15 November 2020
This article originally appeared on the Daily Kos website and was written by Susan Pashkoff.
Alas, the high of Biden’s victory over Trump in the general election did not last long. While definitely a victory and an important one at that, Biden needed to not only defeat Trump but to defeat Trumpism and that has not happened. Defeating Trump was necessary because Trump is a danger to American democracy. Moreover, Trump’s climate change denialism represented an existential threat to humanity. Add to this the fact that Trump is an international poster boy for a rising far right both expressed in political parties in governments and in the streets around the world. The international collaboration between the far right against liberal democracy and multi-culturalism (which is often referred to as Cultural Marxism by the far right) and the rising legitimacy of right-wing national populism in many countries across the world represents a danger to which a weak and fragmented left has a limited response. So while Trump as President will be gone in January; his legacy of nationalist right-wing populism using divide and rule remains a significant threat.
In essence, while Biden defeated Trump, he did not defeat Trumpism which is still largely intact with 73m voters supporting it. The problem with Trumpism among other things, is that it actually contained the normalisation of far-right (read as fascist) groups, open and ugly racism, misogyny, disablism and homophobia and transphobia. These things have always existed in the US and (with exception of misogyny) the extreme versions of this hate had been marginalised for a period of time and now those people holding these positions have been mainstreamed and normalised. Biden needed to defeat both Trump and Trumpism; that would have meant that he won by a wide margin rather than winning a squeaker of an election.
Watching the news reports and discussions coming out of the US since the election there is one word that keeps on repeating itself in my mind: denial. It began with the ridiculous comment by Rick Santorum that “Trump has defeated socialism” which was answered by another person on the same panel, “No, Biden has defeated socialism!” Santorum then argued an additional point which in his mind was an important corollary to this argument; with socialism dead in the water, and the GOP holding the Senate, they could take back the House and the Presidency.
My only thoughts in response were who knew that we were so close to achieving socialism? Just think, if we only knew this, we could have demanded the seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange. The bizarre nature of this discussion is belied clearly by the reality of the situation. While it feels as though we have fallen down the rabbit hole to land in 1950s America, reality is far more disconcerting … the consolidation and normalisation of the far right is evident and the Dems simply refuse to acknowledge what this means. Moreover, the acceptance and adoption of Republican themes of red-baiting by the Democratic Party leadership bodes ill and will enable the consolidation of the far-right while they tilt at the red windmill of socialism.
So while all eyes turn to the run-off elections for both Georgia Senate seats and massive amounts of money are being poured into the state from both Republicans and Democrats, the second battle of the election has started. For some reason beyond my ability to understand, Entrepreneur (and former Dem Presidential Candidate) Andrew Yang has nominated himself to lead the battle and this has been allowed by the Dems rather than telling him to stay home and leave things in the hands of Georgia Dems, Black Americans and black grassroots organisations whose excellent work registering Blacks and getting out the vote led to Biden’s victory in Georgia.
These Senate seat run-offs will be difficult and there is no guarantee that what worked in the Presidential race can work in these Senate runoff elections. It is not only a matter of getting Black Georgians out to vote; these runoffs are both now a straight race between the Dems and Republicans with no distraction of the Libertarian Party to potentially drain votes from the Republicans as in the Presidential election there. Now there is no guarantee that Libertarian voters will come out to vote for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as real Libertarian Party voters dislike the state and may not be thrilled with right-wing Republicans; but there is no guarantee that they won’t. If they do come out to vote for the Republican candidates then the Dems will lose.
The electorate in Georgia is complicated. So while demographic changes and an amazing GOTV campaign worked to enable Biden’s victory, outside of the major cities and their suburbs (especially Atlanta) the Georgia electorate is composed of large numbers of white people whose politics resemble the old South more than the modern sunbelt; racism is used successfully to divide and rule the population for generations (a perfect example is look at the election in the 14th Congressional District of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene to the House of Representatives). Already Kelly Loeffler’s election advertisements are talking about Raphael Warnock’s supposed trafficking with dictators (Fidel Castro) and working with evil socialists and looters (BLM); she has even accused Warnock of having a Marxist ideology. If you were hoping that this red-baiting nonsense was going to disappear, our hopes have been dashed.
