Why Biden May Actually Lose to Trump
And Why the Left Needs to Stop Supporting Capitalist Democrats
First, let me make this clear. The winner of any presidential race is always going to be whomever the capitalist class most wants to win. Let’s no longer pretend that the popular vote is anything more than a symbolic feel-good game to make us think we live in an actual democracy, rather than a plutocracy.
This goes double for the Democrats and their utterly rigged primaries, as they have super delegates to ensure that the DNC will ultimately pick the winner, not the working class voters and not the regular delegates— and that there are several personal and professional consequences for any maverick politician under the party ticket who is serious about going against this system. That explains why these serious contenders never win, and also never remain serious opponents of things-as-they-are for too long.
Also let me make clear that this article is in no way, shape, or form an endorsement of Trump, let alone for the “lesser evilism” doctrine in a broader sense. We the working class should be supporting no capitalist politicians, because the wealthy pundits of the duopoly will always give us nothing save for mere crumbs that are too superficial to actually improve our lives in fundamental ways, nor make business as usual deviate from the usual in any manner.
This post is mainly a series of points I’m trying to make to the Mainstream Left as to why a buffoonish “fascist” made such a comeback after (narrowly) losing the last election after he actually won a previous time — and why workers of all demographics are rapidly turning against Biden, to the point where he is likely to lose the popular vote in 2024. These are all things that the Mainstream Left needs to hear and accept.
These will also provide suggestions as to what we, the working class of the Left, need to actually do to score victories for our class rather than continuously supporting one of two pre-selected capitalist schmucks whose real job is to maintain business as usual in a system that is all about business.
First, let’s look at the stats
Let us start by taking a gander at this eye-opening chart of stats collected jointly by The New York Times and Siena College — both of which are as mainstream liberal as you can get:
Yes, you saw that correctly, my liberal frenemies on the Left: As of early in November 2023, Biden is several percentage points below Trump in all but one of the vaunted “swing” (i.e., purple) states; and the only one in which he leads — Wisconsin — it’s by a mere two percentage points. Next let us consider how 22% of African American voters say they will be voting for Trump this time around, up from 8% in 2020; and a whopping 42% of Hispanic Americans say they will vote for Trump in ’24, up ten percentage points from the last election.
So, why is this? Let’s begin and hope enough workers on the Mainstream Left who insist on supporting the Democrats finally start taking heed.
Your obsessive focus on the Culture Wars are doing you — and the working class as a whole — absolutely no favors.
As those of us on the Classical Left have long been pointing out, at the end of the day workers of all demographics must be primarily concerned about the material needs in their lives.
This includes: having enough food to eat; having a decent shelter over their heads; having medical care whenever it’s needed without worry of going bankrupt; being free from crushing debt that puts immense material and psychological strain on us; complete forgiveness for the mess we’re in due to a few decades of predatory college loans; an end to constantly rising prices for everything accompanied by lowering wages & benefits; the commodification of virtually everything we could possibly need and want, with prices constantly going up faster than our wages can cope; a clean environment; a guarantee of well-paying jobs; the right to a universal basic income (UBI) on top of it all… the list could go on and on.
Biden promised workers heaps of things — though not Medicare for All (and was a total prick for that, especially since he made the vow to veto during the pandemic while campaigning). Instead, all he gave us was all the usual excuses (“I tried, but the Republicans obstructed me!”) and more of the usual wars. In fact, he sent many billions to fight the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and just this month decreed a vow to do the same for Israel in its war on Gaza; and he sent over a trillion upwards to the capitalists via the CARES Act during the pandemic. He allowed no obstruction from Republicans in these cases, even when a good portion of them disagreed with him sending such a vast amount of funds to Ukraine with no congressional scrutiny. Why didn’t he allow the Republicans to obstruct him that time?
We are sick of the lies and broken promises; the continual hoarding of our ultra-abundant resources by the capitalist class; of a price tag being placed on virtually any damn thing imaginable; and tired of constant wars and largess to the rich while the workers who actually do the useful labor are expected to contend with less and less. We are sick of constantly being told that we are asking for “too much” while we see the capitalist class regularly being given far more than they can actually ever possibly use for themselves.
It is no longer enough to make decrees to fight white supremacy; or appointing a handful of female, LGBT, or PoC to high offices where they make the same decisions as the white hetero-males you loathe so much; or allowing these minorities the opportunity to operate drones dropping cluster bombs on foreign civilian populations. None of that “equity” nonsense that actually benefits very few of us in any substantive manner is cutting it anymore. Workers are tired of being divided by these manipulative games played and promoted by the Democrats while giving us nothing that helps us actually survive and live comfortably.
Fear-mongering with “lesser evilism” rhetoric is no longer working, so consider giving it up.
Trying to bamboozle and manipulate workers into supporting a war-mongering capitalist simply because they are not Trump is now becoming yet another game workers are tiring of. The Trump Derangement Syndrome that insists the Orange Guy is “basically Hitler” and that Biden is only a “milquetoast” authoritarian by comparison (to quote Cornel West) does not stand up to evidence… and workers en masse are beginning to notice.
