Reflection on the Election

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik via AP News)

It's over—the election, the agonizing waiting period and the Trump presidency itself (minus the last couple of lame duck months). As of my writing, the Associated Press has projected that Biden will take 290 electoral votes, a number that may well still increase given his narrow lead in Georgia. Trump will go down in history as a one-termer, one of the hapless rejects in the list of American presidents along with guys like Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover and Martin van Buren.*  He has been branded a loser—the last thing in life he ever wanted to be. But if he can recover from that psychological wound, he will probably find his post-presidency far more fun than any but the best days of his presidency: none of the responsibility, but with the same massive following he's had since he started running in 2015. We will not see the last of Donald Trump when he leaves (or is dragged from) the White House next January.

Or of "Trumpism," for that matter, to whatever extent such a thing can be separated from conservatism as it's existed for the past few decades. If exit polls are to be believed, Republican voters' support for Trump may well have increased in 2020 compared to 2016. This should come as no surprise: Gallup's most recent survey on the matter found near-unanimous approval for Trump among Republicans. While Trump himself may have outlived his usefulness to the GOP—at least in the role of president—we're certainly not about to see them repudiate the soon-to-be-former standard-bearer or his legacy.

Nor did we quite see the nation repudiate the Republican Party. The widespread glee at getting rid of Trump is understandable, but the results of this election are nothing to feel triumphant over—whether you're a committed socialist or just a liberal hoping for the Democratic Party's long-term success. Regardless of how the remaining states are called, Biden's victory in the Electoral College will be the narrowest of any Democrat since Jimmy Carter. In 2016, Trump managed to flip three until-then-reliably Democratic states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden managed to flip all three back, but with nearly all of the vote counted, his leads in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania stand at less than one percent and his lead in Michigan is less than three percent; in 2012 Obama carried the three states handily, by margins of better than five percent in each. Possible victories in Arizona** and Georgia—states no Democrat had carried since the '90s—may provide something of a bright spot for Biden, but on the other hand (former?) swing states like Ohio and Florida (both of which Obama won twice) remained safely in the Republican column. All of this becomes even more alarming when one considers who Biden was running against: a consistently unpopular incumbent presiding over massive unemployment, who has completely failed to adequately handle a pandemic as it killed hundreds of thousands of Americans this year. If the pandemic and ensuing economic disruption hadn't come along, it's hard to see how Biden could have won at all. 

Down ballot, the results look even uglier for the Democrats. While they were widely expected to take control of the Senate, it now looks likely that they'll need to win two runoff races in Georgia to even achieve a 50-50 split (with new VP Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote offering them an effective majority). It had also seemed probable that the Democrats would expand their majority in the House, but instead it was the GOP that found itself making unexpected gains.

Things get still more dismaying when we break the results down by demographic. As Osita Nwavenu writes for the The New Republic, "Democrats have seen a shocking amount of erosion among Latino voters, as well as potential gains for Republicans among Black voters, although a final verdict on the latter shouldn’t be rendered before we’ve had a look at postelection surveys that are traditionally more reliable than exit polls." In Texas, Trump increased his share of the vote in the counties that were the least white and most Hispanic. In Starr County for instance, where 96.4% of the residents are Latino or Hispanic, Biden won by just five percent, compared to Hillary Clinton's massive 60% margin of victory four years ago. 

Democrats and Democratic Party loyalists have responded to this underwhelming result in predictable fashion. MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson proposes that "just maybe about half of America actually wants a racist incompetent proto dictator" and that leftists won't admit this because it "would mean acknowledging race over phony economic theory[.]" Even if this is true, it raises some pretty major questions about how we got to that point. One of the biggest landslides in American history came in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson, who had just pushed major civil rights legislation through Congress, defeated Barry Goldwater, who had voted against that same legislation. How did we go from an era when an election like that was possible to one in which a "racist incompetent proto dictator" is (supposedly) guaranteed almost half of the vote? And how was Barack Obama able to score a considerably more impressive victory than Joe Biden if racism is the dominant factor in all of this? 

When not indulging in this sort of fatalism—that no better result was really possible, because of America itself—Democrats and their allies have been eager to lay blame in all of the wrong places. Former Senator Claire McCaskill, who continues to get air time on MSNBC despite being a literal loser with no conceivable credibility on issues like these, seemed to blame excessive focus on cultural issues like abortion and "rights for transsexuals" for the Democrats' losses. Biden surrogate and former (Republican) governor John Kasich wasted no time in blaming the "far-left" for "almost cost[ing Biden] this election." In a three hour-long conference call this past Thursday, centrist House Democrats "blast[ed] their liberal colleagues...for pushing far-left views that cost the party seats," according to The Washington Post, with Representative Abigail Spanberger reportedly arguing that "We need to not ever use the word 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again...We lost good members because of that." This sentiment was echoed by Minority Whip James Clyburn, who warned that if "we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine, we're not going to win," apropos the upcoming Georgia runoffs. All this when a Fox News exit poll showed 70% of voters favor "[c]hanging the health care system so that any American can buy into a government-run health care plan" and Florida voters approved a $15 minimum wage by a 60% supermajority even as Biden failed to carry the state. 

So what's the correct takeaway from all of this? That Bernie (or someone else) would have won by more? Who knows—but it's hard not to note how stupid the arguments against nominating him (He could never win Florida! He'd be a disaster for Democrats in down-ballot races!) look after this. And one can't help but note, when considering the Democrats' erosion of support from Latinos, that they were one of the groups most represented in Sanders' base. But the counterfactual does not interest me very much. Whatever the case is, this election deserves to be viewed as a remarkable shortfall on the part of the Democratic Party, and the analyses they're offering for why it happened this way are transparently self-serving lies. Perhaps it really wasn't possible for them to do much better than they did, but if so that only speaks to the political reality they helped create: a country where partisan polarization is rampant and politics has just become one more outgrowth of mass culture, where the concept of reviving the New Deal (or creating some modern equivalent) must strike many as either unrealistic or just shallow sloganeering because the foundations for such a project (a vibrant labor movement and participatory political culture) do not exist anymore. 

None of this is to say that I'm not relieved Donald Trump's days as president are numbered. I do think it will be good to get him out of office, both because I expect Biden to be somewhat less destructive (in the short term, at least) and because I'm incredibly sick of Trump completely dominating the political discourse; of every issue from NATO to trade to North Korea getting turned into a question of being pro- or anti-Trump. But, especially given the way this election panned out, removing Trump seems far more like a temporary relief than it does any sort of promising shift in the course the nation—or the world—is taking. The idea of pushing Biden left—a bad joke to begin with—is even more absurd now that the Senate appears likely to remain in Republican hands. I don't expect much positive good to come out of Biden's presidency, and I dread what future elections may bring. Something major needs to change quickly, and whatever it is wasn't on the ballot in this election.

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*That is, assuming he doesn't run again and win in 2024—but this seems more than a bit unlikely if for no other reason than his age and health. 

 **As of my writing, AP and Fox have called Arizona for Biden, but other networks such as CNN and CBS have yet to make a projection. 

Trump Can't Stay in Power If He Loses, But He Could Steal the Election

(Chris Kleponis–Polaris/Bloomberg/Getty Images via Time)

Of the many worries that have dominated the public consciousness throughout this deeply unsettling year, one keeps coming up again: that Donald Trump will refuse to leave office even if he loses the upcoming election. Trump himself recently reignited these concerns when he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, ominously saying that "we're going to have to see what happens." But the concern has been around since well before that, with even as prominent a figure as Bernie Sanders warning that it could happen. 