Denial: The Right is a Danger
The reality is obvious, while Biden and the Dems have taken the Presidency, over 73m people in the US voted for Trump. Moreover, the Senate remains currently in the hands of the Republicans and that means that it remains under the control of McConnell who has already indicated that he will move to block not only legislation but also those cabinet appointments that must be approved by the Senate. What we are looking at is a repeat of the last years of President Obama’s rule rather than the possibility of the introduction of legislation relating to Biden’s Greenish New Deal and introducing a public option to the ACA (aka Obamacare) and addressing systemic racism in the US. Moreover, Biden’s ability to actually rebuild the American economy using his New Deal following the economic crisis and using science to actually address the Coronavirus pandemic will be severely constrained. While some disastrous executive orders of Trump can be overturned by Biden through executive order, the reality is that anything requiring appropriation of funds must go through the legislature.
Yet instead of discussing this obvious reality, we get the Dems arguing over …”the danger of socialism.”
While the leadership of both parties fixated (we can call it babbled to be more accurate) on the non-existent dangers of socialism, they are missing the obvious fact that the far right has consolidated behind Trump and his attempt at normalisation and mainstreaming the far right has been successful. The denial of that reality by the Dems is significant and while they sit there literally repeating right-wing Republican themes about the dangers of socialism, what is also evident is they are still wedded to their electoral strategy of uniting the centre-right in the Dems with the anti-Trump right of the Republican party.
Even worse, the Democratic leadership’s strategy for election victory seems to be turning into an agreed perspective of actual rule in the next 4 years. Rather than concentrate on negotiating within the broad tent of the Democratic Party to address the Pandemic and rebuild the American economy, they have repeatedly maintained the centre-right/right-wing alliance established to defeat Trump and appear to be trying to keep the progressives and the left in the Democratic Party marginalised.
While this strategy may have won them the Presidency, it is questionable how strongly it has impacted the electorate. One major point that they seemed to have missed (and this is evident from the 73m voters for Trump) is that while they were able to recruit anti-Trump Republicans to supporting Biden, the majority of white working class Trump supporters have remained uninterested. Biden ran his election campaign on dealing with the impact of the Pandemic, an argument of unite America and empathy. Alas, that does not sell with the large numbers of voters that still support Trump. Biden’s coalition did not win everyone over to his side – an obvious mistake that they made is that this did not speak to the Trump base which has bought into the hate, divide and rule and the desperation to be one rung on the ladder above Blacks and Latinx people … they really don’t care that some rich Republican supports Biden; so how much headway this argument made with Trump’s white working class base is debateable.
In all honesty, why would they care what some rich people think about Biden? The impact of neoliberalism on their lives means that they see these people as opposing the man who is on their side. Instead they believe that Trump expresses their perspective of reality and American’s role in the world. Biden may have won back Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and partially rebuilt the “blue wall” (Ohio voted for Trump), but he did not defeat Trumpism. Ridiculously, while the Dem party leadership have been fighting over the dangers of socialism, they ignored the largest elephant in the room, the 73m voters support for Trump. Biden talks about being the President of everyone, but the reality is that they do not want him as their President. Moreover, Biden is trying to reassure America that the centre-right will hold the reins of government as though this will be a balm for the extremely divided nature of American political discourse. Meanwhile, leaders of the Republicans with eyes on the future (and the recognition that Trump will not be going gentle into that good night) and the reality of the massive support for Trump have actually egged on Trump’s intransigence to admit that he has lost despite lawsuit after lawsuit being thrown out of the courts.
The attack on American Democracy
As Trump continues to undermine basic principles of American electoral processes admitting for the first time today that he may have lost the election, he continues his theme that the election was rigged, that is, Biden won because of election fraud. Of course there is no evidence for this claim; in fact, voter suppression has recently been more along the lines of the Republican Party policy, but that is not important. The goal is to delegitimise US democracy and encourage further division for the purposes of strengthening the hard right.
Looking at Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham’s bizarre support of Trump’s denial of reality, one needs to ask the question, what are they up to? They know that Trump has not, and cannot, win this battle. But Trump has a base far greater than they and everyone else imagined: 73m voters supported him irrespective of his gross mismanagement of the Coronavirus Pandemic and the collapse of the US economy. There is little doubt in my mind, that in the absence of the Pandemic, Trump would have easily won a second term. So, irrespective of not winning a second term, Trump will still hold quite a bit of power in the Republican Party. So if he keeps his options open, he can consider running in 2024 (which will undermine other Republican candidates coming forward) or he can anoint someone to carry the battle for him; either way, given the craven nature of the politicians of the Republican Party kowtowing to Trump will be the norm for the foreseeable future as they want to keep all those juicy Trump supporting voters with them. So if you were hoping for a chastened group of Republicans in the legislature, guess again.
