The DNC Will Never Allow a Genuine Progressive to Win the 2024 Primary
The following is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote and published on Medium earlier this year. It was before Cornel West entered the race (first on the ticket of the People’s Party; then on the Green; and then as an Independent…) which is why he isn’t mentioned. What I had to say in it is even more relevant now as we approach 2024 than it was several months ago, so it more than deserves to go up on my substack.
A lot of my fellow workers on the Left continue to persist with the belief that we have no other choice but to support the Democrats because they’re the “closest we can ever hope to get” to a truly progressive party that is consonant with pro-working class and civil libertarian values. The evidence to the contrary over the past few decades is extensive, and what happened to Bernie Sanders during the last two sadly predictable presidential election campaigns should have made this abundantly clear.
Too many liberals caught up in the emotionally manipulative and divisive Culture War nonsense, as well as others on the Left with one leg in the pro-working class struggle, will again vote for Biden-his-time, or whichever corporate establishment shill the DNC will push through if the latter cannot make it. And they will do so eagerly in the former case, as they believe the war-mongering capitalist Joe Biden— the good friend of Strom Thurmond and one of the main architects of the racist 1994 Crime Bill — is the antidote to “white supremacy” and “fascism”; the latter, due to defeatist resignation that he/she will be the “best we can hope for who actually has a chance of getting elected.”
Now, however, we have two new hopefuls with progressive credentials, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, determined to challenge Biden or his replacement shill (possibly Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton again — ugh!) in the 2024 primaries. They have set themselves up as the latest Sanders-ish great progressive hope to “take back” the Democratic Party for the working class.
Seriously? I would love to be proven wrong, but I sure as hell wasn’t when I predicted that either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would end up winning the 2020 primaries. And that was not due to political savviness on my part, but simple common sense based on observation of the reality that is, not what we may want it to be.
So, here is my response to my fellow 99 percenters on the Left who continue to insist that voting for whomever the already pre-selected Democrat primary winner is the only actual choice we have, if not the “best” choice. And why voting for a Democrat will mean a loss for the working class.
And for those many Lefists still caught up in the Trump and Putin Derangement Syndrome that keeps them tethered to the Democratic wing of the capitalist duopoly, you need to take heed as to why supporting these corporate shills pushed on us by the DNC’s wealthy donors in the Military Industrial Complex, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the Banks only make another Trump victory more likely… and why the DNC would actually prefer a Trump victory than one by a Kennedy, Williamson, or Sanders.
This is the Deal That We Need to Accept
No actual progressive socialist or social democrat running on the Democratic ticket is going to be allowed by the DNC to win the primary.
As noted above, you have probably noticed all the recent hoopla about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, both of whom are going to likely upsurge Biden in the polls, much as Bernie Sanders did in both 2016 and 2020. The DNC is going to make sure that they do not win the primary by using the same dirty but time-tested tricks that enabled them to sabotage Sanders’ candidacy twice in favor of awful corporate war-mongers like Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden.
What Will The Usual Sabotage Tactics Be?
Here is the gist of what the usual dirty tricks will entail:
The corporate media will launch a series of hit pieces on both Kennedy and Williamson, with full financial support from the Military Industrial Complex and Big Tech donors. They will play on the typical liberal cultural fear-mongering points like accusing them of being in league with Russia; or throwing around the “white supremacy” and “antisemitic” labels etc., to smear their image [update: the original version of this article was written before they did indeed use the “antisemitism” trope on Kennedy, which is likely part of the reason he subsequently went on a maniacal pro-Israel kick filled with all the usual Zionist lies and propaganda].
Since Kennedy in particular is against non-stop wars, including the proxy war in Ukraine, he will be an easy target for red-smearing. And since the liberals want to believe that Biden-his-time is a superheroic defender of the oppressed rather than a profit-seeking, opportunistic capitalist whose campaign coffers are filled with donations from the war profiteers, and the corporate-controlled media is dutifully portraying him in the former manner, the shitlibs among the working class will jump at the red-baiting accusations leveled at Kennedy — and Williamson if she breaks with her currently ambiguous stance on funding the war.
Barack Obama or some other highly powerful liberal/Dem luminary will make a few phone calls, as he did before, to convince the other Dems running for the primary to continue their campaigns going until the “Super Tuesday” fiasco (more on that below) — even though it will be obvious much earlier that each of them are going to loose the primary — simply to “drown out” Kennedy and/or Williamson in the polls — and then come out in support of the corporate shill pre-selected by the DNC.