Well, I'm here to tell you not to worry. Sort of. There is plenty to worry about in terms of what will happen between now and January 20, 2021, but if Donald Trump is the clear and official loser of the presidential election, I for one fully expect that his presidency and his reign of terror will end on that date. I could be wrong, but I really don't think I will be. I'm not the first person to examine, and ultimately dismiss, these concerns,* but I also want to take a look at why this (I believe) irrational worry persists—even when there's a much likelier possibility that would also let Trump stay in power.

Obviously, it's not as if Trump has any deep, abiding respect for rules and norms or democracy in general. So why am I so sure he will leave office if he loses? For one thing, because I don't think he enjoys being president. I don't think he ever really expected to win the first time, and I don't think the job is very fun for him. He could resign, of course, but only one president has ever done that previously, and only after major wrongdoing was revealed. He could decide not to run for reelection, but the last sitting president to do that was Lyndon B. Johnson, who was basically admitting his own failure by doing so. To do either of those things would look like a surrender on Trump's part—an admission that he no longer believes he has what it takes to be president. Obviously, someone like Trump is not about to make that sort of admission or give his enemies that kind of a win. But if he actually loses the election, on the other hand, no one would perceive it as some kind of show of weakness for him to leave office. It's just what would be expected at that point. He could very easily rant about how the election was rigged and he was the rightful winner while at the same time claiming his hands were tied and he had no choice but to leave office, and his followers would believe all of it. As ex-president, he could still command the same following and use his platform to talk about how he should have gotten a second term, meaning he would have all the fun of the presidency (the millions of rubes who hang on his every word and view him as a modern-day prophet) with none of the actual responsibility. I would almost be surprised if he's not secretly hoping he loses, and his completely awful campaign makes that idea all the more believable. 

But even if Trump doesn't jump at the opportunity to leave the White House, so what? Which actual institutions are loyal enough to him that they would ignore the results of the election and commit literal treason to keep him in power? The "deep state" that he's claimed is his mortal nemesis? The military, among whom his approval rating has been in decline to the extent that a recent poll of active-duty service members found Biden with a four-point lead? Plenty of Trump's supporters might be willing to go along with it if he decided to try and stay in office past the end of his term, but are they willing to form their own militias and fight against the police and the US military, of which Joe Biden would become the commander-in-chief at noon on January 20, 2021? Even if Trump proclaims himself president for life, without someone to back him up he's still just one feeble, flabby narcissist. A few federal marshals should be able to remove him from the White House pretty easily. 

Again, this doesn't mean that we have nothing to worry about between Election Day and Inauguration Day even assuming Joe Biden wins. There's plenty of reason to imagine Donald Trump would claim the election was rigged even after the results had been certified, as a way to soothe his ego if nothing else. Even if he himself doesn't make this claim, plenty of his supporters would discount the election results anyway. It's entirely likely we would see sporadic acts of violence from his more unstable, QAnon-believing followers. Many others might turn out to protest in the streets, resulting in scenes similar to those from the anti-social distancing protests earlier this year but perhaps more extensive and even angrier. It would very likely be an ugly few months, and Joe Biden's inauguration would certainly not put an end to it. But these are quite different concerns than any worries about Trump trying to stay in power past the end of his term. 

There is, however, a much more realistic concern about how Trump could illegitimately remain in office: simply by stealing the election. While an American president refusing to step down after his term of office expired would be unprecedented, a stolen election would be far from it—Trump's party, after all, has attempted to tip the electoral scale in its favor through shameless gerrymandering, needlessly restrictive voter ID laws and other such dubious means. It was only 20 years ago that the Republican candidate was handed the presidency on a silver platter when five conservative Supreme Court justices put a halt to the recount efforts in Florida, after all. And this election will be very unusual, given the ongoing pandemic and the likely far-higher-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. It is absolutely believable that the Trump campaign and Republican governors will seek to have substantial numbers of absentee ballots discounted for this or that reason, and the courts certainly might give them what they want. With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg there are now only three liberal justices on the Supreme Court, meaning that if a Bush v. Gore-esque situation were to occur once more, Trump's prospects of victory would be quite good. 

By no means is it certain that this is what we're headed for. In fact, if the current polls align with the actual votes cast, it would require far more than just stopping a recount in a state or two or getting a few absentee ballots thrown out for Trump to be certified as the winner. But it is much more believable that Trump and the Republican machine could steal a close election than that Trump would succeed in remaining in office even after Biden is certified as the official winner. 

So why is it the latter possibility and not the former that seems to be getting all of the attention? Probably for a few different reasons. For one thing, I think many liberals and other anti-Trumpers would secretly on some level prefer the Trump-ignores-the-election-results scenario over the other one. It's more dramatic, for one thing. Most Americans have already lived through a presidential election where the courts essentially thwarted the democratic process and installed the Republican as president. A rerun sounds neither appealing nor exciting. On the other hand, a president essentially attempting a coup to stay in power would be a very new thing, and a major break from political reality as we've known it. It's easy to fantasize about what would come next—would this be the event that brings tens of millions of Americans out into the streets in protest? Would we all be faced with a clear choice between saving democracy or living in a world straight out of our favorite dystopian novels? Would Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to accept the wrong that had been done to them, and serve as the leaders for a new opposition movement that wouldn't rest until Trump was defeated? Would the #Resistance finally transform into La Résistance and no longer just be a hashtag? Terrifying as it all may be, it offers the possibility that political life would no longer be dreary and isolated—filling out a ballot every few years, and perhaps donating some money and time to your favorite candidates—but rather full of danger and adventure, and would certainly offer a greater sense of purpose than anything that's been possible under Trump's rule so far. 

Another likely reason that the possibility of a stolen election has been so relatively overlooked is that it requires us to confront some disturbing realities—realities that go far beyond Trump. It means acknowledging that our elections could be undermined and manipulated not by some foreign adversary but by our own elected officials, by our own judiciary, and by a major political organization that has been around for over one and a half centuries (i.e. the Republican Party). It's easy enough to say ex post facto that an election wasn't fair, as an excuse for why your preferred candidate lost. But admitting to yourself in advance that your candidate could be cheated out of victory even if they do everything right is considerably more terrifying. It also makes all of the fervent talk about the importance of voting ring a bit hollow, for obvious reasons. It is, in a way, much less frightening to imagine Trump simply losing the election but refusing to abide by the result. That way, at least his obstruction of democracy would be blatant and likely bring a swift and severe reaction. If the election comes down to some protracted court battle that ultimately results in Trump's reelection, that would certainly result in some protests and a lot of ruffled feathers—but if the 2000 election is anything to go by, we'd still end up suffering through four more years of President Trump. 

This focus on the evils of Donald Trump himself instead of on those of the system that helped saddle us with him has been a consistent throughline of the past four years. It is, no doubt, a big part of the reason we ended up with Joe Biden as the nominee—the candidate who voters perceived as most likely to successfully get rid of Donald Trump, even if he may have been the least likely to seriously disrupt the political status quo. I am one of the many who feel that this shortsighted focus on Trump has already steered us wrong in a major way, and I do not look forward to the ramifications yet to come from it. Whether one is worried about the unlikely possibility of Trump staging a coup or the much likelier one of the Republican Party stealing the election, there is not too much than can be done between now and Election Day. But it couldn't hurt to start thinking more about the corruption of our whole political system instead of obsessing over Trump himself.

