The countdown to the US presidential elections is underway, marked by extreme political and social polarisation. After the attempted assassination attempt against Donald Trump, which has reinforced the ultra-right-wing fanaticism of his faithful, and the withdrawal of a Biden who has become a political corpse, the propaganda machine to promote the new Democratic candidate is in full swing.
But Kamala Harris cannot disguise the interests she really defends: in her first public interview with CNN, she reaffirmed her unwavering commitment to the Zionist regime in Israel, which she will continue to arm and support in its butchery against the Palestinian people. He has also made very clear his support for the concept of ‘a secure border’, which is why he will continue with Biden's racist immigration policies, which in fact have represented a nauseating follow-through of Trump's discourse.
Extreme polarisation in a declining empire
Trump could return to the White House. It is incredible, after so many analyses and premonitions about his political liquidation after the assault on the Capitol in January 2021. The New York tycoon has also imposed his complete domination on the Republican Party. It is quite clear that his impunity is guaranteed thanks to the broad sympathy he enjoys among decisive sectors of the state apparatus and the judiciary, and that his support among broad sectors of the middle and working classes, demoralised and completely enraged with the establishment, has not stopped growing after four years of disaster for the Democratic Administration.
Biden and his collaborators, and all those on the left of the party grouped in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who have been cheering his policies, can see how the legacy of frustration and anger they have left behind cannot be hidden by propaganda and clever slogans.
The Democrats, led by Biden and Harris, have not fulfilled a single one of their star promises, such as cancelling student debt, improving union rights or ending racism and police brutality. Of course, they have been unable to protect the already won rights of women or the LGTBI community, which have suffered a strong setback under the fire of a Trumpist Supreme Court before which they have shown complete impotence.
Biden has governed for Wall Street, lining the pockets of big banking, technology corporations and the most predatory investment funds, and has embarked on a savage immigration agenda that has led to a record 750,000 deportations this year.
Of course, the Democratic administration has not disappointed on foreign policy either, and Biden can retire with the wretched honour of having started an imperialist war in Ukraine and backed a savage genocide in Gaza against a defenceless people. And all to boost the stratospheric profits of the US arms industry and bolster the West's militaristic escalation to unprecedented levels. All this has not stopped the US from continuing its descent into hell and losing out to China in the struggle for global supremacy.
With this record, and despite the very real threat posed by the return of Donald Trump, a new Democratic victory is in the offing.
The vast majority of the US capitalist media are trying to propagate that the Democrats' main problem has been Joe Biden's senility and that, once this “detail” is fixed, everything is now ready for the country to have a president who will guarantee social stability.
But the reality behind this polarisation and the rise of the Trumpist extreme right is the deepening crisis of US capitalism. The more than 150 billion dollars destined for Zelenski's reactionary regime, the 30 billion in support for Netanyahu's genocidal Zionism, or the half a trillion dollars that in four years the big Wall Street firms and the military industry have received in subsidies and tax breaks, contrast with an inflation that eats away at wages, with unstoppable social inequality and the impoverishment of broad sectors of the working class and the middle strata.
It is this reality that fuels Trumpism. Sectors of the middle strata and petty bourgeoisie terrified of a future without privilege, or sectors of the backward white working class hit by deindustrialisation and endemic precariousness, cling desperately to an American dream that is already extinct. Trump's demagogy only encourages these sectors, appealing to wounded national pride, and blaming all ills on immigration, the feminist movement and the militant left that is constantly mobilising in the streets.
Kamala Harris, the deputy prime minister of the war government
Democratic collaboration with the genocide in Gaza has marked a turning point. The viciousness with which Biden and his administration, and numerous Democratic governors and mayors repressed tens of thousands of young people on college campuses across the country has mobilised the repudiation of broad sectors of their traditional electoral base.
Hence the massive propaganda campaign to boost Kamala Harris and mitigate the effects of this strong mobilisation against the Democratic administration. They try to present her as the great alternative against Trumpism, because she is a woman, because of her racial background or because of her image as a ‘vigilante prosecutor’ who pursues corruption and fights for freedom. But not even the most powerful advertising campaign is enough to hide her commitment to the American bourgeoisie, to the state apparatus, to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and to the most ultra Zionism.
This former senator and former attorney general of the State of California has never had a left-wing agenda or anything like it. She has supported with both hands the millionaire packages to finance the war in Ukraine at the expense of the already depleted social programmes in education and health. She has also increased the budget requested by Biden to shield the border with Mexico, advancing in the construction of the famous wall initiated by Trump, and has thrown herself into an immigration strategy that has meant rejecting 90% of asylum seekers and multiplying detention centres and border agents to criminalise them. In her first interview as a candidate, she has also pledged to continue fracking, despite its disastrous consequences for the environment.
Kamala Harris attends the annual meetings of AIPAC, the Zionist lobby that brings together Republican and Democratic millionaires, and so she did not shy away from making her position clear at the Democratic convention in Chicago: ‘Let me be clear on this. I will always defend Israel's right to defend itself and I will make sure that Israel has the ability to defend itself’.
