Coming Up For Air
Another inconclusive post-mortem
My friend Michael Bérubé contends with the post-election debates among Democrats. He is quite right that the outcome was over-determined (had potentially multiple causes, any of which could have made the difference), and commentators tend to pick the cause that accords with their own priors. This always bugged me when it applied to Ralph Nader in Florida in the 2000 election. What about Monica Moorehead of the goofy Workers World Party? Her votes would have put Gore over too.
The usual gambit from establishment and centrist types is to attribute extreme leftist coloration to the candidate, this time around burnished by the anti-woke obsessions. The truth is they would rather lose elections than cede their power in the party.
MB leaves the woke thing alone. He is most at pains to reject Bernie Sanders’s scathing remarks about the party abandoning the working class. But at the same time, he admits “The economic populist left is not wrong on the merits.” Huh?
It is true that Harris-Walz offered a bouquet of proposals that would benefit the working class. I have been writing along these lines myself for years at In These Times. Perhaps it could have been better presented, bigger and more focused. I couldn’t say. Above my pay grade.
The long-term care proposal was potentially huge, but it came way too late. I’m also intrigued by the debate over Howard Dean’s “Fifty state strategy” versus the too-clever-by-half micro-targeting of electoral slices. But who knows. I’ve seen talk of putting Rahm Emanuel in charge of the party. Talk about back to the future. A logical choice for the Loser Regime.
I don’t think there is much that could have been done about Palestine before November 5th. Nor about the inflation that seems to have toppled governments in democratic elections around the world. Harris and Walz struck me as excellent campaigners, though Walz was a bit at sea in his debate with JD Vance. Sometimes we are just shit out of luck.
I am most impressed by a point, not mentioned by MB, that Biden’s dithering on promises to be no more than a “transitional” figure, combined with his apparent physical impairments, made a big difference. An earlier, vigorous competition for the nomination would have been better all around.
I had heard worries about Biden’s health for years from well-connected people otherwise supportive of him. All the elite insiders conspired to keep him in the saddle until it was too late. Of course, the elite insiders suck, but they always do. The question is whether they sucked more than usual.
I come back to the priority of class politics, the fundamental purpose of the Democratic Party. Yes, the electorate is infected with an assortment of racial, ethnic, and nativist biases, but that has always been true. It did not prevent the formation of the CIO in the 1930s and the fortification of the FDR Democrats, when those biases were very raw. Racists voted for Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. So I come back to that.
Fall off the horse, dust yourself off, get on again.
Max. thanks for bringing the name of Michael Berube back to my consciousness. I had completely forgotten about him. My dim recollection is of hearing him in the same early 2000s period when I first heard the name Max Sawicky.
I think his analysis is spot on, and I don't see the contradiction you do between his scourging of Bernie's latest attacks on the DP's moving away from working class politics and his statement that the economic populist critique of the DP has merit. Berube is absolutely right that Biden had no firmer friends in his hour of need last summer than Bernie Sanders and AOC.
Also, as you point out in your reply to Ziggy:
"I think it's true, left econ/welfare policies are well-regarded, but that doesn't translate into votes. Possible explanations: voters don't believe the DP will come through, or those who stand to benefit the most don't vote."
Indeed. When Kamala talked about her housing program, it looked to many like "pie in the sky". Why didn't Kamala ever say, when asked "why haven't you done it the past four year", "we never had a solid majority in Congress. Give me a solid Democratic Congress to work with and these things will be done." That would have fired up Wall Street even more and some Wall Street money is still vital to Dems. Right you are, Bernie Sanders, but when you talk about "taking on the billionaire class" isn't that pie in the sky, too?
The problem, one that many leftists make, is that they assume that their articulation of pro-working-class policies will always resonate with the working class. They neglect that policy is not the only dimension of politics. There are other dimensions. There is the dimension of attitude. Trump seems to fight and working class people think a fight is necessary. I don't believe his bullshit for a minute, but where is the fight on the Democratic side? Staying "above the fray" isn't a working class attitude. It's elite condescension.
We need to be pushing politics BY the working class as well as FOR the working class.
Consider this substack from Brian Beutler on the subject of Hakeem Jeffries' handling of the Matt Gaetz eithics report. It has relevance here as well. https://www.offmessage.net/p/no-trumps-cabinet-is-not-a-distraction?utm_campaign=email-post&r=3izek&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
When will Dems learn to fight even one tenth as dirty as Republicans do? Republicans never hesitate to throw every imaginable form of bullshit at the wall in the hope that a tenth of it will stick, while Dems seem to avoid most retaliation because it's unseemly. Get into the fray!
My two cents, for what they're worth. Voters hate lefty rhetoric, but love most lefty policy. Activists love the rhetoric, and are often surprisingly indifferent to policy on the ground. (Ahem, DSA?).
I'm not sure what this means, as a practical matter. We can't fire the voters and replace them with better ones. The activists are self-firing as they go to law school. But their replacements have seemed mostly the same. But maybe things are looking up? AOC and especially Bernie seem to please most activists, but don't evoke disgust among voters. I don't know how much of this is superior rhetoric or ineffable charisma. If rhetoric, it can be copied. The WPF seems to have its feet on the ground.