*The hosts of the podcast Chapo Trap House, and Matt Christman in particular, have talked pretty extensively about it. When writing this post it was impossible to avoid rehashing some of the points they made, so for the sake of fairness I wanted to give them credit here.

Biden-Harris Offers Personal Diversity but Ideological Uniformity

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via ET

 

After much (and I really do mean much) deliberation and suspense, Joe Biden has announced that his running mate will be Kamala Harris. This is hardly unexpected: for months, Harris had been talked about as one of the top candidates for the slot. Nonetheless, it is a significant choice, in more ways than one. Perhaps the most obvious significance of the choice has to do with Harris' identity: she is the first Black woman to be chosen for the VP spot on a major-party presidential ticket, and would be both the first female and first Black vice president if she and Biden are victorious in November. In this regard, she brings diversity to the Democratic ticket and serves as a balance of sorts to Joe Biden—an old, white man (who, unlike Harris, boasts a long public career and, therefore, "experience"). But when it comes to actual ideology, Harris brings neither diversity nor balance to the ticket. On the contrary, she brings stark uniformity—a reality that Biden and his handlers surely recognized.

To be clear, personal diversity at the highest levels of government is a worthwhile goal. It is better, both symbolically and probably in terms of measurable effect, for the makeup of the government to reflect that of the population with respect to race, gender, religion, and other aspects of personal identity. But it is also undeniably not everything. A government whose composition is as diverse as that of its country can still be a bad government. It can also still fail to represent the populace it's ruling over: people are more than just their race, or gender, or religion, or sexuality. In fact, ideology is more important in this respect than personal identity. While this might seem like a brash or insensitive claim, it's generally reflected in the opinions of voters throughout the country. Most people would rather be represented in government by someone who shares their opinions and priorities (and who they feel is well qualified), rather than someone who shares some aspect of their personal identity. How else can we explain the fact that, for instance, Black voters in the Democratic primary favored Joe Biden over Cory Booker or Kamala Harris? Or that Latino voters were much likelier to support Bernie Sanders than they were Julián Castro? Or that Pete Buttigieg was unable to carry the LGBTQ vote? And, indeed there is good reason for this: while electing a member of a marginalized group to office may be a valuable and inspiring symbolic victory, their ideology determines how they will wield their power—and how they do so may affect the livelihoods of many millions of people. With this in mind, in terms of real-world impact the ideological similarity between Biden and Harris outweighs their differences in personal identity.

From a hardline left-wing standpoint we could, of course, simply say that (like virtually all politicians in the United States) Biden and Harris are both defenders of capitalism and America's sprawling empire overseas, and be done with it. This is true, but even if we get into the finer details the two are often very much in sync. Let's take Medicare for All, for example. We know Biden's standpoint: consistently and unshakably opposed. How about Harris? Initially, she was actually a cosponsor for Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill. But once her presidential campaign got rolling, she pretty quickly abandoned it. The plan she ultimately ran on would, like Biden's, only offer a "public option" while allowing private health insurers to provide competing plans—a weak and inadequate compromise, for reasons I've explained elsewhere. 

When it comes to higher education, the case is similar. Biden has consistently stopped short of advocating for universal free college (which already exists in a number of similarly wealthy countries). He has also shied away from wide-scale cancellation of student loan debt. During her presidential campaign, Harris offered up a student loan debt forgiveness proposal so narrow as to verge on unintentional comedy. As a CNBC article described it, 

Borrowers will have a lot of boxes to check before they can get the $20,000 in student debt forgiveness on the table in her proposal.

They will have to be 1) a Pell Grant Recipient who 2) starts a business in a disadvantaged community and 3) manages to keep that business afloat for at least three years.

When it came to the cost of college going forward, she only promised to "fight to make community college free, make four-year public college debt-free." Incidentally, how to ensure college is "debt-free" without making it tuition-free is something I have yet to hear adequately explained. 

One of the biggest criticisms of Biden from the left is his often-cozy relationship with the finance industry. Harris is similar here, too. As the Attorney General of California, Harris was strongly urged by her own staff to sue Steve Mnuchin's bank OneWest. The bank foreclosed on tens of thousands of homeowners in the state, in possible violation of an agreement with the FDIC. But despite her staff's "strong recommendations," Harris did not file a case against OneWest. Mnuchin, in turn, donated to Harris' 2016 Senate campaign—making her the only Democratic Senate candidate he gave money to in that election cycle. That case seems to be just one instance of a greater trend: the Wall Street Journal has reported that Wall Street is "sigh[ing] with relief" now that Biden has chosen Harris as his running mate, while CNBC notes that "Wall Street executives are glad" about the pick. 

Nor are Biden and Harris far apart on foreign policy. The Times of Israel  observes that "[u]nlike some of the more liberal members of the caucus...[Harris] has not bucked the [Democratic] party’s traditionally supportive posture toward Israel, or called for fundamental changes to the nature of the alliance" and "has also maintained a close relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)." She has tried to outflank President Trump from the right on the issue of North Korea, excoriating him for canceling joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and daring to meet face-to-face with Kim Jong-Un. While her presidential campaign website promised to "end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and protracted military engagements in places like Syria," she has hardly taken a strong stance against ongoing U.S. meddling in the region, telling the New York Times that "I believe we should bring back our troops from Afghanistan, but I also believe that we need to have a presence there in terms of supporting what the leaders of Afghanistan want to do in terms of having peace in that region, and certainly suppressing any possibility of ISIS or any other terrorist organization from gaining steam."

While Harris obviously can't match Biden's tough-on-crime record, here there are commonalities as well. She played a significant role in pushing for harsher penalties for truancy when she was running for Attorney General in California, resulting in a new law that would punish the parents of truant kids with up to a year in jail. Although (unlike Biden) she has recently voiced her support for legalizing marijuana, her record on that issue offers reason to be skeptical: when running against a pro-legalization Republican in 2014, Harris literally laughed at his stance, and an investigation found over 1,500 people were sent to California state prisons for marijuana-related offenses from 2011 to 2016, during her tenure as AG. Her treatment of California's prisoners when she held that office is also controversial: she's faced criticism for sending a brief that sought to deny sex reassignment surgery to transgender inmates, although she claims to have only been enforcing existing policy even as she worked behind the scenes to change it; and when a man convicted of murder sought DNA testing that could exculpate him, Harris did not act on the request (it was later granted by Gavin Newsom). She additionally faces accusations of being soft on police misconduct, and of having slow-walked an investigation into misuse of jailhouse informants by deputies and prosecutors. 

On the environment Harris does strike a more progressive posture, having teamed up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push for climate legislation, cosponsored the Green New Deal resolution and voiced support for a fracking ban. But once more, there are reasons for doubt. Her presidential campaign was advised by Michèle Flournoy, "a career Pen­ta­gon offi­cial who has repeat­ed­ly urged increas­ing domes­tic fos­sil fuel extrac­tion as a key part of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, and sup­port­ed sev­er­al poli­cies that have helped turn the U.S. into one of the world’s worst car­bon pol­luters, such as Obama’s repeal of the ban on domes­tic oil exports" (in the words of writer Branko Marcetic). A 2019 Washington Post article noted that Harris had "accepted donations from a top attorney at CITGO Petroleum, among others at natural gas corporations, federal filings show. After an inquiry from The Washington Post, Harris’s campaign said it was in the process of returning a gift from a vice president at Consumers Energy, a Michigan-based natural gas and electricity company."

