Category: Elections

Sleepwalking to Disaster

The Fierce Urgency of Now

By Jay D. Jurie

Endorsed by the CCDS National Executive

Later this year the midterm elections will determine whether the Democratic Party will lose control of the US Senate, the House, or both.  A loss of either would significantly advance the Republican Party drive to create a one-party state along with a neo-fascist seizure of power.  If such success was followed by a Trump victory in 2024, or the victory of an even more capable neo-fascist in 2025, such a takeover would virtually be guaranteed.

Already underway is a reconfiguration of a wide variety of public policies by state governments under the control of Republican governors and/or supermajority legislatures.  Besides standard Republican goals denying worker and reproductive rights, more corporate welfare for  the wealthy, and so on, the ante has been upped by the Republican conversion into a de facto neo-fascist party.  More recently we’ve seen measures that directly assault democracy, the democratic process and institutions.  These include voter suppression, the designation of false slates of electors, and the substitution of far right loyalists for conventional election officials, among others.

Cementing such a transformation into place would produce drastically severe consequences for progressive organizations, campaigns, and ideals along with the restructuring and disruption of the daily lives of millions of US citizens and residents.  For the neo-fascist project to succeed, more in the US would need to be persuaded to get on board and support changes brought about, as many doubtlessly would.  Others who are not in accord, or who resist these changes, will find themselves subject to active repression, including quite possibly detention and violent reprisals.

Yet many, including progressives, continue to go about their normal routine oblivious to this looming threat.  Much of what the progressive agenda seeks to advance will of necessity have to be put on sustained hold if such events were to come to pass. There will be little or no chance to pass, enact, or administer legislation or other measures that vitally affect the lives and well-being of millions and our environment.  It has not registered with the public at large what these changes would mean to their routines and aspirations, which for those not in accord with them, would prove extreme and highly undesirable.

We have two urgent responsibilities at this moment.  First, regardless of other issues we may be pursuing, we must add significant electoral involvement to our “must do” list.  In some instances we can use the electoral dilemma to advance our causes de jour, so the two might dovetail.  In other words, we don’t have to drop what we’re doing to rush over to do electoral work. But to the extent that work is not on our current agenda, it is incumbent upon us to make it so, or, to prioritize it if need be.

The important second task is to consider what we might do in the aftermath of a possible neo-fascist victory.  What will we need to survive, carry on important elements of our work, even if underground, and to mount effective resistance?  We do have models to draw upon, about which we should undertake a quick study, and learn more.  We need to think through this contingency and be as prepared as possible, to incorporate what we need into our planning, and be ready to keep moving even under what would prove to be very adverse circumstances.

As Palmiro Togliatti, who survived fascism under Mussolini, taught us in his Lectures on Fascism, “Totalitarianism does not close the path of struggle…but opens new paths (p. 27).”

A Path to Power for the American Left

By ETHAN YOUNG
The Indypendent / NYC

Dec 22, 2017 – Living through this era of rotten feelings is like being trapped in an endless dystopian movie. We now live under an alliance of the old-guard conservatives and the far right (evangelicals, Tea Party and overt white supremacists), funded up the yin-yang by billionaire lunatics. This alliance includes theocrats like Vice President Mike Pence and open fascists, and their beliefs are surging into the mainstream.

The goal of this real-life hydra, which now dominates all three branches of government, has gone beyond the old conservative dream of dismantling the social benefits brought about by the New Deal. Now they are set on destroying what’s left of bourgeois democracy. A Hunger Games story is emerging in its place: a tightly controlled state, militarized police, unregulated monopolies, privatized services, a powerless and destitute working class and a culture pulsing with the venom of war and racial hatred.

The role of the electoral opposition largely falls to the corporate-friendly Democratic Party centrists, now decidedly in the minority in Congress despite the GOP’s low polling numbers. The centrists did not plan it that way. They play that role because no one else is in any position to put up a fight at that level of politics. But they’re lousy at it. They blew the election and they know it, but they don’t want to confront their mistakes.

