Note to the Left: Voting for Democrats is Not Going to Help Us
With an election looming in 2024, a stern talking-to is required for the too-many working class folks on the Left who will again be voting for the wealthy pro-corporate parasite that will get pre-approved by the DNC during the sham we call the primaries.
Let’s start this off with a link to a somber but eye-opening article by Aimee Picchi for CBS News that was actually collated by Republican analysts:
“Americans need an extra $11,400 today just to afford the basics, Republican analysis finds”
I thank my friend and comrade Brian Harris for bringing that to my awareness.
Here’s the ongoing situation that the Left — and all the working class — needs to get itself out of
With the ’04 election looming and the working class in dire economic straights, too many of my fellow 99 percenters on the Left are going to continue voting for the war-mongering capitalist shark (whether it’s Biden-his-time or someone else) simply because he/she is not a Republican due to fear-mongering over Trump (again!). And if it wasn’t Trump, it would be over some other Republican shill for the other wing of the duopoly who was elevated by the Dems into a Hitleresque figure that self-proclaimed champions of “Democracy” have to stop from getting into office at any cost.
Let’s go with Biden, the current horrible corporate candidate foisted onto us like an elementary school homework assignment by the DNC.
Like any Democrat or Republican candidate pre-approved by the capitalist committee that has Washington in their pockets, Biden (or whoever may take his place) is not going to do a damn thing for workers. We need to finally accept that due to the overwhelming evidence and decades-long trend that should be more than enough to convince the most doubting skeptic.
The Republicans won’t even offer us any social programs while making vague vows to “fix the medical insurance system” or fake populist statements to be looking out for the “little guy.”
In contrast, the Dems will make false promises that they have no intention of keeping during the campaign and then a year or two after winning the election — if they win — will say “they tried” but were “obstructed” by the Republicans and “bad guy” Dems like Sinema and Manchin who take on that role in a revolving door. That, and/or they will run a campaign on divisive wedge issues like identity politics and promises to finally codify Roe vs. Wade into federal law while never actually doing so because they need it to run on in the absence of any economic policies to help us out… and also because as wealthy capitalists, they do not need to be concerned with a woman’s right to choose since that law doesn’t affect young capitalist women or the daughters of older capitalists who can easily fly to France to get a legal and medically safe abortion.
Of course, the actual “obstruction” will be a lack of desire to do anything for us since it’s their capitalist donor base, not the working class who stubbornly continues to support them, to whom they are beholden to. Once elected (again, if they get elected) they will then simply use their constant deliberate failures posing as a series of faux pas events to further bleed us dry by demanding that we donate huge amounts of the money most of us do not have into Democratic campaign coffers to get more Dems elected into office so that “next time” there will be enough of them to finally bypass the obstruction and give workers the policies that we want.
But as always, once they get elected to the House, just enough of them will vote “present” or “no” to keep the policies from getting passed. Further, all will break promises to put pressure on eliminating the democracy-crushing congressional filibuster rule that helps Republicans and “bad guy” Dems alike easily prevent all but the most superficial policies to get through. Then once again they will say, “Oops! Still not enough of us in Congress! Please throw even more of that money you don’t have into our campaign coffers leading up to the next election cycle!”The excuses from workers on the Left to continue voting for corporate, war-profiteering capitalists like Biden and the Clintons will, of course, consist of the “lesser evilism” or “the Left has nowhere else to go” spiels, but they will not be limited to those tired old standbys.
Another one will be, “Well, I know the Dems aren’t perfect, but if I have to vote for a corporatist shill, I’m going to at least vote for those who share my social values.” Pffft! News flash, my misguided fellow workers: Capitalists and the upper middle class elitist liberal members of the managerial sub-class who aspire to be capitalists — i.e., the 20 percenters, e.g., the House members comprising the Squad — do not share our social values. They live in an entirely different world than we do. Their values revolve around making more and more money, and doing anything required to maintain the status quo so they can have more than most other people on the planet and call all the shots themselves. It really is that simple.
Spouting feel-good pro-working class rhetoric while never actually voting for said policies and constantly referring to these failures as “necessary compromises”; or, frequently reminding us how “politics is negotiation”; or, perpetually saying “it’s not the right time for [insert much-needed working class economic policy of your choice]” provides us all the evidence we need that we’re simply being used and manipulated.
What the common excuses from the working class Democrats will be
The excuses from workers on the Left to continue voting for corporate, war-profiteering capitalists like Biden and the Clintons will, of course, consist of the “lesser evilism” or “the Left has nowhere else to go” spiels, but they will not be limited to those tired old standbys.
Another one will be, “Well, I know the Dems aren’t perfect, but if I have to vote for a corporatist shill, I’m going to at least vote for those who share my social values.” Pffft! News flash, my misguided fellow workers: Capitalists and the upper middle class elitist liberal members of the managerial sub-class who aspire to be capitalists — i.e., the 20 percenters, e.g., the House members comprising the Squad — do not share our social values. They live in an entirely different world than we do. Their values revolve around making more and more money, and doing anything required to maintain the status quo so they can have more than most other people on the planet and call all the shots themselves. It really is that simple.
