The United States presidential election after Biden’s withdrawal — The energy has changed. The underlying politics have not.
First published at Convergence Magazine.
The Joe Biden-to-Kamala Harris handoff has produced a dramatic shift in mood among all opponents of MAGA’s white Christian Nationalist agenda. The gloom about prospects for defeating authoritarianism in 2024 that hung in the air for months has been replaced by a surge of energy and hope.
That hope can produce a big win in November, but only if it is translated into effective action grounded in realism. The balance of forces that existed before Biden withdrew remains the same. Likewise unchanged are the differing political programs of those contending for power—the MAGA-controlled GOP, the Biden-Harris (now Harris-?) wing of the Democratic Party, and the still-developing progressive trend that started to take its current shape in 2016.
To begin sorting through the complexities of the moment, let’s examine what forced Biden to step down.
Ceasefire movement laid the groundwork
The unprecedented movement for a ceasefire and an end to US complicity with the Israeli genocide in Gaza laid the groundwork for Biden’s withdrawal. The sustained protests consistently spotlighted the moral bankruptcy and political cowardice of a President whose “red lines” were just hot air. They were irrefutable evidence that Biden had alienated large numbers in constituencies absolutely essential to any electoral victory.
That meant the pump was already primed for change when Biden’s debate debacle showed the world that he was unable to effectively combat Trump even on the issues where he had actual accomplishments or had majority support.
That combination punctured the bubble of denial that had pervaded the Democratic Party leadership for the last year. For several weeks, leaks and speculation about their ensuing rethink filled the headlines.
On the broad Left, the conversation about what was underway reflected the widespread opinion that mainstream Democrats don’t offer a program that can inspire the working-class majority and are incompetent at messaging even when they do something positive. But the Democratic leadership’s apparent paralysis while facing the prospect of a landslide defeat seemed to bolster the idea that mainstream Democrats are mired in denial about the danger from the Right, and only get combative when they battle the Left.
But then the hammer came down. Led by their toughest and savviest heavyweight, Nancy Pelosi, top Democrats faced facts and moved to push Biden out. And once they succeeded, they quickly got behind Kamala Harris and gave her the green light: Make this a fight.
And Kamala Harris came out swinging.
Three lessons
There are three lessons here.
One, even before a militant grassroots movement achieves its immediate goal (in this case, a ceasefire) it can alter political dynamics in the country.
Two, by playing a sparkplug role in forcing Biden to withdraw, the movement for a ceasefire and Palestinian rights showed once again that it is at the cutting edge in the fight for peace and for consistent opposition to fascism.
Three, a Left that opts to sit out the fight because it objects to the weaknesses and inconsistencies in mainstream Democrats’ opposition to fascism will have little credibility with the millions whose spirits have been lifted by the one-two punch of Biden being forced out and Harris launching what is shaping up as the most combative Democratic presidential campaign in decades.
This is energy at scale
The speed and scale of the energy surge underway has outstripped anything since the first Women’s March on January 21, 2017 and the uprising that began immediately after the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.
Within days of the baton being passed, 44,000 Black women joined a Zoom that raised $1.5 million and more than 20,000 Black men joined a call and raised over $1 million. Groups that had been struggling to recruit people to postcard, text and canvass got flooded with volunteers. Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) sponsored a series of three calls for white people and more than 20,000 registered. A “White Women Answer the Call” session initiated by anti-gun violence activist and founder of Moms Demand Action Shannon Watts broke the record for the largest Zoom call ever with 164,000 participants.
This outpouring reflects the deep and wide hunger for a fighting response to what millions of people in the US regard as an existential threat to their rights and livelihoods. It’s not that tens of thousands studied Kamala’s political positions and decided they were better than Biden’s, though many of course hope they are. The shift in mood that is translating into action is not driven by a change in policy. The surge is driven by a call to fight.