Moreover, just in case you thought that all this was only about a vote and passive support of an authoritarian (or proto-fascist or fascist) Donald Trump, protests by Trump supporters throughout the period of vote counting and yesterday’s “Million MAGA March” demonstration in Washington DC; the cheers for Trump erupted as his motorcade passed by the protest. This protest was supposed to remind us of Trump’s popular support; what it should have done is remind us of Trump’s successful normalisation of the far-right in American politics. Unlike the astroturf Tea Party movement (and while we recognise that these protests are the brain-child of Roger Stone resurrecting his 2016 “Stop the Steal” campaign), these protests look like they are reflecting an unrestrained far right that is capable of mobilising people. Whether they actually are astroturfing and will collapse or instead actually have sticking power and will continue the consolidation of the right remains to be seen, but denying the danger that exists is not only stupid, it is dangerous.
The Far-Right cannot be defeated by the Centre
The delusion that the centre can contain the far-right is simply a delusion. Anyone with a basic knowledge of history can remember the last time the centre had a fantasy of containing a demagogue. The centre cannot contain the far-right because the centre itself does not have either the ideological strength or willingness to recognise that these are not just political opponents but rather the enemy.
There is not just a difference of opinion within the mainstream of bourgeois democratic parties. Instead these are people who support an authoritarian to impose their beliefs on everyone else. These are people that oppose in principle the idea of a collective humanity; if you think that those that oppose civil liberties due to their white supremacism and racism, who support police violence and brutality to maintain the status quo of white supremacy and the oppression of people of colour, who utilise voter suppression to continue to undermine American democracy, that deny women their rights of bodily autonomy, whose ideology requires the denial of science, and who believe that American individualism and exceptionalism means that the US has the inalienable right to destroy the planet continuing the existential threat to humanity because they do not believe in science and who are opposed to even regulating the economic system slightly to ensure that the majority have basic needs covered are mere opponents rather than an enemy, you need to look closer. The problem is not only the right-wing Republican party, the problem is far broader and includes large numbers of the American population who will not disappear because the Dems are appealing to the principle of unity and democracy.
Denial: Redbaiting Modern American Style
Throughout Trump’s Presidency and the Presidential Election campaign, we have seen the use of red-baiting to undermine the Dems, Black Lives Matter, and as a general argument to address any opposition to Trump’s actions and plans. The constant refrain of the dangers of BLM, Marxists and Anarchists and Antifa were one of the constants since the murder of George Floyd. While Biden claims that it was Trump’s response to the events of Charlottesville that led him to enter the Democratic primaries for President, he has offered little to stem the tide of the rise and consolidation of the right in the US.
We see the arguments against the dangers of socialism used against the Dems in several points advanced by Trump. Some of these relate to the debates around healthcare policy in the US; other times, there is the accusation that Biden is under the control of the socialist left of the Democratic Party evidenced by the fact that he is not a climate change denier. How many people remember Trump’s rather loud aside of “you just lost the left” during the first Presidential Debate when Biden said he did not support the progressive proposed Green New Deal and instead had his own version of a New Deal? The idea that Biden is under the control of the left because he needs their votes and their grassroots organising to win the election appeared in many of Trump’s speeches. The third form of red-baiting that has occurred relates to the linkage of Trump’s racism with his use of red-baiting that was aimed at Migrants and Refugees, Black Americans and his use of traditional themes of antisemitism.
The use of Redbaiting and the Marginalisation of the Left
These use of red-baiting arguments by Trump and other Republicans continued irrespective of the fact that the Dems electoral strategy of a centre right and right anti-Trump alliance was clear. The left was marginalised throughout the election; the Dems were quite happy to have the left doing grassroots organising and GOTV work. However, apart from a short speech by Bernie Sanders and AOC’s 30 second nomination of Sanders to the convention, they were not seen throughout the Democratic Party convention which featured large numbers of Republicans.