If all of this feels like picking out the most objectionable bits of Harris' record, that is only because—once again, as with Biden—I find it difficult to discern much in terms of a positive agenda or vision that she really stands for. It would be easier to overlook some of these imperfections if they seemed to be mere blemishes, distractions from the true substance of Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to discern any true substance that can be separated from the imperfections. 

For many, the historical import of Harris' placement on the ticket—and the promise of a return to the "sanity" of the Obama years—will be enough to win not just their vote but their enthusiasm. I find this response misguided, but those people are entitled to their opinion and I won't scold them for it. However, we should at least be able to retire any claims about Biden running on The Most Progressive Platform Since FDR, or seriously adopting any ideas from the Democratic Party's left flank. A nominee's choice of running mate is always important, and especially so in Biden's case (for obvious reasons). Faced with possibly the most consequential decision of his general election campaign—he may have just picked our 47th president, after all—Biden chose someone who is far closer to him, ideologically, than she is to Bernie Sanders (who was, lest we forget, the first runner-up in the crowded Democratic primary field). That he did so is neither a surprise nor a scandal, but it certainly tells us more about how he would govern than any of the words in his platform do.

The Revolutionary Spark in the Ongoing Protests

Protestors in Brooklyn (Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images via Vox)

It is said that after the famous storming of the Bastille prison, King Louis XVI remarked "Why, this is a revolt!" only to be corrected by the Duke de La Rochefoucauld: "No, sire, it is a revolution." While the recent protests in Minneapolis and across the nation have not made that leap, there is some core there that undeniably goes beyond either anger at one police officer or even police department, hope for reformist measures, or desire to simply express dissatisfaction at the prevailing conditions. In this sense, one could say there is a sort of revolutionary spark to them—and in this sense they may differ, in degree if not in kind, from the plentiful other protests that have been seen in the years since 2014.

The pattern should be familiar by now, as it's been seen repeatedly over the past few years—in France, Hong Kong, Chile and now the United States: first, something happens to spark mass outrage and protest (fuel taxes, extradition bill, public transport fares, and now a police murder). Before long, though, the protests have taken on a life of their own, as the practical expression of a kind of collective rage at the pervasive injustice in society. To acknowledge this is in no way to downplay the importance of George Floyd's murder (and that is what it was) or to de-center the issue of police racism and brutality. But there can be little doubt that more than just these issues are motivating many of the protestors, and to dismiss those for whom this holds true as interlopers or "white anarchists" rings false.

Even thinking only in terms of racial issues, the question is hardly what to protest as much as it is what not to. The median black household's wealth is hardly more than one-tenth that of the median white household; the mortality rate for infants born to black women is over twice that for infants born to white, Hispanic, or Asian women; even in the midst of a pandemic that we've been assured does not care about race, social class or any aspect of personal identity, it is clear that black people are being hit disproportionately hard, and make up more than their share of the deaths from COVID-19. Throw in the growing joblessness and social disruption inflicted by the lockdown—and, especially, the government's failure to adequately address these problems—and the only surprising element of the protests is that they didn't materialize earlier.

The general disorder and occasional looting and property destruction have predictably led to accusations that the protests themselves have lost their focus, or that they're being exploited by outside agitators and greedy opportunists. But these accusations miss the reality of the situation. While there will inevitably those who exploit mass unrest for either selfish or sinister purposes, the real reason behind much of the looting and vandalism is a genuine anger—not simply at the police, but at the society that tolerates and reinforces injustice on a daily basis. James Baldwin addressed this point in a 1968 interview with Esquire:

[A "looter" taking a television set] doesn’t really want the TV set. He’s saying screw you. It’s just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn’t want it. He wants to let you know he’s there...you’re accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting.

In this respect, the presence of "looting" and property destruction is often far from indicative that a protest has lost touch with its purpose; rather, it reveals the sentiment that's driving the protest goes beyond whatever issue served as a point of ignition, and has become an anger at the whole social structure that manifests itself in everything around the protestors. To simply attribute these acts of law-breaking to interlopers is to refuse to reckon with how deep the anger (rightfully) goes. When regular people become so outraged they react with seemingly gratuitous disobedience and destruction, it says something about the health (or lack thereof) of the society they live in. Acknowledging that normal people might turn to such extreme measures requires us to acknowledge that perhaps society really is so broken they would feel the need to do so.

It is also worth noting that many of the most consequential uprisings in American history were "non-peaceful" in nature. In 1963, after bombings targeting a motel owner and the brother of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil disorder ensued in Birmingham, Alabama in which (per a contemporary New York Times report) "[a]bout 50 persons were injured, including a policeman and a taxicab driver who were stabbed." The uprising additionally "wrecked scores of police and private automobiles and burned six small stores and a two-story apartment house." Rather than serving as a boon to the "law and order" Right as one might expect, the ultimate effect was quite the opposite. Malcolm X described it thusly:

 [R]ight at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham—remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up 'side their head—yes, they did. That's when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. So, and right after that, Kennedy got on the television and said "this is a moral issue." That's when he said he was going to put out a civil-rights bill.

Of course, one can still embrace the spirit behind the unrest happening now but argue against looting or property destruction as tactics. This is essentially the same approach as Martin Luther King took in arguing that "riots are socially destructive and self-defeating" but also "the language of the unheard" crying out for justice in an unjust society. But despite the superficial similarity, this is an entirely different approach than either arguing that the protests have "lost their way" or trying to neatly separate the "real" protestors from the supposedly insincere "looters" and "outside agitators." To take a truly King-like approach, one must genuinely understand and endorse the outrage driving this unrest (in all the forms it takes)—and, if rejecting certain tactics, at least propose a genuine alternative. One should also realize that the approach advocated by King himself was, while nonviolent, nonetheless dependent on creating "such a crisis...that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue." Demonstrations that fail to disrupt society—whether violently or nonviolently—simply are not a viable tactic for any revolution.

I should be clear here that when I speak of revolution and a "revolutionary spark" I do not mean the actual overthrow of the United States government, or any government—a goal that probably few of the protestors would endorse. I mean it in the broader sense, defined by George Orwell as "a fundamental shift of power," one that "is not primarily a question of change of government" because "if we alter our structure from below we shall get the government we need." It is no secret that, while we are all (for the most part) equal on paper, there are gross inequalities not just of wealth but of power in society. Any serious person understands that someone like George Floyd was never on anything resembling equal footing with a Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, or even with a comfortably middle-class white person. It is this fundamental imbalance of power that has to be dealt with—and to do so would demand a truly revolutionary effort.

Of course, the "revolutionary spark" that exists in the recent unrest is only the genuine desire of the participants to effect that change, and their willingness to take action in order to do so; by no means does its existence ensure that the protests will have their intended effect. What comes out of them in the end is anyone's guess, though any attempts to draw conclusions from historical parallels are overly hasty. For now, the protests serve not only as inspiring acts of rebellion (if not always against the law, certainly against the larger unjust social order), but also to reveal the truth about police forces across the country as they respond with shocking acts of violence and escalation. All that can be done is to support the protestors through whatever means are available, and to oppose the police response—as well as the still more disturbing possibility of the military being deployed to quell the nationwide unrest. The moment we are at now could ultimately prove to be a turning point—but whether that turn is toward a better society or a repressive police state remains to be seen.