Voices in the progressive wing of the anti-MAGA front – electeds like Bernie, AOC and Cori Bush, labor leaders like Shawn Fain, people’s organizations like the Working Families Party and Progressive Democrats of America – have been working to rouse the electorate all along. But it’s hard to build excitement when the electoral standard-bearer’s posture signals the exact opposite of the militancy needed. Once Kamala showed she could take the gloves off, the dam burst.
What about the politics?
The contrast between Harris and Biden on fighting mode is not matched by a comparable difference in their political programs. Harris has, after all, been a loyal part of the current administration and has long functioned within the parameters of the Democratic mainstream. And initial indications are that she is assembling her campaign team and the advisers who will flank her if she is elected from the same pool of insiders that have surrounded Biden.
That said, Harris comes from a different political generation and has not been as cocooned as Biden from current cultural trends and the sentiments in younger generations. That shows in some of her rhetoric, and it means that she is likely to be more susceptible to pressure on several key issues than Biden has been.
Both the inertia and the potential openings in the above combination have already shown up in Harris’ positioning on the Gaza genocide and US support for Israel. She continues to pledge “unwavering” support for Israel, she issued a terrible statement denouncing the protests against Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, and she gives no sign she is breaking with the administration on any concrete action item. But she did break tradition and skip Netanyahu’s speech; her on-camera remarks after meeting privately with him lifted up the importance of Palestinian life in a way Biden never could manage, and her stress on achieving a ceasefire has reportedly made Israeli officials nervous.
Only continuing pressure will reveal whether Harris can be moved from words to real action. A new vehicle for such pressure is the Not Another Bomb initiative just launched by the Uncommitted Movement. Like the hundreds of thousands of uncommitted primary votes that played a big part in priming the pump for Biden to withdraw, this new campaign has the potential to turn the shifting sentiment among left-of-centner constituencies and young people generally and the Democratic voting base in particular into a powerful political force.
The potential for change here is underscored by looking again at Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi skipped Netanyahu’s speech, saying afterwards that it was “by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.” She stated that Netanyahu’s time would be better spent achieving a ceasefire. That kind of stance coming from this powerful Democratic stalwart is clear evidence that the movement for Palestine has made a difference, and is a huge incentive not just to keep up but to intensify our efforts. And another big battle on this front, Cori Bush vs. AIPAC, is right around the corner.
The same goes for immigration, real action to combat climate change, and every other issue on which progressives differ with mainstream Democrats. Defeating MAGA is an essential step on the road to changing the country, but so is building the clout to force deep-going change as the fascists are pushed back.
Progressives are seizing the moment
Because of the gains progressives have made since 2016—including important shifts in the labor movement—we now have both influential figures and organizational infrastructure to make a difference in this new climate. The sophistication now exists to move in a way that strengthens the overall anti-MAGA front, grows the clout of social justice organizations, and moves the Democratic mainstream closer to our positions on key policy issues.
This does not require tactical uniformity in the progressive camp. As of this writing, for example, the United Auto Workers and Rashida Tlaib are withholding their endorsements, stressing the pressure side of this moment of new opportunity. Other Squad members—Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, AOC and Ayanna Presley —have all endorsed Kamala, as have the AFL-CIO and numerous national unions (Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association) and grassroots progressive organizations (Community Change Action, March for Our Lives, Black Voters Matter).
Of particular note is the increased cooperation among progressive national and local groups reflected in common messaging and coordination of practical efforts. On July 25, the Working Families Party, Center for Popular Democracy Action, and People’s Action jointly announced their endorsement of Harris and “pledged to mobilize their national member bases to knock on over 5 million doors in key battleground states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona.”
The Working Families Party also has been joined by SURJ, Seed the Vote and the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) in a common 2024 effort of political education and action situated within a long-term strategy to gain governing power. In explaining WFP’s plan to “make 2024 a win for working people” and forge a new center of gravity within the progressive movement, WfP director Maurice Mitchell wrote:
We must block MAGA extremists from seizing governing power, and we must build the most viable, durable political vehicle that is beholden and accountable to the people and not the wealthy and corporations.
Where are the socialists?