Moreover, neither progressives nor the Dem left were seen representing Biden in the national election campaign; they were confined to local areas where they had support and not on the national stage; that meant that left Dems (progressives and the left) and the left outside the party were marginalised. Chief among these people were Bernie Sanders and the Justice Democrats, but also Progressives like Julien Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Raul Grijalva, etc. Surely, the fact that there are now 9 Justice Democrats in the House of Representatives as opposed to the original 4 should not be a sign that socialism is taking over the Democratic Party. The fact that the left of the Dem Party worked hard to ensure Biden’s election and also kept their criticisms of Biden’s approach and political position quiet throughout the election campaign has not stopped the accusations of the dangerous upcoming seizure of power by hidden socialists that were “controlling Biden.”
The Dem leadership is now blaming the left of the party for the loss of 5 seats in the House of Representatives. By running the election on a centre-right and right-wing anti-Trump alliance, they marginalised the young and those that are grassroots activists. Convincing the Dem leadership that the left in the party actually played an important role in the election and represent a lot of people is not going to be an easy fight as the Dem mainstream does not like the hard left any more than the right does. Moreover, treating the progressives and the Dem left as a hard left actually is doing the work of the right for them. Already discussions around demands of the Dem Left and Progressives are being rejected including stacking the SCOTUS, limiting the power of the SCOTUS, single payer healthcare (Biden doesn’t support it), eliminating the Electoral College (that will require a Constitutional Amendment) and a more extensive Green New Deal (which unlike Biden rejects Fracking and wants a stronger shift towards sustainable energy and away from fossil fuels).
One major issue that Biden will have to address is the impact of systemic and structural racism in the US. While Biden came out strongly against defunding the police (along with much of the Democratic Party leadership), this is an issue that will not go away and has formed part of Trump’s arsenal against the Dems and the left inside and outside of the Democratic Party. While the Dems have tried to water down the demand “defund the police” to address long overdue police reforms rather than a call for the transformation of the criminal justice system and the end of the criminalisation of poverty, they cannot escape the reality of the situation of social, political and economic injustice in which American Blacks live in the US. This may require a lot more than simple police reforms to address. Despite all their hard work to register people and get out the vote, Black Lives Matter and M4BL are a problem for Biden.
The 1994 Crime Bill which has led to the massive incarceration of Black men and the criminalisation of poverty in the US along with the militarisation of police needs to be eliminated. But the Dems in Congress can only really affect general federal policing policy; the states determine a lot of laws relating to criminal justice and policing. The Federal government can restrict the sale of military goods to police but unless they are willing to actually transform the criminal justice system itself, then all that is being offered are reforms that should have been done decades ago. Additionally less radical groups in the American Black community like the NAACP and Urban League oppose the idea of defunding the police and think that the reforms on offer from the Dems drafted in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks (among many others) are what is needed currently. But even the passage of reforms in the Congress presupposes that legislation can get past the Senate and that is not probable if the Republicans win in the Georgia Senate run-offs this January. Passing any reforms that are significant in this situation to address the problems of systemic and institutional racism in the justice system in the US (as well as in American society as a whole) may just not be possible with make-up of the Senate and in this case Biden’s tradition of reaching across the aisle may be a problem.
Healthcare Debates and Red-Baiting
The use of red-baiting specifically appears in Republican opposition to the ACA (aka Obamacare) and in discussions of healthcare policy. Sometimes it is casual and appears in discussions of the need for devolving healthcare using the posturing of States Rights argumentation where it is implied that any federal role in healthcare is socialism or potentially socialist. Think of Lindsay Graham’s opening statement at the Senate Judiciary Hearings for Amy Coney Barratt where he insisted that what is needed is South Carolina care rather than Obamacare. This is subtle, but is an important underlying subtext appearing in every state’s rights argument advanced by the right in the US. Students of American history know this argument which has been in use for much of America’s history, but it has now been imbued with the dangers of socialism by people that oppose in general the use of the power of the Federal government and have worked very hard to dismantle this power by undermining Federal regulations as guidelines as a threat to the power of various US states.
Then there is the less subtle argument relating to Single Payer healthcare or Medicare for All. Irrespective of the increasing support for Medicare for All which would guarantee healthcare for all Americans, the Republicans oppose “Medicare for All” as socialism coming to take over the country and as a threat to the glory of American capitalism. Notwithstanding the absurdity of this argument as the overwhelming majority of countries in the world have some form of socialised medicine (and these countries are by no means socialist and many have a private system existing alongside of the state healthcare system), it is evident that the health of the population is far less relevant than the defeat of a non-existent ideological enemy. The reasons for both Republican and the majority of Democratic party opposition has nothing to do with the dangers of socialism and everything to do with propping up a private health insurance system that is extremely expensive (both in terms of what is available and its costs to consumers) and doesn’t cover the needs of the population for healthcare. Removing control of healthcare from the health insurance industry and big Pharma and from eligibility granted through employment will enable healthcare coverage for the population.