How long did you think it would take large numbers of workers to notice that until the recent Hamas attack on Israel that prompted the Zionist psychopath Netanyahu to finally go all medieval on Gaza it was mostly Democrats who were getting people banned from social media (including here on Medium); or abusing the emotionally manipulative #MeToo movement against any man who went up against the system strongly enough (Russell Brand being a good recent example); and suspending Paypal or Stripe accounts of working class people around the globe who offended Democratic politicians (or their European and Canadian equivalents) badly enough?
And how long did you expect workers to ignore that it was under the watch of a Democratic administration that Roe vs. Wade got derailed? And that they didn’t do anything about it other than make a commitment to “hold their positions” and demand more money from workers into their campaign coffers?
Biden and Democrats gave us nothing substantive, either in terms of material benefits nor greater civil rights. Emotionally manipulative rhetoric about slapping down “Whitey” and pressuring corporations into putting Gay Pride & BLM flags on their buildings is not enough. We need to be given the ability to live well, not barely sustain an existence with the constant fear of losing everything.
Stop supporting horrible corporate candidates.
It should now be crystal clear that a politician simply being a Democrat is not going to convince workers — whether on the Left, or of any race or gender etc — to vote for them. As I noted above, more and more of us each year are getting sick of the broken promises and lies, while our own lives get worse in direct proportion to how much more wealthy and powerful the handful of capitalists are getting.
Never in any previous election have so many third party candidates gained traction. The “spoiler” myth rhetoric is in full swing on the liberal-controlled media as expected, but this time far fewer workers are listening to it.
Supporting these awful corporate shills is also the reason why desperate people are vulnerable to the words of Republican con artists and fake populists like Trump.
Identity Politics do not work over the long haul…
… because they do not make our lives easier in any real material sense. In fact, it makes our lives worse.
First off, only a handful of people belonging to marginalized groups will actually get the chance to acquire real power. The rest will be left to bitch and complain about how awful white male heterosexuals are on the predominantly liberal social media without having improved material conditions. And in the meantime, the result is increasing hatred, tension, and competition between the disparate demographics, which keep us divided against each other rather than united against the capitalist class and capitalism. Well, workers are now seeing that capitalists are benefiting from this no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation et al., while workers from all demographics are losing more and more each year.
Secondly, capitalists aren’t stupid, which is why the wealthiest among them are pushing identity politics upon corporations, including the entertainment industry and legacy media, via ESG and DEI score requirements to maintain access to much-needed lines of credit. Do you think your fellow workers were not eventually going to catch on to this game too? And see that identity politics comes from the heart of the capitalist source, in contrast to actually opposing the system?
As Jimmy Dore noted in the above-linked vid regarding the likes of Larry Fink and other 0.1 percenters who are pushing this agenda:
So, just keep in mind: these white guys are doing all this in lieu of actually helping you economically. So while they crush the world economically they’re doing it with lots more inclusion of gays, and blacks, and browns… they’re going to find diverse psychopaths to help…
This may make some workers who hate certain demographics within their class smile with sadistic delight, but it won’t pay the bills for most of you or give you a better material life unless you’re one of the lucky few.
Thirdly, liberals need to accept this too: the majority of PoC do not hate white people; the majority of women do not hate men; and the majority of LGBTs do not hate straight people. Most people from those traditionally marginalized demographics simply want to live in equality and peace with white male cis-heteros, not stomp them into the group or attempt to fight bigotry (both real but largely in the past and imagined) with bigotry of their own. Just as, contrary to what liberals seem to believe, the population of the U.S. and other Western nations are not comprised of 50% white supremacists.
This is why you’re seeing previously unthinkable things such as the founder of the BLM chapter in Rhode Island, Mark Fisher, telling Kim Iverson that he will vote for Trump in ’24 because of how badly the Biden/Harris administration has failed to give PoC in America a single damn thing of material benefit.
Is it good that Fisher has gone over to Trump instead of the Classical Left? Certainly not. Is it good that he sees capitalism as a means of “building wealth” for black people (or anyone else) in America? Hell no!
But the point is, horrible capitalist pundits who happen to be Democrats are going to do nothing for any demographic in the working class and workers across across all possible spectrums are beginning to see this with full clarity. The evidence is in that your support for Democrats is ill-founded and ill-fated, and we need to abandon supporting all capitalist politicians and instead take up the fight ourselves on our own behalf.
What is gradually becoming increasingly clear to the working class is that capitalism needs to go. That is not going to happen if we keep trusting capitalists to do for us. And workers of every political persuasion are beginning to see this. It’s time for the Left as a whole to stop supporting Democrats, identity politics, or any superficial wedge issues and shift to a united front for social ownership of all the material resources. Ending class divisions will cut off all forms of inequality at their very source.