When faced with the threat (or reality) of authoritarian or fascist rule, socialists, communists, and revolutionaries in most times and places have sought to galvanize the broadest possible front in defense of democratic space, and to rally the most progressive forces in their society to contend for influence and leadership within that front.
Some socialists are taking that kind of approach to US politics today. Framing the 2024 election as one essential-to-win fight in the long-term battle to win working-class political power, several socialist groups are throwing themselves into the anti-MAGA fight with all they’ve got.
These include the Communist Party USA, whose resolution on the 2024 elections contains a “call to action to help build and actively participate in the broad all-people’s front to block fascism”; the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism whose editorial statement is titled “The Core of Our 2024 Elections: Democracy vs. Fascism”; and Liberation Road, which has issued a statement titled “ Block, Broaden, Build: the 2024 Elections and the Threefold Tasks of the Left.”
These three groups are also joined by the newly formed North Star Socialist Organization, which emerged out of a years-long process of strategy discussion and cadre development. Their Movement Mission 2024 statement says: “Block the Right and Build the Left must be leftists’ guiding orientation for 2024 and upcoming years. Blocking the Right this year must include defeating the Donald Trump and MAGA campaign to commandeer the power of the presidency…”
All these formations have the potential for growing their influence in the newly energized anti-MAGA front. The Liberation Road and North Star groups are especially well- positioned to boost the influence and anti-MAGA contributions of some of the progressive world’s most dynamic sectors: many of their members are already embedded in labor and many of the state-based power-building organizations and issue-focused organizing networks that relate to the Working Families Party-led motion noted above.
But these groups, even taken together, are far smaller than the largest socialist group in the US, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Unfortunately, the current majority on the leadership body of DSA does not agree with positioning the organization within the anti-MAGA front and assigns little importance to most of that front’s progressive wing. They refrain from a call to defeat MAGA in 2024, instead calling for a focus on building a new party as an alternative to both the Republicans and Democrats.
Many DSA members—perhaps a majority—disagree with this view. So while the organization as such sits out the 2024 presidential contest as it did in 2020, many of these members will be doing what they can to defeat MAGA, especially at the local and state levels, and trying to preserve relationships with those progressives and socialists who are throwing themselves into the anti-fascist fight. Hopefully, their efforts will succeed. But the stance of DSA’s national leadership is not just a missed opportunity for DSA, it is an obstacle to accomplishing those goals.
US-style fascism is on the march. Among most of the constituencies existentially threatened by MAGA there is a surge of new energy for taking on the electoral fight against it. Victory or defeat will still come down to close votes in six battleground states. And with a woman of African American and Asian descent heading the anti-MAGA ticket, we can expect that the racist and sexist tropes floated in the last week will only increase in both viciousness and quantity.
The mood shift produced by the Biden-to-Harris handoff will not by itself produce the changes we need. But the combative energy unleashed is an essential element in moving this country, and failure to connect to it, build it, and fight for influence over its political direction, is to miss the moment.
The gender myopia in this passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar stands out at a time when it is largely women’s energy that is driving US politics. But still, these lines capture the moment:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Max Elbaum is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board and the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is also a co-editor, with Linda Burnham and María Poblet, of Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections (OR Books, 2022).
United States: The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election
First published at International Socialism Project.
What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets — and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.
But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline — underway for several years — has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.
For the last three years Party leaders have viciously attacked anyone who observed that President Joe Biden’s mental faculties appeared to be disintegrating (dismissing these critics as, among other things, “bedwetters”). As recently as last month, when the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” a chorus of Democratic lawmakers (including former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi) called it a “ hit piece” engineered by Republicans.
Party leaders’ about-face
The Party’s leaders had a sudden change of heart after Biden’s abysmal performance debating Donald Trump on June 27th. During some of Biden’s worst moments in the debate, the viewing audience held its collective breath while waiting to learn whether Biden would be able to finish a sentence or instead drift off into an unintelligible mumble. After the debate finished, First Lady Jill Biden famously told him, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question,” as if talking to a toddler as she guided him by the hand off the stage.