Republican opposition to the ACA and the refusal of many Republican controlled states to allow a Medicaid expansion has prevented access to healthcare for many. The ACA itself was an attempt to provide an alternative system of healthcare but never went far enough to ensure that all Americans could afford health insurance; the public option was not even put on the table and Single Payer was not even allowed in political discussions. In many ways, the Republican accusation that the Dems are trying to bring socialism to this country would be humorous if not for the fact that so many in the US do not have access to healthcare and that there is a world pandemic happening. Trump’s accusation that Biden clearly was under the control of socialists due to his support of Medicare for All would also be humorous except for the fact that it is a lie. Biden has never supported Single Payer; he supports creating a public option as part of Obamacare which would offer an alternative package to those offered by health insurance providers. It is not enough to cover all Americans and it leaves healthcare in the hands of the health insurance industry. But to be red-baited for offering this reform to the ACA has created an argument that has resonated with people in the US.
Divide and Rule and Red-Baiting
There are three aspects of Trump’s ideology that have been used very often during his Presidency that have led to both the normalisation of far right ideology and his use of divide and rule politics that have led to the consolidation of the right in the Republican party and outside the Party in a section of the American electorate. The utilisation of divide and rule as a political tool in Trump’s arsenal comes down to three general points relating to the use of racism against immigrants and refugees, the use of Anti-Black racism and the use of Antisemitism linked to Judeo-Bolshevist and other antisemitic conspiracy theories. These three points are interwoven in Trump’s politics closely.
Xenophobic racism is a favourite for the right and Trump is no exception; attacks against migrants and refugees can be seen even before his 2016 campaign in his championing the birther myth against President Obama and in his 2016 campaign demand for a wall (paid for by Mexico) on the US-Mexican border. But the intensity of this campaign pledge increased substantially culminating in attempts to change laws relating to rights of refugees, the incarceration of refugees and migrants and the separation of families at the border. The creation of concentration camps and the seizure of children from their families is not only a violation of US law but international humanitarian law. The attempts to punish cities that have chosen to be designated as sanctuaries for migrants were a constant weapon in his arsenal. Then of course, there was the Muslim ban and the attempt to prevent Muslims not only migrating but actually simply visiting the US; harassment of Muslim American and the denial of their actually being Americans (as though all Americans are white and Christian) was already evident in Trump’s birtherism against President Obama and continued throughout his Presidency; just recently he attacked Representative Ilhan Omar as not being an American at a campaign stop in Minnesota.
Then there is Trump’s antisemitism and its resonance with far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories; what is fascinating about this is that we once again see the combination of antisemitism with support for the state of Israel that is far more common among Christian Zionism in the US among fundamentalist Christians where Jews are needed to be in the Holy Land to fight in the battle of Armageddon to earn redemption for not accepting Christ as the messiah.
We see a combination of antisemitic themes here. On the one hand there are the Judeo-Bolshevism arguments; this is an old antisemitic theme where Jews are seen as behind all Marxism and Anarchism (and in the modern discussion Antifa) and as such represent a threat to the countries in which they live. This argument was a favourite of Hitler and the old fascists. In this argument Jews are viewed to be the leftist presence within the county who are internationalist and trying to overthrow the system in favour of Communism or Socialism. Jews are viewed to be a group of people that refuse to assimilate in the culture where they live (in this case the US) – they are considered to be not loyal and untrustworthy. Moreover, this applies to not only the hard left, look at his comments on George Soros who he views as a commie stooge rather than the liberal that he is — Soros is the new Rothschild and it is not only Trump that hates him; he is on Viktor Orbán’s (the Hungarian Prime Minister) hate list as well who ran his last political campaign based on antisemitism around Soros. A variant on this theme was used by Joseph Stalin who described Jews in the USSR as “rootless cosmopolitans” arguing that they have little or no loyalty to the countries in which they reside. For the right, this Judeo-
Bolshevism is then linked to an additional antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Jews own the banks and control all the media. So not only are Jews trying to bring about world communism, they also control finance capitalism and the world’s media (it seems that they have never heard of Rupert Murdoch for example) by which they spread their hate of capitalism while they actually run capitalism. Racist conspiracy theories do not have to be consistent or even make sense unfortunately.