A Response to the USA Today Article on Tara Reade's Allegations

Former Biden staffer Tara Reade
(Max Whittaker/The New York Times)

After seeming to fly under the radar for a while, former Biden staffer Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against her ex-boss are finally a major point of focus. It's no surprise, then, that they're getting pushback—and, given that the target of the accusations is the presumptive Democratic nominee, that the pushback often takes a disgusting form. Michael Stern's recent USA Today article is a prime example of both the pushback itself and the vile form it takes. While its goal is to discredit Reade's allegations, all it ends up demonstrating is that prosecutors have no actual expertise when it comes to psychology or uncovering the truth, and that USA Today has editorial standards somewhat lower than the Mariana Trench.

After a brief introduction ("During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases...When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them..."), Stern delves into his reasons for doubting Reade's allegation, each laid out with its own subheading. I will attempt to go through all of them as concisely as possible and demonstrate why his arguments fall woefully short, and reveal him to be far from any sort of objective source on Reade's credibility.

Stern's first reason for skepticism is that Reade "Delayed reporting…twice." "[I]t is reasonable," he intones,

to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable—but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.

We are already off to a poor start. Several of Reade's acquaintances have confirmed she told them her story long ago, and it is far from unheard of for sexual assault victims to wait decades before coming forward. The fact that this fact could be missed by a liberal like Stern after the Kavanaugh affair in 2018 is quite remarkable, if not indicative of willful blindness.

Next is Reade's "Implausible explanation for changing [her] story." Stern explains:

When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story.

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.

That someone would struggle to talk about probably the most traumatic incident in their life is actually not at all hard to believe. Neither is it hard to imagine that, after the backlash she received due to her initial allegation, Reade would sit back and hope Biden's campaign would tank all on its own (as it almost did) rather than trying to find someone else to tell her full story to.

Next subheading: "People who contradict Reade’s claim." All three of these people are former Biden staffers who deny Reade made a complaint to them. Obviously, even if Reade made no such complaint her allegations about the sexual assault could still be true. It's also quite possible that people who worked for Biden have some loyalty to him and aren't being honest. As journalist Paul Blest notes, Biden aide Dennis Toner—one of the three people Stern mentions here—"not only called the allegation 'preposterous' but denied ever knowing Reade at all, something that’s much more far-fetched than anything Reade has said."

In the following section, Stern notes that Reade claims she filed a written complaint against Biden, but no copy could be found and she didn't keep a copy herself. "It is odd," he remarks, "that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties changed 'the trajectory' of her life." It is actually not odd that a woman wouldn't want to keep a memento of the time her boss sexually assaulted her—and the fact no other record could be found could have something to do with the fact that Biden's senate papers are sealed until two years after he leaves public life.

The next mark against Reade is her "Memory lapse":

Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a "semiprivate" area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los Angeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade’s amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.

For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation. 

It's actually quite common for victims of trauma to have fragmented and vague memories of the event in question—something it's hard to imagine Stern wasn't aware of.

Next up: the "The lie about losing her job." After originally claiming "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ" after she refused to serve drinks at an event, according to The Union, Reade now says she was fired for filing her sexual harassment complaint. Again, the fact Reade was reluctant to tell her full story is not at all surprising, and feeling "pushed out" and leaving "Biden's employ" already sounds like a euphemism for being fired.

But, Stern, goes on, Reade had "Compliments for Biden" as recently as 2017: "It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her." Is it? Survivors  of abuse and assault often defend and make excuses for their abuser, especially if it's someone they knew beforehand. Presumably Reade went to work for Biden because she agreed with his positions and thought he had some value as a political figure, and there were likely plenty of friendly interactions she had with him during her employ. Assuming she's telling the truth, it's not shocking she would rather emphasize (and remember) the good side of Joe Biden rather than focusing on the time he assaulted her.

The next three sections ("Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders," "Love of Russia and Putin" and "Suspect timing") are where the article takes a turn for the truly disgusting. As the titles imply, here Stern focuses on Reade's support for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, a 2018 blog post she wrote praising Vladimir Putin, and the fact that she came forward with her allegations against Biden after he won a string of primary victories. At best, all of this offers a possible motive Reade would have to lie. Stern, however, uses it to insinuate Reade at least suffers from emotional instability (given she had previously criticized Putin, and has now disavowed her former praise) and possibly has a loyalty to a foreign despot. He even manages to work in smear against Sanders, claiming that he has "a long history of ties to Russia[.]" The source linked to in order to back up this claim is a Politico article about footage of Bernie and Jane Sanders' 1988 trip to the Soviet Union—hardly evidence of the sinister Russian ties Stern seems to be hinting at.

Reade's misguided, and now-disavowed, praise for Putin has no bearing on the truth of her accusations so I won't waste any time on it. Using Reade's support for Sanders as evidence against her allegation is just taking a page from the playbook conservatives relied on to try to discredit Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh's accusers—and it's obvious why she would support the Democratic candidate who didn't assault her over the one who, she alleges, did. Her "suspect timing" is not actually suspect, either: as noted earlier, she would have probably been hoping Biden would tank all on his own and retire into obscurity. Once his campaign had come back from the dead and he was well on his way to the Democratic nomination, it would have been obvious that her story was still relevant. Besides, if Reade's allegations were designed to inflict maximum damage on Biden, wouldn't it have made sense to attack before he had won "a string of March primary victories [that] threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination"?

After this despicable garbage, Stern addresses the recently unearthed call from Reade's mother to Larry King Live, in which she talks about how her daughter left "after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him." Because her call was anonymous, Stern thinks, Reade's mother should have been willing to go into graphic detail about what happened instead of only vaguely hinting at it. This is truly bizarre thinking. Is it really hard to believe that a mother calling into a live TV show—even anonymously—wouldn't want to discuss her daughter's sexual assault in detail? For a former prosecutor, perhaps it is. For the rest of us, it should be obvious why she would want to exercise some discretion when telling her daughter's story, apparently without that daughter's permission.

Stern also pooh-poohs this evidence on the grounds that "I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of 'respect' for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice." Again, Stern betrays either deliberate obtuseness or a lack of even basic knowledge about human psychology. It is entirely conceivable that Reade might have rationalized her assault as being partly her fault (self-blaming being common among assault survivors) and not wanted to publicly embarrass—and potentially damage the career of—a man she had respected enough to go to work for. And the idea that the choice was between "painful silence" or "justice" reveals absolutely no understanding of the fate that befalls many survivors of assault if they come forward. Talk to Christine Blasey Ford or any of Donald Trump's victims about the "justice" they got by telling their stories.

Next, Stern tries discredit the corroboration offered by Reade's acquaintances (her brother, several friends, a former colleague) by implying that perhaps they, too, are lying. Or perhaps Reade simply lied to them: "Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat." The idea that a woman would lie to her friends about being sexually assaulted in order to "save face" seems rather unlikely at best, but that's the best explanation Stern apparently has for why Reade would have spent decades telling the same story.

Lastly, there is a "Lack of other sexual assault allegations" against Biden. Of course, there were those "several women" who spoke last year about how Biden had made them uncomfortable—one of whom, Stern lets us know, he wrote an article criticizing. But Reade is the only person to have publicly accused Biden of sexual assault. "It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade," Stern admits. "But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once...like Donald Trump, who has had more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia."