In the following weeks, the Party’s elites ripped each other apart as one after another Democrat (many of them lawmakers in competitive electoral races) began to publicly urge Biden to step down. Interestingly, “moderate” congressional Democrats became his loudest critics, but “progressives” stuck by him, voicing their support for Biden to continue his campaign. Bernie Sanders, along with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), Ilhan Omar, members of the so-called “Squad,” lined up behind Biden — presumably to protect their future ambitions within the Party apparatus. Rep. Rashida Tlaib from Michigan member was one of the few progressive Democrats to refuse to endorse Biden — because of his unswerving support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Sanders knows what the DNC is capable of, since he was targeted for electoral destruction when his own pro-working class presidential campaign gained traction with voters during the 2020 primary season. After winning the popular vote in the Iowa caucus and then winning the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic Party apparatus pulled out all the stops to sideline Sanders’ campaign. By April of that year, he withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden.
For what it’s worth, AOC has backtracked so much on her support for Palestinians that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) withdrew its endorsement for her. Once a symbol of the DSA’s hopes to shift the Democratic Party to the left, AOC’s career trajectory has become a harsh reminder that those politicians expecting to shift the Democratic Party leftward from within soon find themselves moving to the right and conforming to Democratic policy.
None of the moderates, of course, raised a complaint about Biden’s role in Israel’s genocidal war. This wasn’t a surprise, since the Democrats have been unwavering supporters of Israeli apartheid throughout Israel’s history.
Party powerbrokers backed Biden despite his cognitive decline
The most powerful Democrats publicly stuck by Biden even as a majority of rank-and-file Democratic voters voiced their desire for him to step down, although some — such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer — more recently privately urged Biden to step aside. A mid-July AP/NORC poll showed 7 in 10 adults, including 65 percent of Democrats, wanted Biden to withdraw, with Trump consistently beating him in polling numbers.
But it appears that the turning point came when the party’s megadonors threatened to withhold further contributions to Biden’s campaign, and panic-stricken Party powerbrokers like Pelosi became more public in pressuring Biden to stand down. Top Hollywood fundraiser George Clooney published a full-page op-ed in the New York Times — although his only qualification on this matter is as a celebrity fundraiser for Democrats.
So, after propping him up for years, the Democrats dropped Biden like a hot potato. Even then, he refused to back down for weeks. He was defiant, even combative, toward his Party adversaries. But Party pressure ultimately prevailed over his enormous ego, and he finally stepped down as a candidate on July 21st.
Minutes after stepping down, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
From there, the transition was seamless. Within hours after Biden’s endorsement, Harris gained the support of nearly everyone in the Democratic Party establishment, from Pelosi to Bill and Hillary Clinton. By the following day, she had received enough Democratic delegate votes to qualify for the nomination in the first round of voting at next month’s Democratic National Convention. Hollywood donors, including Clooney, have also endorsed her en masse.
Although Harris’ nomination is not automatic, she is certainly the most likely nominee — even though she has never won a single primary — because she has the Party establishment’s backing. Within the first 24 hours, Harris garnered a record-breaking $81 million in donations to her campaign. As Harris walked on stage for her first presidential campaign appearance, she was accompanied by Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” — which had become an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Without missing a beat, all the smoke and mirrors were in place, and the Party united behind Harris.
What does Harris stand for?
Some Democratic Party moderates have characterized Harris as “too far left.” Although Harris uses rhetoric that seems to be to the left of Biden, her own history shows otherwise.
Before being elected senator in 2017, Harris built her political career for two decades as a public prosecutor — first as district attorney in San Francisco and then as attorney general in California. Reuters described her record as mixing “criminal justice reform with a tough-on-crime approach.” If this seems contradictory, that is because Harris was contradictory.
While labeled a progressive, Harris was far from consistently so. For example, she opposed the death penalty, yet she also appealed a California court ruling that declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Likewise, she pioneered a program for first-time nonviolent offenders in San Francisco that offered job training and substance abuse treatment. But she also implemented a truancy policy, first in San Francisco and then statewide, that prosecuted the parents of children who were deemed to have missed too much school. Some overzealous authorities threw parents in jail under this policy, even though their children’s school attendance was out of their control. Harris called this one of the law’s “ unintended consequences.”
