Trump's defeat: excerpts from the US left

Submitted by AWL on 10 November, 2020 - 9:44
Trump loses rally

The working class needs a party

Maria Svart, National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America, from a "dispatch" here

While breathless... expectations of a blue wave totally flopped, there was a red wave — our kind of red! So far, 28 out of our 37 nationally-endorsed campaigns have won; we have “squads” in [15] state legislatures... and we won 8 out of 9 major ballot initiatives.

We’re still just a political organisation [i.e. not a party], but contrast that with a Democratic Party that fails to listen to working class people and fails to invest in building grassroots power. It has become a failure — or perhaps was never designed to empower us in the first place...

So how does the working class build enough real power in such a rigged system to eventually have our own party? We’re figuring it out together! We know it starts with putting boots on the ground to demand democracy, but it goes so much deeper than that... Our chapters in every state of the country will be out asking our co-workers and neighbours how we resist both fascism and neoliberalism and build a better world.

Fundamental discussion needed

David Finkel, of the US socialist group Solidarity, from an article here

For the second straight election, US voters have actually repudiated Donald Trump’s repulsive, racist and nativist message...

Third-party campaigns appear to have been pretty much overwhelmed by the polarisation of the two main capitalist parties. The Green Party campaign... is showing a 0.23% vote, but we’ll need more time to see where Green results may be significant in local or state races…

The socialist left, essentially a spectator in electoral terms, needs to be with the movements fighting the battles that most matter — around racial justice, police brutality and prison abolition; on the sadistic treatment of asylum seekers, family separations and terror raids in immigrant communities; on the climate catastrophe; on defending reproductive rights and Queer communities from what Trump’s Supreme Court might inflict.

A fundamental discussion is needed about what independent political action means today and how to move it forward. Solidarity hopes to help advance that discussion among activists looking for a way to break out of the crippling two-party political trap.

The working class divided

Dan La Botz, on the New Politics website here

Biden has had the support of weighty sectors of the capitalist class, like tech and entertainment, as well as pharmaceuticals and real estate. Many professional organisations of doctors, lawyers, and others endorsed him. Like all Democrats he has had the support the AFL-CIO and all of the major labour unions with few exceptions, as well as most Black and Latino, women’s and LGBT organisations. Trump, of course, still had much support from other sectors such as casinos and gambling, oil and gas, contractors and manufacturers and his own networks of professionals.

The election, as was to be expected, showed the country divided geographically along traditional lines, with the coasts going for Biden and the Midwest and South for Trump... Almost everywhere, the Democrats won the cities and the Republicans the rural areas. 90% of Black people and 65% of Latinos voted for Biden... Biden won more women’s votes, especially suburban women. The working class is completely divided, Trump winning 55% of men without a college degree while Biden won 43%. The majority of white workers support Trump, the overwhelming majority of Black and Latino workers back Biden.

A referendum on Trump

Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, Green Party candidates for president and vice-president (republished from here)

We are happy to see Trump go. Good riddance! This election was a referendum on Trump. Biden was Not-Trump, nothing more. Biden has no solutions for the climate, poverty, racism, and nuclear war.

The Hawkins/Walker campaign thanks our supporters for their donations and campaign work in a difficult year for the Green Party and independent socialists. The media blanked us out. After the Democratic establishment closed ranks to defeat Bernie Sanders, most progressive leaders lined up behind Biden without making any policy demands on him. The Biden administration is now free to ignore them.

We will continue to fight for a Green New Deal, an Economic Bill of Rights including Medicare for All, and a reprioritisation of federal spending from militarism to caring for the people and the planet. We will continue organising toward a major party of the green and socialist left and supporting the election of thousands to local office and, on that foundation, to state legislatures and Congress as we go into the 2020s.

We are running out of time on the climate, declining working-class life expectancies, and the new nuclear arms race. Real solutions can’t wait.

• Also worth reading: “In the streets for the next four years”, by Eric Blanc, on Jacobin here

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