But, as it turns out, Biden may have been accused of sexual misconduct more than once. In a 2008 piece published in the left-wing magazine CounterPunch, political journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote the following:

Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like.  On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

As it stands, he has a well-documented problem respecting women's personal space. It may have once been easy to treat that as some innocent byproduct of his being of an older generation—as I once did—but now that there is a well-corroborated accusation of sexual assault against him, it should be harder to overlook.

Stern wraps up with a section titled "What remains," concluding with some theatrical hand-wringing ("I've dreaded writing this piece") and an anecdote about how, as a prosecutor, he questioned the credibility of a rape claim that later turned out to be false. Naturally, he also makes sure to clarify that he is actually the best friend the #MeToo movement, and sexual assault survivors, could ever have:

We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That’s not how I see the #MeToo movement. It’s too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that. 

This is probably the worst article I've ever responded to on this blog, and absolutely one of the worst I've read from any outlet. Regardless of whether you believe Reade's allegation, it deserves to be discussed more seriously, and in better faith, than Stern appears capable of. I hope my point-by-point dissection makes that clear. But I thought it might also help to summarize my arguments once more, in a format more amenable to Michael J. Stern and USA Today. So here it is:

Why I'm skeptical about Michael Stern's skepticism about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Blogger

During my six years as a blogger, I've written responses to many articles. The vast majority of them have been dogshit. When media outlets publish an article, my default response is to give the writer a chance to make their points. But as I read Michael J. Stern's article in USA Today, I became increasingly disgusted. Here are some of the reasons why:

Poor understanding of human psychology. Throughout his article, Stern shows he understands very little about how sexual assault victims process trauma, or human psychology in general. We aren't talking the fine points here, he doesn't even have a Psych 101-level grasp of this stuff.

Blatantly political motivations. Between his defense of Biden, his focus on irrelevant Russia bullshit and his gratuitous smear of Bernie Sanders, it's pretty clear Stern falls somewhere in the insufferable "#Resist" Democrat camp. His Twitter bio confirms this, with phrases like "#Resisting all things Trump" and "#BlueNoMatterWho." Since he believes Tara Reade's political views should be treated as counterevidence against her sexual assault allegations, it's only fair to use his own political views as a reason to discount the sincerity of his article.

Full of irrelevant points. Stern's digressions about Bernie Sanders' supposed "long history of ties to Russia" and Tara Reade's Putin blog post show he's not able to focus on actual evidence, and raise questions about his emotional stability.

Former prosecutor. A prosecutor's job isn't to find the truth, it's to get a conviction. They don't deserve to be treated as experts on human psychology, or credibility, or truth, or anything. Many of them are also, frankly, freaks. If you don't believe that, just watch any true crime show about someone who was wrongly convicted and listen to what the prosecutor who put them behind bars has to say. I don't like to make blanket statements, but a lot of these people were born without souls. While Stern's political convictions put him in an odd spot for a former prosecutor—arguing for an acquittal in the court of public opinion, not a conviction—he marshals all the scummiest tricks of his trade to portray Tara Reade as a villainous harpy out to destroy good old Joe Biden.

What remains. The article is, once again, very bad.

The House Wins Again

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via Business Insider)

The 2020 Democratic primary is over—and the last man standing is Joe Biden. His first war is won: he will be the nominee, the one to face off against Donald Trump in November. Barring, that is, the possibility that he steps down, citing health reasons or something along those lines, so the party insiders can crown someone younger and more dynamic at whatever virtual convention ends up happening this summer. That turn of events feels more plausible than it would in a normal year. But otherwise, it's all Joe. 

After every other candidate in the "moderate" lane of the primary dropped out and threw their support behind Biden, the only obstacle left was Bernie Sanders—who, as of my writing these words, announced he was suspending his campaign about 12 hours ago.* It would be short-sighted to overlook the significance of Sanders' achievements in this race. With the entire Democratic Party establishment, the economic elites, and much of the media class dead-set against him, he was still able to out-fundraise his opponents, win the popular vote in the first three consecutive states, dominate the youth vote and, ultimately, come in second place out of a field that once had over 20 candidates. But it wasn't enough. The consolidation that happened behind Biden, the media's continued hostility, and increased suburban turnout—perhaps because there was no Republican presidential primary worth voting in, or perhaps motivated by a fear that a socialist really would capture the Democratic nomination—proved too much for Sanders to overcome. There are certainly things he could and should have done differently. Phone calls and door-to-door canvassing, it's clear now, weren't enough to turn out the young voters he needed. Emphasizing the common ground between himself and Obama might have helped him perform better among more moderate Democrats. And the fact he's spent decades calling himself a socialist almost surely did more harm than good. But in the end, maybe the elite hostility to leftism of any sort and the voters' readiness to be cowed into voting for an "electable" centrist would have doomed him no matter what.

So now we're left with Biden, a candidate who's a laughable anachronism in the year 2020. Instead of taking the opportunity provided by the pandemic to call for a single-payer healthcare system—for which popular support has surged—he's busied himself arguing that Italy shows us it wouldn't make it any difference if we had one. Any notion that the left could meaningfully pressure Biden to govern as some kind of social democrat is nothing but a bad joke. With two-thirds of the American public and 21 of Biden's former Democratic primary opponents in favor of legalizing marijuana, Biden still can't even bring himself to support that. He's an inveterate left-puncher and has spent his whole career as one, and whatever rhetorical concessions he might make to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party will be forgotten as soon as he's elected—if that happens.

Whether he will be able to pull it off is anyone's guess. Against a normal president he'd be as good as dead, but Trump is no normal president—and, according to FiveThirtyEight, no incumbent since at least Harry Truman has gotten reelected with approval numbers like his. COVID-19 looks certain to be the dominant campaign issue, and how the pandemic plays out between now and November might well be the decisive factor. If it—and the economic mayhem it's unleashed— can be brought under control, that could boost Trump's image enough for him to get four more years. If not, Biden should have an easy path to victory. A cold comfort if ever there was one.

It's not clear what future there is for the left-wing movement Bernie Sanders represented, either. Regardless of who wins this election, he will be too old to run again and he has no obvious successor. It's completely unclear whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will have the experience, political acumen or even principles to take up the mantle from him in four or eight years, and it's even harder to imagine Rashida Tlaib mounting a successful presidential campaign. Aside from them, there are few high-profile left-wing politicians who would even be eligible. If Biden goes on to win the election, it could be a major, and lasting, victory for the Democratic Party establishment—particularly if he picks Kamala Harris or someone else with known presidential aspirations as his running mate. But then again, nothing is certain anymore. The idea that we could revive the old "normal" just by tossing out Donald Trump is just as much ridiculous nostalgia-mongering as his promise to Make America Great Again. For the foreseeable future, American politics will likely be as bizarre and unpredictable as they've been since 2016.