These outrageous and cruel words got no rebuke from the Democratic ‘left’ of the DSA, from leaders like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who did address the convention but only to unwaveringly, uncritically support the new Democratic front-runner.
The Democrats have demonstrated in practice, in the eyes of millions, that they are no alternative to halt the advance of the extreme right-wing Trumpists, hence the major crisis they are going through, which could accelerate if they suffer an electoral defeat. More than half of the Democratic congressmen did not applaud or absented themselves from the congressional session attended by Netanyahu, trying to dissociate themselves, with empty gestures, from a genocidal policy worthy of the Third Reich.
The ruling class in the run-up to the elections
Part of the campaign to present Kamala Harris as the solution has consisted of a letter from Republican leaders in favour of her candidacy. A document that, supposedly, would prove that there is opposition to Trump within the Republican Party and that the tycoon is a loose, uncontrolled and uncontrollable figure with no solid support among the American ruling class.
A theory that hardly fits the facts. In reality the capitalist class is divided. It is true that powerful sections of the bourgeoisie prefer the Democrats to handle this delicate social and political situation, and rightly fear that a Trump administration will blow everything out of the water. But many other sectors see with desperation the loss of American influence abroad, the unstoppable advance of China, and know that they must squeeze the native and immigrant working class mercilessly, if they want to secure their profits and power. That is why Trump also attracts powerful, not marginal, support among US plutocrats. That Elon Musk or Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, are today some of his main supporters speaks volumes.
The sector that believes that a heavy hand must be applied to the working class to crush any hint of union militancy, and that the resources to win the war for hegemony come out of the public coffers, are betting heavily on Trump. Most importantly, the Republican leader has built up a mass base and has organised and mobilised it nationally. The assault on the Capitol was an excellent example of what this reactionary and rabid social powder keg is willing to do.
What alternative do we need in the face of Trump and in the face of war?
Polls in the pro-democratic bourgeois media, such as the daily El País, are hiding the fact that the race is still extremely tight. It will be decided in a handful of ‘key states’ that voted for Biden in 2020 but where Trump won in 2016. The difference between the candidates is, in many cases, less than one percentage point in several of these states.
What the polls do not measure is the difference between a fully mobilised and offensive far right and a left hamstrung by the policies of its leaders, often indistinguishable from those of the Republicans, and which contribute to demobilising its social base. What will happen to the thousands of young people and workers who have taken to the streets to denounce Genocide Joe for his support for Netanyahu? Will they vote for Kamala Harris?
There will be many workers who will vote for Kamala Harris out of sheer desperation and lack of alternatives in the face of Trump's advance, but let's be clear. There will be millions of young people, of African-Americans, of Arabs, of working men and women, of militant women who in 2020 made Biden's victory possible who this time will refuse to give their support to the blue party. There is a limit to everything.
The Democratic Party has already crossed so many red lines that the frustration generated is difficult to compensate for with advertising gestures and empty slogans. If for much of their history they have taken advantage of the absence of a working class party to rally the left vote, this scenario is changing. A large part of the youth and sectors of the working class have said enough is enough, as reflected in the large mobilisations against the Zionist genocide in Gaza. It is true that on the electoral terrain, the most unfavourable for the working class, this opposition may not yet be clearly reflected, but there is undoubtedly a transformation among large sections of the masses.
The space and potential for a revolutionary, class-based, working class organisation with socialist politics aimed at the heart of the system is more than ripe. If today the Democratic Party is using the authority of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or other DSA leaders to wash its face and to try to block the movement in the streets, it is because they won that authority by claiming the ideas of socialism, of public education, of working class power in action, that got millions excited. Today they have abandoned all those positions, surrendering body and soul to the ruling class and the Democratic bureaucracy, acting as a mere left-wing crutch for Biden or, now, Kamala Harris.
The electoral prospects are obviously complex and uncertain. Some polls show historic vote shares, especially among the under-30s, for alternative left-wing options, such as that of the Green Party and its candidate - Jill Stein - who has been very active in the fight against genocide. There is also uncertainty about abstention, historically very high, but which in 2020 was among the lowest since the founding of the US and decisively benefited Biden.
In any case, in the face of the threat of Trumpism and his increasingly far-right and reactionary discourse, questioning even the need for new elections in the future, there could be a new mobilisation of the popular vote not so much in favour of Harris, but against Trump.
If Trump wins this election it will not be the result of a lack of consciousness among the working class and youth, but a consequence of the disastrous role of the Democrats, unable to provide a coherent alternative to reaction. And in any case, that victory will only be the prelude to new and hard battles in the class struggle.
What is really crucial is what lies behind these elections and the underlying tendencies they mark. The youth have risen up strongly against racism, against machismo, against Zionist genocide, and a new trade union movement is challenging and wresting victories from giants like Google, Amazon, the automotive giants. A generation is rediscovering the revolutionary traditions of their class and learning from their experience.
They are the ones who will build the barricades to block the advance of the far right. In order for them to do so, we need to build that tool that will serve as our weapon in the struggle against the far right of the 21st century: the party of revolution, of socialism, of American workers against the dictatorship of capital.