Spouting feel-good pro-working class rhetoric while never actually voting for said policies and constantly referring to these failures as “necessary compromises”; or, frequently reminding us how “politics is negotiation”; or, perpetually saying “it’s not the right time for [insert much-needed working class economic policy of your choice]” provides us all the evidence we need that we’re simply being used and manipulated.
The above do not give a shit about any women, PoC, or LGBTs who aren’t fellow capitalists or useful elitist aspirants to their class. And the allegedly (but sometimes actually) homophobic and racist hyper-traditionalist Republicans will gladly tolerate them having a seat at their round table as long as the handful of them within or directly serving the capitalist class help keep the working class in check and the status quo intact. This, of course, is something that the privileged Dems are well aware of.
This explains why a known homophobic Repub like George W. Bush and an elitist Dem LGBT activist celebrity capitalist like Ellen DeGeneres are good friends and more than happy to share a $5,000.00 (and up!) luxury box at a football game together. Do you ever see Ellen sitting down and sharing a cocktail, let alone an luxury box at a football game, with any 99 percenters, including working class LGBTs? Nope, but an evangelical homophobe like Bush is fine for her social circle since, as they both see it, the two of them have the most important thing of all in common: class interests.
So much for the claims of the liberal identitarians who deride members of the Classical Left like myself as “class reductionists.” The capitalist class have their parasitic priorities straight, so it’s about time that we as the working class get our revolutionary ones similarly in line. The capitalist class rarely if ever let identity politics stand in the way of their interests, and the working class needs to do the same for our own.
Yet another excuse we’ll often be hearing going into the following year is the truly bizarre but all too common claim that Biden (or any other corporate Dem shill in office) has done an “amazing” job that “exceeded all expectations” considering “the limitations and obstruction” he had to work; and that he “proved” this by passing “revolutionary” but actually superficial policies like the Inflation Reduction Act (which didn’t actually reduce inflation) or the one granting exclusive American corporate rights to micro-chip production. In reality, these policies constitute a politician in the Oval Office doing the minimum required of his job just so that he can say that he did “something” while not actually doing anything that noticeably improves the lives of workers on a mass scale, let alone in any way circumventing the status quo.
These superficial policies touted by working class Dem supporters as “next level” awesomeness will hardly be a replacement for desperately needed working class policies such as:
universal health care (well, at least Biden kept his promise not to give us that… though of course he did break the usual promise for a “public option” as a consolation prize);
a meaningful job with a living wage guarantee;
free college with the end of government-subsidized legal loan sharks like Sallie Mae;
full college debt forgiveness so we can actually afford to buy & own houses and otherwise contribute to the economy;
the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to keep banks in check so they stop causing so many periodic “crashes” that routinely devastate the working class and result in generous-to-capitalist bailouts that help them remain “too big to fail” but leave us lying in the middle of the proverbial street (like with the 2008 debacle that started the Great Recession we are still suffering from);
the de-monopolization of corporate media so that freedom of speech & what we see on both the big and small screens are far less restricted;
the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI) to compensate for workers having their jobs increasingly replaced by automation and A.I.;
establishing shelter, utilities, and access to a reasonable amount of food as guaranteed human rights;
the reduction of working class property taxes so we can still actually own homes without it being a constant struggle that routinely bankrupts us;
and other greatly needed social programs that I can list by the dozen, not to mention finally getting Roe vs. Wade & recreational marijuana usage codified into federal law.
The bottom line that the Left needs to accept
The more we keep voting for these capitalist war-mongers, the more our situation will continue to go downhill and the existing status quo will increasingly consume us in poverty, homelessness, crime, rampant mental illness, class in-fighting via identity politics, environmental destruction due to uncontrolled mass consumerism, further attacks on our civil liberties to keep us in line, and destructive wars that can become truly cataclysmic.
What is it going to take to wake you up, people?
If you should lose your house or your job, do not blame white people, or immigrants, or conservatives, or straight people, or Trump supporters (or Trump himself), or Muslims, or Christians, etc.
Instead, put the blame where it actually deserves to be placed: on the capitalist system that puts a price tag on virtually everything and forces our entire lives to revolve around making a profit for capitalists while struggling against both each other and a mad casino-like game stacked very much and increasingly against us for whatever crumbs or lucky breaks we can manage to get… and the tiny class of 1 percenters and their 20 percenter enablers who only pretend to serve our interests while actually serving the former; and who are the only true beneficiaries of this system and of our voting them into office.
That, along with the stubborn willingness of so many people in our class to continue tolerating the rule of the capitalist class as long as we believe this or that capitalist from whichever wing of the duopoly happen to share the same opinions on social issues that we do. We need serious, fundamental change and the Democrats are not going to give that to us anymore than the Republicans are.
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