Probably the most important thing and things you can read today.
A Dangerous Moment for the Democratic Party
Just a few snippets for the quotes of the day. First from Paul Jay.
Trump may be a buffoon, but the forces behind him are serious. Trump may be gone, at least for now, but many developments are driving a section of the American elites towards a more overtly coercive and racist state.This section of the elite has been ascendant because “liberal American capitalism” is out of solutions. Had it not been for the pandemic, Trump would likely be headed back to the White House. In spite of his criminal mishandling of the pandemic, he still received 70 million votes. Obama’s economic policies favored Wall Street and produced greater income inequality. Desperation and frustration created conditions for strengthening fascist and racist ideas in segments of the working class and rural poor. It tilled the soil for Trump.
People, especially in rural America, have lost faith in traditional post-war American institutions, and evangelical and conservative religions are gaining strength. At least 60 percent of the Trump vote came from very religious people. These people have lost their ideological moorings, as have people in most of the country, and demagogues from the right, from Trump to Tucker Carlson, are staking out the anti-elitist position. I think if progressives don’t learn how to talk to people of religious faith, they can’t win this battle.
The oligarchy is aghast at the success of the Sanders campaign and the wave of progressives elected to office. They fear increasing public support for socialized solutions like Medicare for All, publicly owned banks, community control of police, and a growing consciousness that some form of socialism is a viable alternative. If Biden continues Clinton/Obama-era pro-banker economic policies, he will set the table for a more dangerous version of Trump in 2024 or maybe Trump himself all over again.
The climate crisis makes all this even more urgent. We don’t have time for compromise and reach-across-the-aisle solutions. I said, vote for Biden without illusions, because it would be a better field of battle for progressive forces. Well, the next phase of the battle has begun.
Then from Matt Taibbi in the same column.
I think this is a dangerous moment for the Democrats because I think they’re going to take Biden’s victory as a validation of all of their strategy for the last two election cycles, whereas, in fact, you know, it’s really been disastrous. They lost to Trump in 2016, kind of inexplicably, and they nearly lost to him this time. And they suffered losses in the House, and they didn’t win the Senate.
You know, the Democrats have become essentially an upper-class, cosmopolitan party. People outside the cities just don’t vote Democratic. It’s a party of people who are college-educated and have professional jobs. People who are more working-class and rural, even though they may not have the class sensibility, they are much more much more likely to fall into the Trump camp. So, I think it’s a starkly divided electorate where at this point you can almost tell who’s going to vote for which candidate based on where you are in the country, and you know what that person’s background is. And that I think that’s a troubling sign for the Democrats, because I think they don’t realize it. But I think they’ve lost working-class people.
So the good news?
We voted out Trump.
The bad news?
We have a LOAD of work to do.
God help us. God help us all. God save the United States of America.
No exaggeration or overstatement.
Link--Another good, helpful, maybe even important read:
Is the United States a Democracy?