Instead, they are praying for the cavalry, a fairy godmother, any superhero from the power centers of society to come to their rescue. Their appeal has always been to the moderate wing of capitalists: You need us, keep us funded and we’ll keep them dogies rollin’. To the public, their appeal is: We’ll protect you if you come through with the votes. Between the money guys’ indifference and being out-organized in key sectors of key states, those appeals fell flat. Yet they seem to know no other way to play politics.

The Democratic centrists’ main hope right now is that the Mueller investigation will bring Trump down with a crash, à la Watergate. They envision a scenario in which Trump’s Russian ties get him legally branded a traitor to America. This would get them off the hook for their bungling the election and tarnish the Republicans’ image enough to give them a path back to power. It would also enable them to win without offering a strong alternative that would draw on their base’s eagerness for change; for more, not less, social welfare and stability, for peace at home and abroad and for democratic rights.

This works out nicely under the tunnel-view formula the center-clingers have cultivated for decades. Follow the shift to the right halfway, keep the left at bay and eventually the public will get sick of the Republicans and return to Old Faithful. So in the face of an active attack on every principle they purport to be about, the centrists still insist on a half-assed response. They are afraid of their party’s base. They are afraid of losing favor and financial support from big business and Wall Street.

That’s their problem. Our problem is that the stakes are much more than just win or lose for the Democratic Party. The country and the world are at a critical tipping point. Government is being transformed amid widespread voter disenfranchisement, rampant privatization and monopolization, shrinking wages and the destruction of basic democratic and human rights. And, of course, all the money in the world can’t deal with the ravages of a wrecked environment.

We can’t afford the Democrats trying to fight the rightist siege with their usual tactics of “bipartisan” halfway tradeoffs. Their working assumption is that the more balls-out crazy Trump performs, the more power he’ll lose, as Republicans and more moderate supporters defect. Some see Roy Moore’s defeat in that light. But generally, without a strong progressive alternative, the crazy becomes normal.

Centrists will be centrists, dependent on support from corporate donors even when they use leftish-sounding rhetoric for votes or back some leftist goals.

When the media talk about “the resistance,” they are usually referring to Democrats in office. Secondarily, they mean the crowds of angry civilians confronting elected officials in town halls, on the heels of the massive women’s marches in January. Below the radar, there is widespread opposition, anger and revulsion. This is where the left should come in. Situations like this call for a solid, politically coherent left, but that’s what seems to be missing.

The left’s role is to move this unrest and opposition in the direction of politics — enabling working-class people to apply pressure where and when it can change the situation in their favor, building their (small-d) democratic strength. This is our mission inside and outside the Democratic Party, in social movements, in unions and in intellectual settings. Continue reading A Path to Power for the American Left

The Victory in Alabama

by Bill Fletcher Jr

Well, team, I must confess that i expected Moore to win Alabama’s special Senatorial race.  As a result, I was shocked this morning when I awakened and received a text from one of my best friends celebrating Moore’s defeat.  I immediately went to msn.com to read about the election results.

When I subsequently went to Facebook i saw a posting from an African American who was, in effect, treating the Jones victory as a victory for white people, i.e., that African Americans had placed no demands on the campaign and we gained little from the victory.

I disagree.

What struck me about the results–besides the fact that the election was so close–was that initial analyses indicated that African American turnout was comparable to 2008 and 2012,  In other words, Presidential years when Obama ran (and won).  African Americans in Alabama understood what was at stake in this election and this turnout demonstrates that, under the right circumstances, voters who normally don’t vote in non-Presidential elections can be mobilized.

Is Jones a revolutionary?  Certainly not.  But the election was not a choice between revolution and counter-revolution.  It was an election against misogynism, right-wing populism, irrationalism and racism.  It’s significance cannot be underestimated given Alabama’s history as a home of the former Confederacy and a state that voted for Trump by an overwhelming margin.

Yet the book is not closed, and not simply because there will inevitably be a recount.   What is so essential is the building and strengthening of progressive organizations in Alabama that can take advantage of the voter mobilization toward the achievement of longer term, progressive strategic objectives.  There are organizations popping up all over the country that are advancing progressive electoral work with an "inside/outside the Democratic Party" orientation that are making a difference.  My hope is that such organizations will proliferate in Alabama.

Congratulations to the people of Alabama who have rejected irrationalism!  The war, however, is far from won.