So what would a Joe Biden presidency give us? On the plus side, a reprieve from the worst excesses and savageries of the Trump Administration. But not much more than that. Four (or eight) years of feckless centrism, while Trump's base embraces paranoid fantasies about how the Communists are secretly pulling all the strings. The Republicans in Congress will go back their old game of blocking every bill or nomination that could be a feather in the Democratic president's cap. But even when he's able to act without Congress, Biden—like Obama—will not be bold or aggressive enough in trying to tackle any of the major crises we face. Inequality will keep getting worse. Any hope of keeping climate change in tow will slip further away. Our military will continue dropping bombs on people in faraway lands. Even after the current pandemic-induced crisis has abated, the economy probably won't be booming over the course of the next several years, either. After one or two miserable terms of this, it's not hard to imagine a right-wing populist more savvy—and more dangerous—than Trump coming to power. There are no shortage of candidates here, either—it could be freshman Missouri senator Josh Hawley, who's made a name for himself by ranting against the "cosmopolitan elite." Or perhaps Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who blends Trumpian racism and nationalism with über-neoconservative foreign policy views. For that matter, it could end up being Fox News host Tucker Carlson—another media personality, like Trump, but one who's proven far more articulate and consistent in promoting far-right ideology.

On the other hand, another Trump term could be terrifying in its own right. God only knows what Big Don and his gang of crooks, geeks and racists might try if they're emboldened by another electoral victory. More state violence against immigrants, shredded environmental regulations and giveaways to the rich should all be treated as givens. Perhaps it would even go well beyond the horror show we've been subjected to so far. On the other han
d, maybe Trump's second term would be more moderate than his first, as happened with George W. Bush. Either way, the Democrats would likely win big in the 2022 midterms, and perhaps again in 2024—for whatever good that would do.

The whole picture is bleak, and there's not much cause for optimism right now. There will still be important fights for the next four years—in congressional, state and local elections, and outside electoral politics altogether—but the battle for the presidency is already lost, at least for me and every other leftist out there. Don't let anyone delude you otherwise—there is no institutional left that could push Biden to take up any meaningful portion of Bernie Sanders' agenda, and the Occupy movement showed that simply getting a lot of people to make noise does little to influence policy on these issues. No, regardless of what happens in November we are in for four more grim years, and perhaps many more than that. That reality is no excuse for political detachment, apathy, or nihilism—but it is a reality, and it's one worth confronting.
________________________________________________________________

*Obviously, it's taken some time for me to get this post out.

Living in the Future

Sarah Palin appears on The Masked Singer (screenshot via YouTube courtesy of Mic)

My faith's been torn asunder
Tell me is that rolling thunder
Or just the sinking sound
Of something righteous going under

Don't worry, darling
No baby, don't you fret
We're living in the future
And none of this has happened yet

—Bruce Springsteen, "Livin' in the Future"

I had a strange moment as I was driving home last Friday. My thoughts were jumping around the way they usually do on night drives like that one. The main thing on my mind was the COVID-19 pandemic. Much more would come of that outbreak over the next few days, as restaurants and bars were forced to shut down and my state's primary election was ultimately postponed to stem the spread of disease. My thoughts also drifted to another, much stupider recent event: the completely surreal appearance of former governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Fox's already-ridiculous show The Masked Singer. Earlier that week, Palin, dressed in a pink bear costume, had spat reworked lyrics to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in an event that no sober person could have imagined back in 2008 when she first came on the national scene. There was no obvious connection between these two things, a deadly global pandemic on the one hand and washed-up politician's last gasp for relevance on the other. But considering them together, as two wildly dissimilar but contemporary news stories, an ominous question emerged: what if this is just how things are gonna be?

Start with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States at least, we are not faced only with the disease itself but also with a society that seems almost perfectly designed to let it flourish: a state that has been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades, and is now presided over by a former reality show host whose reign has been marked by open incompetence and corruption; a private healthcare system that has little incentive to focus on testing and providing proper treatment to those who need it; and a culture where misinformation readily spreads among a populace that has grown rightfully distrustful of its own government and mass media, as well as of "experts" of any sort. And now that the seriousness of the new coronavirus outbreak is starting to be understood, the deep dysfunction and irrationality is beginning to make itself known: supermarket shelves left barren as people start bafflingly stocking up on toilet paper in large quantities, travel bans enacted against China and Europe over the objections of health experts, the stock market thrown into chaos, lives disrupted as universities and places of employment shut down.

COVID-19 is not the first global pandemic, and it certainly won't be the last. As the planet's climate is progressively altered and the permafrost—home to all sorts of dormant bacteria and vira—melts, and as our globalized culture continues to become more and more integrated with people and cargo traveling from all parts of the world with regularity, it's likely there's more where this came from. While some places, like South Korea, have done an admirable job of responding to the coronavirus pandemic, taken as a whole the global response does not portend terribly well for how these future outbreaks will be handled.

Obviously, the greatest tragedy of COVID-19 and any future pandemics will be the many lives lost to them. But it's fair to also ponder the cultural impact semi-regular outbreaks would have on the vast majority of us who survive them. The irony of the term "social distancing," the practice now being encouraged to prevent the spread of disease, is that it could just as easily be applied to what we've all been doing, willfully or not, over the course of the past few decades. As the collective institutions and groupings that, for better or worse, provided some sense of community have disintegrated (in accordance with Margaret Thatcher's proclamation that "there's no such thing as society"), societies have more and more resembled collections of atomized individuals. We've hardly had much choice to but withdraw further and further into ourselves as practically everything—jobs, homes, acquaintances, marriages—became more and more temporary by necessity. The personal relationships and face-to-face interactions that were once central have become increasingly supplanted by social media, which often encourages the meanest, dumbest and most narcissistic impulses, leaving people more alienated and less empathetic than they once were—not, of course, that we should wax too nostalgic about the "good old days," which were full of their own problems and injustices. And now, if every so often, we must worry that face-to-face interaction might help spread life-threatening illnesses—and cope with the inevitable disruptions to day-to-day life the response and reaction to such outbreaks will entail—that will just be one more factor pushing us towards personal isolation.

It's that same atomization that has helped give us bizarre scenes like Sarah Palin rapping on TV—or a former game show host being sworn in as president for that matter. For politics to be participatory or democratic in any profound sense, collective institutions and organizations—not to mention just some general sense of community—are necessary, and all of those are what's been getting power-washed away like an old coat of paint. So when politics based on mass organization and participation becomes obsolete, what happens? Politics must glom onto some other sort of cultural phenomena, effect some kind of merger. That's where the entertainment industry comes in.

Entertainment, after all, is yet another thing that must fill the gaps left behind by the neoliberalization of modern society. The fact that it's become increasingly available over the past few decades is not simply a fortunate coincidence—and, if possible, it will only become more ubiquitous the further social atomization progresses. How else can you keep a populace of increasingly alienated individuals from either rebelling against the system or simply imploding altogether? It's no wonder that politics and entertainment appear to be merging, up to and including a sort of revolving door that now connects the two of them: at the same time the old forms of politics have died off, entertainment dominates the cultural landscape more and more, and it naturally has to evolve to keep its consumers' attention. If religion was the opium of the masses in Marx's age, something must take its place in an increasingly post-religious landscape.

Not that we will ever reach the levels of, say, the societies imagined in Mike Judge's Idiocracy or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where every form of mass entertainment is artless vulgarity or overwhelming absurdity. No, far from it: people have to get intellectual stimulation from somewhere. There are, and will always continue to be, many shows, movies and books that are intelligent, well-crafted and of serious artistic value. But that's just it: soon enough, the only place that level of profundity or thoughtfulness might be found is in the realm of entertainment, where it's safely directed away from any use that could end up threatening the status quo and serves as just another temporary distraction from the alienation of modern life. It's something of a cold comfort to know we will always have prestige TV and cinema when they serve only as a break from the chaos and irrationality of everything else.

