United States: The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election

First published at International Socialism Project.

What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets — and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.

But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline — underway for several years — has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.

For the last three years Party leaders have viciously attacked anyone who observed that President Joe Biden’s mental faculties appeared to be disintegrating (dismissing these critics as, among other things, “bedwetters”). As recently as last month, when the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” a chorus of Democratic lawmakers (including former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi) called it a “ hit piece” engineered by Republicans.

Party leaders’ about-face

The Party’s leaders had a sudden change of heart after Biden’s abysmal performance debating Donald Trump on June 27th. During some of Biden’s worst moments in the debate, the viewing audience held its collective breath while waiting to learn whether Biden would be able to finish a sentence or instead drift off into an unintelligible mumble. After the debate finished, First Lady Jill Biden famously told him, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question,” as if talking to a toddler as she guided him by the hand off the stage.

In the following weeks, the Party’s elites ripped each other apart as one after another Democrat (many of them lawmakers in competitive electoral races) began to publicly urge Biden to step down. Interestingly, “moderate” congressional Democrats became his loudest critics, but “progressives” stuck by him, voicing their support for Biden to continue his campaign. Bernie Sanders, along with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC), Ilhan Omar, members of the so-called “Squad,” lined up behind Biden — presumably to protect their future ambitions within the Party apparatus. Rep. Rashida Tlaib from Michigan member was one of the few progressive Democrats to refuse to endorse Biden — because of his unswerving support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Sanders knows what the DNC is capable of, since he was targeted for electoral destruction when his own pro-working class presidential campaign gained traction with voters during the 2020 primary season. After winning the popular vote in the Iowa caucus and then winning the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic Party apparatus pulled out all the stops to sideline Sanders’ campaign. By April of that year, he withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden.

For what it’s worth, AOC has backtracked so much on her support for Palestinians that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) withdrew its endorsement for her. Once a symbol of the DSA’s hopes to shift the Democratic Party to the left, AOC’s career trajectory has become a harsh reminder that those politicians expecting to shift the Democratic Party leftward from within soon find themselves moving to the right and conforming to Democratic policy.

None of the moderates, of course, raised a complaint about Biden’s role in Israel’s genocidal war. This wasn’t a surprise, since the Democrats have been unwavering supporters of Israeli apartheid throughout Israel’s history.

Party powerbrokers backed Biden despite his cognitive decline

The most powerful Democrats publicly stuck by Biden even as a majority of rank-and-file Democratic voters voiced their desire for him to step down, although some — such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer — more recently privately urged Biden to step aside. A mid-July AP/NORC poll showed 7 in 10 adults, including 65 percent of Democrats, wanted Biden to withdraw, with Trump consistently beating him in polling numbers.

But it appears that the turning point came when the party’s megadonors threatened to withhold further contributions to Biden’s campaign, and panic-stricken Party powerbrokers like Pelosi became more public in pressuring Biden to stand down. Top Hollywood fundraiser George Clooney published a full-page op-ed in the New York Times — although his only qualification on this matter is as a celebrity fundraiser for Democrats.

So, after propping him up for years, the Democrats dropped Biden like a hot potato. Even then, he refused to back down for weeks. He was defiant, even combative, toward his Party adversaries. But Party pressure ultimately prevailed over his enormous ego, and he finally stepped down as a candidate on July 21st.

Minutes after stepping down, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

From there, the transition was seamless. Within hours after Biden’s endorsement, Harris gained the support of nearly everyone in the Democratic Party establishment, from Pelosi to Bill and Hillary Clinton. By the following day, she had received enough Democratic delegate votes to qualify for the nomination in the first round of voting at next month’s Democratic National Convention. Hollywood donors, including Clooney, have also endorsed her en masse.

Although Harris’ nomination is not automatic, she is certainly the most likely nominee — even though she has never won a single primary — because she has the Party establishment’s backing. Within the first 24 hours, Harris garnered a record-breaking $81 million in donations to her campaign. As Harris walked on stage for her first presidential campaign appearance, she was accompanied by Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” — which had become an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

Without missing a beat, all the smoke and mirrors were in place, and the Party united behind Harris.

What does Harris stand for?

Some Democratic Party moderates have characterized Harris as “too far left.” Although Harris uses rhetoric that seems to be to the left of Biden, her own history shows otherwise.

