Time to Defeat Trump - Without Make-Believe About Biden
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
27 August 20
Ane result of the Republican convention will be a drop in the number of
progressives who are in denial about the Trump regime's momentum toward
fascism. This week's relentlessly unhinged GOP gathering has probably done
more to win votes for Joe Biden from the left than last week's Democratic
convention did. And that points up a problem.
The people running the Biden show have been trying hard to woo Republicans,
while the affection remains largely unrequited. Mainstream media keep
featuring VIP anti-Trump Republicans, but few registered voters have
defected from Trump. Recent polling data continue to show the electoral
folly of messaging to cultivate "Biden Republicans" while damaging the
turnout prospects from the Democratic Party's progressive base.
Neither the Democratic nominee nor his media echo chambers have much use for
Bernie Sanders supporters or genuine progressives overall, who now rarely
get words in edgewise - even though they represent a major chunk of the
electorate (many times that of the phantom "moderate Republican voter").
During the spring, the Biden campaign extended a few olive branches in a
progressive direction, but some of them morphed into sticks in the eyes of
Bernie convention delegates and their constituencies - whether in the form
of the eleventh-hour deletion of a platform provision to end fossil-fuel
subsidies and tax breaks, or the suppression of the delegates' vote tally
that had more than 1,000 voting against the platform mostly because it lacks
Medicare for All. In a non-virtual convention or a country with less
corporately biased media, such dissent from a party platform would have been
big news.
The imperative of preventing a second Trump term is roaring at us every
moment. Some progressives mistakenly believe that means we should melt into
the ranks of Biden boosters and otherwise keep quiet until after the
election. On the contrary. For instance, continuing to insist that the
Democratic Party must take a clear stand for Medicare for All is not only
the morally right thing to do; it's also good politics in 2020, as polling
clearly shows.
Nor should we pretend that Biden doesn't have a five-decade record that is
very far from progressive. Reasons to distrust him are profuse. But this
presidential election isn't really about Biden, who's a garden-variety
corporate Democrat. It's about a clear and present threat to democratic
capacities in the United States.
The irreversible fork in the historic road of this election was aptly summed
up by an activist and scholar with a long history on the left, H. Bruce
Franklin, who concluded a new article this way: "Even in these dark days,
light is visible. In my 86 years as an American, I have never witnessed a
progressive movement as broad and deep as the one sweeping across the nation
today. If Biden and the Democrats win in November, this movement will have
room to thrive. If not, it will be crushed."
Progressives should be a leading force in a united front against Trump for
the next 10 weeks. We must go all out, so that we - and progressive
movements - are not crushed.
There's no point in arguing about whether progressives should vote for Biden
in "safe states" like New York or California; such discussions are at best a
waste of time. Whether Trump can remain president for another four years
will hinge on the votes in a dozen swing states.
Professor Franklin takes aim at the disconnected-from-facts argument
sometimes heard (disproportionately in reader comments on some progressive
websites) that the two parties are, in essence, indistinguishable: "Really?
If you can't see glaring differences between the Supreme Court justices
chosen by the two parties and their votes crucial to our lives, your name
might be Magoo."
And Franklin added: "Compare the Democrats: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen
Breyer (Clinton appointees); Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan (Obama
appointees) to the Republicans: Clarence Thomas (appointed by George H. W.
Bush to take the place of the great Thurgood Marshall, appointed by LBJ);
Samuel Alito and John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush); and Neil
Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh (appointed by Trump). I agree with Mitch
McConnell that there is no more important outcome of presidential elections
than the composition of the Supreme Court, an outcome that will probably be
crucial for decades after the four- or eight-year term of Donald Trump. For
starters, who will get to appoint the successor to the heroic Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg? The same president who will get to appoint the successor to
the 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer. If it's Trump, those two will be
replaced by two more Kavanaughs, or worse if possible. Whatever Trump wants
to be the law of the land will be validated by that truly supreme court."
Franklin makes a broader point: "On health care, public education, voting
rights, civil rights, the environment, abortion rights, immigration, minimum
wages, union rights, and taxation of the wealthy, every vote in the House
and Senate splits right along party lines. And these party lines are drawn
along the lines of the voting bases of the two parties. The Republican Party
today is the party of white supremacy."
Denial of such realities is dangerous. As my colleagues at the #VoteTrumpOut
campaign point out, "For every undocumented family seeking asylum, for every
woman seeking access to reproductive healthcare, for every young person
fighting to avert climate catastrophe, for every parent afraid of gun
violence at their children's school, for every working class family hoping
for some relief from the medical and economic fallout of the coronavirus,
life will be very different under a Biden presidency than under four more
years of Trump.
"And crucially, Biden is moveable. We've already shown that with mass
pressure, we can push him to support more progressive policies. Trump, on
the other hand, is immune to public persuasion or protest. With a Biden
presidency, a disciplined and mobilized left could extract significant
victories. With another Trump presidency, the left would have few options
and could face new levels of government repression. Our democracy, our
planet, and our human rights would continue to sustain enormous - and
potentially irreparable - damage."
This is our political crossroads.