This is the nightmare future we are faced with—not some radical deviation, but merely the worst and most frightening (as well as the most ridiculous) aspects of the past few years and decades made regular, turned into the new "normal." The feelings of isolation and fear we're experience we're all experiencing right now could become just another part of day-to-day life, while politics is finally reduced to the level of a spectator sport—just one more reality show to waste some time on.

Of course, it's not yet inevitable. While Bernie Sanders now stands little chance of becoming the Democratic nominee, the movement he helped to build with this campaign and his 2016 one is a promising deviation from the long-term trends we've seen in politics and society. And the coronavirus epidemic plus the economic turmoil it's already wreaking could prove enough of a shock that we're forced to confront the ominous direction we're headed in, and find a way to change it. Those glimmers of hope, however small, do not have to disappear regardless of who ends up winning the 2020 election. But the window of opportunity is closing. Let these past weeks and the months ahead be a warning that spurs some sort of action, and not a preview of what the future will be.

The Vampires Strike Back

Well, no one said it would be easy. We knew that the Democratic Establishment was in full panic mode after Bernie Sanders scored a trio of victories (at least in the popular vote), in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada—the first three states on the primary calendar. Now we're seeing the full extent of their desperation. After Biden managed to score a big victory in South Carolina and became the first candidate to defeat Sanders anywhere, the wagons have circled: Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar unexpectedly called it quits, along with billionaire donor Tom Steyer, leaving Biden as the only remaining candidate in the "moderate lane" aside from Michael Bloomberg.* Shortly after, they threw their support behind Uncle Joe, and were joined by one Robert "Beto" O'Rourke, who long-time viewers will remember as yesteryear's Hot New Thing in the world of Democratic politics, as well as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It looks like Mr. Hope and Change himself, former president Obama, may have even played some role in at least Buttigieg's decision. Now, as I'm writing this, it's Super Tuesday, and Biden looks positioned to stage a major comeback.** FiveThirtyEight already gives him a 31% chance of securing a majority of delegates in the primaries, while Sanders has fallen to just 8% after being the favorite for weeks (the most likely possibility, with 61%, is still that no one secures a majority).

Shirts sold by the Biden campaign, celebrating his latest
endorsements (via Team Joe Store)

This comes just after Biden got caught in an astounding lie about getting arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela, a new spin on his old fabrication about marching in the Civil Rights movement. Of course, it might be unfair to call it a lie for that matter. Joe's been having his share of innocent slip-ups lately, such as saying that he's running for Senate and that if voters don't like him they can "vote for the other Biden," and apparently forgetting the quote from the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal—the one every third grader knows—about halfway through his attempt to recite it ("All men and women created by the—you know—you know the thing.") None of that matters when there's a chance the peons might actually storm the Bastille and nominate someone who really means it when they use the old Democratic Party talking points (those ones about creating a fair economy and looking out for working class people).

No—the one thing the Democratic Party power brokers care about is right there in their name. For anyone who suffers from any other illusion, what we're seeing right now should be the equivalent of Winston Smith's shock treatment in 1984:

"You are ruling over us for our own good," he said feebly. "You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore—"

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

"That was stupid, Winston, stupid!" he said. "You should know better than to say a thing like that."

He pulled the lever back and continued:

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power...We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end...The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

Of course, poor old Joe is just a pawn in their game, to borrow Bob Dylan's turn of phrase—and in a just world, elder abuse would added to the list of charges against all the insiders and hacks pushing Biden's campaign along. There's a poetry to it all. You couldn't ask for a better embodiment of the decrepit, decadent Democratic Center that's been in power for decades: the wizened old moderate who once gave Strom Thurmond's eulogy and was to the right of Ronald Reagan on criminal justice, and who now struggles to go a week without messing up a news anchor's name or forgetting which president it was that he served under. Who needs Thomas Nast anymore when the politicians are already their own caricatures?

There's, of course, no point in whining about fairness in all of this. All's fair in love and war, and in politics, one might add. The tactics the Establishment is relying on aren't even particularly shocking or outrageous. A bunch of losing candidates dropping out and rallying behind the guy whose views are most like theirs hardly seems like any great moral travesty or attempt to squelch out democracy. Even the attempts to prey on electability fears or to paint Sanders as some out-of-touch utopian (or cyrpto-Communist) are hardly some Nixon-style ratfucking. The real scandal is the continuing existence of the Democratic Establishment itself, given the miserable failure of its brand of politics in actually creating any sort of decent society, the way it's broken every promise it ever made to the poor and working class people across the country and the fact that just four years ago it helped give us Donald Trump by sticking us with another uninspiring centrist who epitomized its disgusting lack of any moral center. It doesn't much matter what rules the Establishment plays by—as long as it's winning, the rest of us are losing.

And sweeping all of this aside in the name of defeating Trump is just doing the Establishment's work for it. If there's one thing you can say about Donald Trump and the Democratic power elite, it's that they deserve each other: just one big band of unprincipled, cynical elitists with nothing but contempt for anyone outside of their social tier—especially if, God forbid, those unwashed masses actually start trying to take some kind of control. In the long run, failing to shatter the hegemony the Democratic Party elites exercise will be a far costlier mistake than reelecting Donald Trump would be, anyway. Crises like increasing inequality, uncontrolled climate change and the much-discussed shrinking of the "middle class" threaten to push us toward some kind of quasi-dystopia, what Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"—maybe within a few decades, in my non-expert estimation. Maybe more, maybe less. If these issues aren't seriously addressed soon, Donald Trump may just be the first in a line of authoritarian demagogues to gain power, and the next one might make him look like an amateur.

It would be delusional to think these problems disappear if Bernie Sanders is elected, but electing establishment picks like Biden all but guarantees they will only get worse. But, as I've previously discussed, Biden's far from certain to beat Trump anyway. The video montages of his most unflattering moments ("150 million people have been killed [by guns] since 2007," "Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids") that I predicted in my last post have already materialized, spread by Big Don and his right-wing media allies. Anecdotally, the anger I've seen from younger voters and leftists over the past few days, as it's become clear the party elites will pull out all the stops for Biden, does not bode well for his ability to turn out former Bernie supporters. Low youth turnout alone—or a significant defection of left-leaning young voters to third party candidates—could leave Biden's odds as good as dead. But there's no need to tarry on when I've covered this ground before.

What it all comes down to is that the most important battle to be fought is not, as many would have it, between the Democratic and Republican parties. It's between the Democratic Party establishment—the network of wealthy donors, fundraisers, party insiders, political consultants, and other blood-suckers whose ilk has helped gift us with our current politico-economic nightmare—and those who refuse to accept the rule of these self-proclaimed experts for any longer. The only way the Democratic Party can effectively combat not only Trump and right-wing "populism" in general but also the many other grave threats we face is to become an authentic working class party—one that has a meaningful connection with, and is responsive to the needs of, the poor, displaced and struggling that have been betrayed by our political system and by the dynamics of twenty-first century capitalism. Nominating Bernie Sanders would only be the start of this process. Nominating Joe Biden means we make no progress at all.

*After winning only American Samoa on Super Tuesday, Bloomberg has also dropped out and thrown his support behind Biden. 

**With Super Tuesday over, it's fair to say this happened as expected. Biden how has a 65-delegate lead, though many more still remain to be allocated.