Before being elected senator in 2017, Harris built her political career for two decades as a public prosecutor — first as district attorney in San Francisco and then as attorney general in California. Reuters described her record as mixing “criminal justice reform with a tough-on-crime approach.” If this seems contradictory, that is because Harris was contradictory.

While labeled a progressive, Harris was far from consistently so. For example, she opposed the death penalty, yet she also appealed a California court ruling that declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Likewise, she pioneered a program for first-time nonviolent offenders in San Francisco that offered job training and substance abuse treatment. But she also implemented a truancy policy, first in San Francisco and then statewide, that prosecuted the parents of children who were deemed to have missed too much school. Some overzealous authorities threw parents in jail under this policy, even though their children’s school attendance was out of their control. Harris called this one of the law’s “ unintended consequences.”

Harris’ rhetoric has tended to be more progressive than Biden’s, but Biden’s policies are very likely to be Harris’ policies in a future presidency because Harris has never strayed far from them — whatever language she has used.

For example, Harris has expressed more sympathy with Palestinians in recent months. But, as investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill recently reported on Drop Site News,

The truth is that, like most Democrats, Harris has supported Biden’s policies, even if she has raised tactical objections or expressed moral unease with the horrifying death toll. While Harris is not Biden—and does not have a half century of overwhelming support for Israel’s brutality and militarism fueling her positions—she does have her own record of hardline support for Israel, both as a senator and as vice president.

Soon after being elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris earned a reputation as an ardent defender of Israel. She spoke two years in a row at AIPAC conferences and co-sponsored legislation aimed at undermining a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian land. One of her first international trips as a senator was to Israel where she met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. “I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade,” Harris told an AIPAC conference that year. “I believe the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and we can never let anyone drive a wedge between us. … As long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.”

Harris is unapologetically pro-abortion, and unlike Biden, who says he’s “not big on abortion” she uses the word “abortion” in campaign speeches — which in itself is hardly radical. Harris, like Biden, thus far aims merely to “restore Roe” rather than fight for abortion on demand. But in the two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, Republicans have successfully obliterated the right to abortion in the many states with abortion bans and have set their sights on criminalizing contraception and even IVF, along with gender affirming care. There will be no easy path back to recover the basic reproductive rights that have been destroyed.

While circumstances can change, Harris should be expected to continue Democratic Party policies overall if elected — which is why Party leaders anointed her as Biden’s successor. The party’s plan is to work behind the scenes to ensure Harris is nominated at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Of course, it’s anyone’s guess whether the plan will unfold smoothly. House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened Republican lawsuits to force Biden’s name to go back on the ballot in individual states. While such a legal strategy will ultimately fail, it could cause plenty of chaos in the meantime.

It is also possible that a political fight will break out at the Democratic National Convention, and the Democrats’ plan for a smooth passing of the torch will go completely awry.

Either way, the recent turmoil inside the Party has exposed the inner workings of its apparatus — and the political insiders who pull the strings to ensure that members of its inner circle succeed while others fail. They will likely choose a moderate, perhaps from a swing state, as a running mate to “balance out” the ticket.

Expect Trump to run a racist, misogynist campaign (no surprise there)

Of course, the misogynous duo topping the Republican Party ballot guarantee the months ahead will be filled with sexist and racist mudslinging directed at Harris. Trump has already started letting loose at Harris, labeling her “ Dumb as a Rock” on social media.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance might be even more contemptuous of women — if that’s possible. In a 2022 Fox News interview with Tucker Carson, Vance stated,

We’re effectively run in this country — via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs — by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. It’s just a basic fact.

If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?

Vance has called for a national abortion ban, although recently “softened” his position to match Trump’s anti-Roe “let the states decide” position. Vance has also spoken out against divorce, arguing that women stuck in marriages that are “maybe even violent” should stay married for the sake of their children. He has further stated, “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace … making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”

But Trump picked Vance when he still expected Biden to be his opponent. This might prove to be a strategic miscalculation on his part now that Harris has replaced Biden. A clear majority of the population consistently supports abortion rights — a majority that has grown since Roe was overturned. Even in swing states (including Vance’s home state of Ohio) a Pew Research Center in May found that “a clear majority of residents in the top swing state support abortions.”

It is possible that Harris’ support for abortion rights will motivate Democratic Party turnout in November, as it did in 2022 — to the detriment of Republicans.

However, since the election outcome will be determined not by the popular vote but by voters in a handful of swing states, there is no reliable way to predict a winner. Expect another nail-biter on Election Day.