The Biden Debate Performance, the Supreme Court Immunity Decision for Trump
and the Future of Democracy
"And now it’s winter. It’s winter in America. Yes and all of the healers have been killed, or sent way. Yeah, but the people know, the people know it’s winter in America. And ain’t nobody fighting, ‘cause nobody knows what to save. Save your souls, Lord knows from winter in America!" (Gil Scott-Herron and Brian Jackson)
I post on two broad but interconnected themes: the two American national identities and left and right-wing populisms. Today I wish to focus on the role of populism. I quote the legendary songwriter and spoken word artist Gil Scott-Herron’s1970s classic “Winter in America” at the top, because I feel that after the presidential debate last Thursday and the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, right populism personified by Donald Trump is in ascendancy, while the left populism of Bernie Sanders is in dire straits.
We’ve established that populists on all sides find the policy direction of the political establishment immoral. They find the intricacies of day-to-day politics as usual toxic. They dream of blowing it all up and setting the country on the correct moral course, usually behind a charismatic leader.
Since 2016 the right and left political establishments have fared divergently. The right establishment around the Republican Party collapsed before the Trump challenge as the party’s social base salivated over Trump’s racism, misogyny and overall mean-spiritedness. In contrast, the liberal Democratic establishment, reeled after the defeat of Hillary Clinton, but steadied itself and managed to get Joe Biden elected in 2020.
As President Trump did as much as he could to dismantle the status quo. He issued executive orders across a range of issues that sought to radically change the direction of federal policy without undergoing the vicissitudes of passing legislation. He left numerous key positions in the State Department and other agencies unfilled in his mission to undermine what he called the “deep state.” He flooded the federal judiciary with appointees mostly taken from the list of the right-wing Federalist Society, an interest group that thinks the country should forever be ruled by the values and ideas of the Founding Fathers (slaveholders who didn’t think women should vote). And unlike any president of whatever ideological disposition, he made no effort to talk in a way that promised to unify the country.
And after he lost the 2020 presidential election Trump tried to get the Republican Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,000 more votes so he could win the state. Trump’s lackeys also tried to seat electoral college members in several states that would fail to vote in accordance with the laws requiring them to vote as the majority voted during the elections. Finally, (we all know) Trump instigated the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 7th in a bid to stop the certification of the election. Those hooligans were a sample of the right-wing base energized by Trump throughout his presidency. Already by 2021 Republican elected officials across the country were kowtowing to Trump if they wished to have a future in Republican politics.
Contrastingly, despite another serious populist challenge from Sanders in the 2020 primaries, Biden was able to harness his left-wing Congressional base and pass the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act before the 2022 mid-term elections. The Progressive Caucus battled more centrist Democrats valiantly in the spring and summer of 2022 over that latter piece of legislation. In the end progressives got important climate change and health care pricing measures incorporated into the law.
The ranks of Progressive Democrats in the House included stalwarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the Squad,” populist who, like the Freedom Caucus among Republicans, went to Washington to blow it all up! But in the end, they settled for partial victories as the Democrats held together to pass legislation that has been described as the most significant social welfarist package since Roosevelt’s New Deal. When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the House the entire Democratic Caucus let out a collective cheer!
The political establishment never likes populists coming from the extremes and wishing to tear down the system. But populists often have good policy ideas whose realization only awaits pragmatic actors to implement.[1]
As I write two things have occurred in the last week which create a populist moment for the left in the United States: the disastrous debate performance by Joe Biden against Donald Trump on Thursday, and the Supreme Court ruling on Monday that essentially said that presidents cannot be indicted for alleged crimes committed while acting in their official capacity.[2]
Democrats were immediately in panic after the debate and are now in full scale hysteria following a court decision which opens the door to Trumpist authoritarianism. With Trump as their standard bearer right populist have seized the high ground in Republican politics. The populist base on the left has congealed in a younger generation that “felt the burn” of the two Sanders presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. This generation came of age from the immigrant rights protests of 2006, the Occupy Movement of 2011, Ferguson in 2014, Standing Rock in 2016, the Me Too Movement in 2017, and the Climate Action Movement in 2018. This is the left that also includes the thousands of all ages who mobilized in the Women’s marches on inauguration day 2017 and found life in numerous grassroots organs around the country in opposition to Trumpism.
Because of the fervor of that populist base100 of the 213 Democrats in the House of Representatives today are members of the Progressive Caucus. This populist left, must now “blow up” the “sleepy-eyed” establishment and demand that “Sleepy Joe Biden” step down and give the “people” a candidate they can stand behind enthusiastically in the fall election.
The Democrats now have a deep bench of outstanding vigorous alternatives to Biden. They include Vice-President Kamala Harris and Governors Gavin Newsome (California), Gretchen Whitmer Michigan) and J.D. Pritzger (Illinois).
Obviously, after unstinting pressure, Biden must agree to step down. This needs to happen in the next week or so I believe. Then the Democratic National Committee might be utilized as an instrument for quickly channeling support for and vetting leading candidates prior to the Democratic Convention in late August.[3] If the Dems can manage the process, they might yet turn disaster into destiny.
A half century later, countering Gil Scott’s words “ain’t nobody fighting, ‘cause nobody knows what to save,” We might stave off fascism, save the soul of America and sustain the project of multiracial democracy for our own salvation and as a beacon for the world.
[1] Jim Crow laws in the 19th century were passed as a result of white supremacist protest politics including vigilantism. Anti-trust law and the direct election of US Senators are examples of legislation first called for by the original Populist Party. And civil rights laws of the 50s and 60s, let’s recall, was rooted in a non-violent civil disobedience movement against a Jim Crow system that nobody in the political establishment was seeking to change.
[2] Depending on how one spins this even Trump’s role in trying to get the election results changed in Georgia and his instigation of the January 6 rebellion could be construed as official acts by conservative jurists.
[3] For an interesting take on how to smoothly replace Biden with more electable candidate see progressive Democratic National Committee member Joe Zogby on Democracy Now, July 3, 2024. Accessed at https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/3/james_zogby_2024_biden_replacement_options
No comments:
Post a Comment