Trump’s repeated comments that Jews are only concerned about money and as such they must support him due to his wonderful economic policies and his complaints that the “Jews are ungrateful, look what he did for Israel” are yet just more antisemitism. In describing Netanyahu as “your Prime Minister” to an audience of Jews, he is saying they are not really Americans as if Israel were their home instead of the US. Moreover, these positions imply that Jews are a homogenous monolithic group of people which is antisemitic as it denies that Jews have different political and religious beliefs and come from different class backgrounds just like everyone else. This is antisemitism, blatant and unapologetic.
Then, of course, and probably most important due to the number of people impacted by it, there is Trump’s anti-Black racism which forms a core of his arguments and has been employed routinely in his speeches. He denies systemic racism and institutional racism in American capitalism defending the criminalisation of poverty that characterises the American criminal justice system. Racism and marginalisation are not the causes of poverty in Trump’s mind, there is not a lack of social, political and economic justice in the system; rather it is the actions of individuals that are the reason for Black poverty, income and wealth inequality and for the marginalisation of Black Americans socially, economically and politically. This is a classic blame the victim ideology employed by the ruling class to shift responsibility away from the system and onto the victims. Trump, of course, uses white supremacy and racism and actually tried to create a white backlash to win the election using the protests of BLM and their demand for defunding the police by using the familiar racist themes of defending the actions of police brutality and violence because “Blacks are looters and violent” and therefore a threat to America rather than a threat to American racism.
Trump’s anti-Black racism has also been interwoven with his red-baiting. Trump has been arguing that BLM and Movement for Black Lives were not expressions of Black political positions or under control of black people, but rather these movements were being manipulated by Marxists, Anarchists and Antifa. Not only is this racist in that he is denying that an autonomous black movement was controlled by (or dupes of) the hard left but he is also trying to extend the argument that these cannot be Black-led movements due to the fact that they had wide support among white Americans because in his mind, white Americans cannot possibly support a Black-led movement and even more so that this Black movement was corrupted by Marxism and other left ideologies due to the demands for serious transformation of the criminal justice system and its challenge to white supremacy and demands for social, economic and political justice.
Trump’s cynicism was on full display during these elections. He used the “demand defund the police” against Biden and Democratic candidates. Moreover, the 1994 Crime Bill drafted by Biden for the Senate was used by Trump during the election arguing that he has done more for Blacks in his term in office than anyone but Abraham Lincoln. But while Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party and stayed with the Dems, it has been reported that some small numbers of Black men wavered and the problem is with such a close election that could affect the vote results which were close in different states. Biden’s admission that the 1994 Crime Bill is a problem is clearly not sufficient due to the impact that it has had on the lives of Black Americans and their communities. This is not a small problem for Biden and the Democrats in the Congress to address as their ability to pass legislation and any room for negotiation will be under the control of the Republicans if the Senate stays in the hands of the Republicans.
Some thoughts …
While red-baiting and the fears of socialism have long been a part of US politics, it has been a while that it has been used so extensively in an election. The threats of indoctrination of children and reds under the bed have been utilised extensively by Trump. I certainly would not expect the Dems to stand up to the Republicans on red-baiting; after all they are not fans of socialists or socialism. Moreover, the last thing that they want to have to deal with in the middle of a crisis of democracy and a capitalist economic crisis is a group of democratic socialist entryists in their party that actually have support and have helped out during the election. However, their willingness to use red-baiting themselves and continue the marginalisation of Progressives and the left in the Democratic Party neither solves the problem of a consolidated right in the US nor addresses the problem of motivating young people to join, support and participate in the Democratic Party. Moreover, by marginalising and watering down progressive policies the question arises will these revised polices actually do the job? It is not as though an existential environmental crisis will disappear even if drastic action towards a Green Capitalism will go be undertaken.
Please accept my profuse apologies for the length of this piece!
Susan Pashkoff is an economist and political activist, and is the chair of East London Unite Community. As a writer and blogger Susan concentrates on Economics, Politics and Socialist Feminism. Susan is a supporter of Anti*Capitalist Resistance and Socialist Resistance.