Nov 7, 2024: Diagnostics
Centrists failed. Left populists have work to do.
It’s fair to critique Kamala Harris's campaign (always important when you lose by wide margins) but it is the Democratic Party machine that:
put Joe Biden in by orchestrating a 2020 primary coalition to stop Sanders;
promised Joe would be a one term president; and
ran Biden a second time without a primary while hiding the 2024 cognitive issues we were all yelling about back in 2020.
So it’s not just team Harris's mistakes (there were some), or Biden's hubris (there was so much). The failures are systemic.
Trump reminds us of what the United States is – a deeply sexist and racist society built on genocide and slavery. It's who we are and have been. But recall that less than 20 yrs ago, Barack Hussein Obama was elected on the promise of what the US could become. But with his strong mandate (and amid crushing racist backlash), he then chose capital over the American people with the bank bailouts. The same man who campaigned on opposition to the Iraq War than innovated dropping drones overseas. Pluralities of us became very disillusioned.
Crucially, since then, the Democratic Party machine has only denied that disillusionment rather than address it head on.
Out of the consequences of Obama's choices came populists. On the right the tea party and Trump doing birtherism. Truly disgusting stuff. Named immigrants and leftists as the villains.
On the left came Occupy Wall Street. Small but mighty, post partisan. Named billionaires and corporate greed as the villains. The history here is that organizers from Occupy Wall Street decided to go big and drafted Elizabeth Warren to run for president, she declined. So they created the People for Bernie Sanders and we caught fire.
Then the Democratic Party crushed us.
Now we have people like NYT columnist and centrist thought leader David Brooks saying, well, hold up, maybe, just maybe, a Bernie Sanders like movement could have won here. Maybe that's the direction we need to go!
But we know that if we try to go in that direction, legacy media, the Democratic Party machine, and many MSNBC-pilled liberal rank and file folks will (continue to) tell us to fuck off into the sun.
I am going to go in that direction anyway. Centrists failed. Left populists have work to do.
Those of us who’ve tried organizing in that post Obama, left-populist lineage have learned a few things. We've learned that despite how hideously we've been treated by party operatives and legacy media, we are the sober adults in the room, not drunk on money or access (we have neither). Elements of our diagnostics and theory of change are in fact sea worthy. We've learned (often through very hard ways) that when we treat one another well and we follow through, we can succeed. We've learned this week that no one else is coming to save us. Not a party flush with cash, not the experts. This is on us. Or as we like to clarify: Not me. Us.
My advice to all of you (and myself) is to avoid fighting with those who can’t see it, and focus on organizing. Organize, recruit, persuade. Share indy media, join groups, be active. Nurture durable networks. Work with anyone who shows up to organize. Instead of abusing folks that hold different views, work on making our ideas fun and impossible to resist. Importantly, find and share narratives — ways of understanding our position and direction — from the people who have been consistently calling these issues accurately: like the journalists now running Lever News, Drop Site News, and Breaking Points, to name my own favorites.
I don't know the final vote tallies, but it’s clear that both of Trump's wins were in large part due to depressed turnout on the Dem’s side. That's good news for us because it means we can beat fascists back by recruiting and organizing from the vast ranks of the politically disenfranchised. Bernie Sanders pulled people out of the woodwork with a simple story that named villains, channeled anger, condemned racism and sexism, and built community by bringing people together, or as he often bellowed “we must bring people TOGETHAH!”
Think we’re worth fighting for and ready to get going? Here’s one place to start! More on this soon.
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