He — or another, possibly one of the Clintons — will also make a call to the offending progressive candidates themselves, as Obama did to Sanders, and tell them how it will hurt their standing in Congress if they do not toe the line. This will result in one of two things.
One, they will back off, drop out of the race, and eagerly endorse Biden, as Sanders did twice (“Now is not the time for division in the Democrats! Stopping Trump has to be our main concern!”), so they do not end up like Ralph Nader or Dennis Kuchinich. Or two, they will have no choice but to accept the need to leave the Democratic Party if they truly want to fight for the working class. It would be nice if the latter happens, but I am putting my wager on the first result.
They will get popular corporate politicians representing marginalized people, like James Clyborn, to rally as many in the black community as possible in favor of the corporate shill selected by the DNC. His doing this during the 2020 primary was a major blow to Sanders losing support in the South to Strom Thurmond’s great friend Joe Biden. This is because like all members of the capitalist class or their lackeys in the professional managerial class (PMC), regardless of race, gender, etc., Clyburn doesn’t give a shit about PoC, but only for the class he identifies with.
The DNC will use its nefarious “super delegates” on “Super Tuesday” to cast votes for the corporate candidate no matter who the working class base supports. Then it’s a done deal! Biden, or some other corporate shill if the former cannot make it, will win the primary (and really, already has it in the bag even as I write these words).
Of course, the DNC will count on anyone from the working class Left who bother to come to the polls to rally behind Biden because “at least he’s not Trump!” Sadly and ironically, this will make a Trump (or DeSantis) victory very likely, as occurred in 2016 and almost did again in 2020.
And frankly, the Dems consider a GOP victory, including from a maverick capitalist like Trump, to be the lesser evil compared to an actual progressive winning the general election on the Dem ticket. You see, like the working class liberals, the capitalist class also plays the “lesser evilism” game — albeit very differently!
So, What Can We Do and What Should We Do?
As Classical Left activist Sabrina Salvati presciently notes in this vid covering Kennedy’s recent interview on CNN regarding what the Democrats are focusing on to keep the workers divided and at each others’ throats, as usual:
… if you guys noticed, this is what [the Democrats] are pandering to — they’re pandering towards the Culture War stuff. Not one question about the economy, not one question about the minimum wage or living wage in this country, nothing about the homelessness crisis in this country, nothing about [universal] health care… that’s important!
And this tactic is supposed to defeat Trump, or any GOP capitalist candidate who promotes themselves as a fake populist and panders to the workers whom the liberal cultural war rhetoric viciously attacks? This is supposed to be the best game in town for the working class?
As Sabrina has noted in another recent vid that explains much of what I’m trying to say here, if genuinely progressive candidates had spent the last few decades working as hard to establish a massive pro-working class party as opposed to trying to “break through” the corporate barrier in the Dem party (as Marianne Williamson put it), we would likely have had a fully viable party controlled by the working class fighting for truly revolutionary goals by now. It seems the evidence clearly suggests which of the two efforts — fighting to “reclaim” the Dem party for the working class, or building our own party from the ground up — is truly the futile one. Considerable effort has been put into the former endeavor for more than a generation to no avail; relatively scant effort has been put into the former.
We need to support pro-working class, genuinely socialist progressive and egalitarian candidates outside of the duopoly altogether and do so en masse, much as the French workers are now doing. We need to target the capitalists and capitalism itself and put the “Culture War” bullshit that divides us into petty “Right vs. Left” or “white identity vs. every other identity” or “vaxxer vs. anti-vaxxer” et al. camps behind us and unite a vast portion of the 99% against the system itself. Again, just as the French workers are now doing!
And this needs to happen all over the world, not in one nation alone. It is hard, daunting work, but it’s fully possible; and moreover, it is the only way. With the world on the brink of nuclear war and facing endless wars afterwards due to the Military Industrial Complex’s stranglehold on the economy, not to mention the continued impoverishment of the working class no matter which of the duopoly holds office, is going to force our hand eventually.
Hence, the sooner we give up our stubborn loyalty to one wing of the Powers That Be and take matters into our own hands, the sooner we move towards a better economic world order for everyone.
I hope Kennedy wins. How do you think it will pan out? X