Harris’ rhetoric has tended to be more progressive than Biden’s, but Biden’s policies are very likely to be Harris’ policies in a future presidency because Harris has never strayed far from them — whatever language she has used.
For example, Harris has expressed more sympathy with Palestinians in recent months. But, as investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill recently reported on Drop Site News,
The truth is that, like most Democrats, Harris has supported Biden’s policies, even if she has raised tactical objections or expressed moral unease with the horrifying death toll. While Harris is not Biden—and does not have a half century of overwhelming support for Israel’s brutality and militarism fueling her positions—she does have her own record of hardline support for Israel, both as a senator and as vice president.
Soon after being elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris earned a reputation as an ardent defender of Israel. She spoke two years in a row at AIPAC conferences and co-sponsored legislation aimed at undermining a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian land. One of her first international trips as a senator was to Israel where she met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. “I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade,” Harris told an AIPAC conference that year. “I believe the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and we can never let anyone drive a wedge between us. … As long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.”
Harris is unapologetically pro-abortion, and unlike Biden, who says he’s “not big on abortion” she uses the word “abortion” in campaign speeches — which in itself is hardly radical. Harris, like Biden, thus far aims merely to “restore Roe” rather than fight for abortion on demand. But in the two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, Republicans have successfully obliterated the right to abortion in the many states with abortion bans and have set their sights on criminalizing contraception and even IVF, along with gender affirming care. There will be no easy path back to recover the basic reproductive rights that have been destroyed.
While circumstances can change, Harris should be expected to continue Democratic Party policies overall if elected — which is why Party leaders anointed her as Biden’s successor. The party’s plan is to work behind the scenes to ensure Harris is nominated at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Of course, it’s anyone’s guess whether the plan will unfold smoothly. House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened Republican lawsuits to force Biden’s name to go back on the ballot in individual states. While such a legal strategy will ultimately fail, it could cause plenty of chaos in the meantime.
It is also possible that a political fight will break out at the Democratic National Convention, and the Democrats’ plan for a smooth passing of the torch will go completely awry.
Either way, the recent turmoil inside the Party has exposed the inner workings of its apparatus — and the political insiders who pull the strings to ensure that members of its inner circle succeed while others fail. They will likely choose a moderate, perhaps from a swing state, as a running mate to “balance out” the ticket.
Expect Trump to run a racist, misogynist campaign (no surprise there)
Of course, the misogynous duo topping the Republican Party ballot guarantee the months ahead will be filled with sexist and racist mudslinging directed at Harris. Trump has already started letting loose at Harris, labeling her “ Dumb as a Rock” on social media.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance might be even more contemptuous of women — if that’s possible. In a 2022 Fox News interview with Tucker Carson, Vance stated,
We’re effectively run in this country — via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs — by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. It’s just a basic fact.
If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?
Vance has called for a national abortion ban, although recently “softened” his position to match Trump’s anti-Roe “let the states decide” position. Vance has also spoken out against divorce, arguing that women stuck in marriages that are “maybe even violent” should stay married for the sake of their children. He has further stated, “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace … making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”
But Trump picked Vance when he still expected Biden to be his opponent. This might prove to be a strategic miscalculation on his part now that Harris has replaced Biden. A clear majority of the population consistently supports abortion rights — a majority that has grown since Roe was overturned. Even in swing states (including Vance’s home state of Ohio) a Pew Research Center in May found that “a clear majority of residents in the top swing state support abortions.”
It is possible that Harris’ support for abortion rights will motivate Democratic Party turnout in November, as it did in 2022 — to the detriment of Republicans.
However, since the election outcome will be determined not by the popular vote but by voters in a handful of swing states, there is no reliable way to predict a winner. Expect another nail-biter on Election Day.
Sharon Smith is the author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Haymarket, 2006) and Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital (revised and updated, Haymarket, 2015).
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