But most significantly, Biden has shifted the international perceptions of our nation in some major ways. With the Biden administration’s lock-step support of Israel as Israel systematically destroys the civilian population of Gaza, the world no longer sees us as a nation that is fair and balanced in international affairs, a supporter of human rights and humanitarian aid as well as a nation willing to name rogue nations, apartheid and genocide for what they are, a nation serving as a beacon of what a good world citizen should be.
The Biden administration has, bewilderingly, shucked off that view of America in support of a nation which is clearly not much of a democracy. You only need to look at how Israel treats it’s Palestinian citizens, in nearly an apartheid state, to see how anti-democratic it has become and its total censorship of the news. The Biden administration has even taken this so far as to pressure, harass and even punish citizens who actively disagree with the Biden policies.
There may be some domestic political calculus at play here and perhaps some cynical realpolitik, geopolitical goals. But the price of the loss of international standing is far too high a price to pay, unless we are hoping to be the overpowering empire of the future that everyone hates but dares not challenge.
The Quandary
And here is the quandary, do we simply give up on saving any remnants of democracy in our anger with what a mess we have created with it, or do we vote for a highly damaged democracy in some pie-in-the-sky hope that the Democratic Party will finally reform to become a haven for the ordinary citizens again.
We all understand that, as with all elections, the winner takes that win as a mandate to carry out his stated policies or continue to carry out his present policies. If elected, I would like to think that Biden will not take that electoral win to be a mandate to continue his war policies, his support of Israel’s destruction of Gaza or his support of corporate America and the growth of income inequality and of the billionaire class, soon to be a trillionaire class.
Unfortunately, I am not holding my breath.
So, given the realities we are faced with in this upcoming election, between two corporate candidates, I will need to hold my nose and vote for what looks like the lesser of two evils, which is still very evil smelling. That will be Joe Biden in the wild hope that the Democratic Party will come to it senses and begin to finally represent the ordinary citizens again.
It’s a quandary.
We need to start many conversations - all around the country - about what we want the U.S.A. to be when it grows up. We need to take this conversation out of the corporate boardrooms, and the monied interests, and away from the political parties (that do their bidding) - and take it to the people of all classes, shapes, and sizes!