Image by Mangokeylime, used under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0
Buckle up—it’s happening again. Donald Trump will be president of the United States on January 20, 2025. The next four years will be a constant struggle, as we fight to retain the meager rights and supports we currently possess in this cutthroat society, with all three branches of national government stacked against us.
The Democratic Party has once again demonstrated that “Republican-lite” is an ineffective political project. Aside from the uninspiring, completely lackluster policies emanating from the “at least I’m not Donald Trump” camp, any argument as to electability or political advantage in contrast to authentic leftist policies can be soundly put to bed with the failed Harris campaign.
It’s worth asking: what does this political party stand for anymore? The vice president lurched to the far right on immigration, granting the Republicans completely unwarranted legitimacy as they fearmongered and made villains of migrants—documented and undocumented.
The party also completely dismissed the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. Insulting the intelligence of voters, Harris insisted she was working tirelessly for a ceasefire, while parroting the same American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)–supplied responses about Israel’s supposed right to institute ethnic cleansing, and the misinformation that would describe the beginning of this conflict as October 7, 2023—not its true origins, the founding of Israel in 1948. Harris and the Democrats shared complete lies about Gaza and the Palestinian people, and their minimization of the ongoing holocaust in the Middle East perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel was politically and ethically challenged.
Critically, Harris refused to address the economic realities facing poor and working-class people. Instead of taking on corporate greed, ever-increasing costs imposed by price gouging, and an economy structurally dependent on exploitation, she campaigned for an “opportunity economy” that exists only in the minds of the corporate elite. Her favored cryptocurrency incentives, small-business tax credits, and rhetoric were devoid of any meaningful direct support for poor and working people.
During the first two years of President Joe Biden’s tenure, when he presided over what many called a pseudo-European social safety net, including child tax credits and direct stimulus funds, economic conditions improved drastically. Child poverty was cut in half, and personal purchasing power grew above pre-pandemic levels. But those programs—all of them—were allowed to lapse. When they did, millions of Americans were burdened with previously unseen levels of financial hardship.
We all know that costs are up, annual take-home pay has been lower than the years preceding every single year since the Reagan administration. That must be addressed. The Republicans certainly won’t do it. But when Americans continually vote for the opposition party, they aren’t voting for either party, they’re voting against their worsening circumstances and whoever’s in charge at the moment—and really, who can blame them?
Clearly, the Democratic Party is broken. It is unprincipled, and it has no structural goals informing its policy: that must change. I think it has to start with the economy. A plurality of Americans just voted for someone who said he’d be a dictator, would deport millions of people, and has been found liable for sexual abuse, because he spoke about the economy. Harris ran along saying that things were OK—we all know they’re not.
Unlike the arrogant Democratic consultants and elites who led us into this second phase of the Trump disaster, I won’t blame the voters. Not when the institutions they are told to believe in continue to fail them. Instead, as the Left—as those who need to be leading the Democratic Party into the future—we need to completely overhaul these systems. The policies we favor, had Harris chosen to run on them, would have won her the election. We cannot allow another corporate-friendly Democrat to run, lose, and further endanger the public at the hands of the far-right, capitalist authoritarians who are preparing the march against our freedoms.
Imagine this in any other arena. If a restaurant blamed its one-star rating not on their failed health inspection, undercooked food, or high prices—instead blaming its customers—we would all recognize how insane that is. But in politics, it’s crazier—and it’s dangerous.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist and one of the most popular politicians in the country, summed up the Kamala Harris loss well: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
Bernie—like those of us on the left who’ve been sounding the alarm—is right. The Democratic Party must change. We need immediate support to do what little we can ahead of Trump’s ascension to office; and in the longer term, we need a bold political strategy to win back power and address the problems we face.
In the interim, President Biden can decide to recognize what we all know: the institutions themselves are broken. The norms and traditions he grew to respect as a senator and vice president for fifty-plus years are dead and gone. Trump has no respect for those relics, and honestly, there’s a good case to be made for some of them to go. Pedantic actions, like the Senate Parliamentarian’s objections to much of the Build Back Better legislation, kept us from securing historic economic progress. Biden heeded the recommendation of an unelected advisor, tanking the more ambitious domestic proposals from earlier in his presidency. But he didn’t have to. He doesn’t have to allow tradition and process to block progress now either.
Republicans don’t care about the conventions. In 2017, they amended the Senate filibuster rule to allow for Trump to appoint a record number of judges at breakneck speed. Democrats whined about the breakage of that norm, but those judges still took the bench. They have power—Democrats don’t. The party needs to get serious about using the tools available to it, rather than bemoaning Republicans for “shattering norms.” The norms and traditions that blocked Build Back Better didn’t help us. Do what’s necessary to create positive change—we know that the traditions and perceptions you seek to protect will be stomped on by the Republicans anyway.
Joe Biden must learn this lesson now. He just handed back control of the country to Trump. His political project of restoring his version of normalcy failed miserably. Now, in the waning moments we have before chaos, he must act. Cancel student debt. Cancel medical debt. When the Supreme Court butts in with its bogus, bought-and-paid-for pedantry that would block this substantive relief, ignore it.
The court just this year gave presidents immunity for official actions—effectively allowing them to act as monarchs. Instead of waxing poetically about the old set of rules, use what’s available now, in this lame-duck period. Do any of us believe Trump will, out of some principled belief in tradition and law, not abuse this new legal landscape to his advantage?
But Biden and the failed Democratic elite won’t do any such thing. Their 2024 iteration is completely incapable of meeting this moment. That’s why the longer-term project all of us must engage in has to begin in earnest, and it must start now.
That future has to be—finally—the one all of us on the socialist left envision: a Democratic Party that is responsive to the working class, goes after structural injustice, and is committed to public policy that is a material benefit to the vast majority, not the wealthy few.
We need a socialist alternative in our country. Things like public ownership, rent control, price controls, jobs guarantees, universal healthcare, and other kitchen-table issues that improve the conditions of our people are a winner—and they’re the right thing to do. The Democrats would be wise to adopt this vision. I’ll be doing everything I can to fight for that future during the dark times we’re facing. A better world truly is possible: let’s create it.
Grant Chassy is a lifelong Champaign-Urbana area resident. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Illinois State University. He serves as Communications Director for State Representative Carol Ammons and he is a former deputy Champaign County Clerk and Recorder. Opinions expressed are his own.
134 total views, 2 views today