November 15, 2024

Democratic Autopsy, Version n + n
If Harris tacked to the left, would it have truly saved the campaign? The editors at The Drift are sour on this, summarizing that the Democrats failed to confront the national collapse being faced by Americans due to “the fracturing of the media monoculture into a bewildering patchwork of social media platforms, podcasts, streams, and cable news networks; and the decimation, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, of offline social relationships and community institutions. Under such conditions, it is easy to suspect that anyone who insists we’re all in this together is just trying to rip you off — a suspicion that Trump is especially adept at vocalizing.”

“Understanding and truth are our best weapons”
As to our own current descent into the abyss, comrade Kurt S observes, one factor lies in the nature of disinformation. “This is nothing new — from the early 19th century on, when ruling circles have been forced to expand voting rolls, they have increased demagoguery, using cultural and ideological ‘common sense’ as a weapon in the class struggle. He points at an extranational perspective from John Clarke, a socialist writing in the left journal Canadian Dimension, noting that “any viewpoint that challenges capitalism as a system of production holds that system to be inherently exploitative and unjust, and aims to replace the existing system with a more egalitarian and sustainable social order. For capitalists and their ideological enablers, however, no such considerations can be entertained. They must deny or minimize the predatory nature of their system. …Understanding and truth are our best weapons against an exploitative society based on lies.”

Bernie’s response to the election
“The results of the 2024 election have confirmed a reality that is too frequently denied by Democratic Party leaders and strategists: The American working class is angry — and for good reason. They want to know why the very rich are getting much richer, while weekly wages remain stagnant and 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They want to know why corporate profits soar while companies shut down factories in America and move to low-wage countries. [and more] Donald Trump won this election because he tapped into that anger. Did he address any of these serious issues in a thoughtful or meaningful way? Absolutely not. What he did do was divert the festering anger in our country at a greedy and out-of-touch corporate elite into a politics that served his political goals and will end up further enriching his fellow billionaires. Trump’s “genius” is his ability to divide the working class so that tens of millions of Americans will reject solidarity with their fellow workers and pave the way for huge tax breaks for the very rich and large corporations.” More from Sen. Sanders’s op-ed in the Boston Globe

Fletcher: Labor Now Needs to Be an Anti-Fascist Movement
“MAGA forces have begun what they believe to be their final offensive against everything on the Left. One way to fight back is for organized labor to become a conscious anti-fascist movement.” A plan and exhortation from our comrade Bill Fletcher Jr. in In These Times. And Bill F writing with Dave Zirin, a similarly themed article in The Nation. via Portside

The Lesson of This Election: We Must Stop Inflation Before It Starts
The NYT’s headline is a little bland to announce striking dismal-science findings that are no surprise to socialists: the “Shock Doctrine” lives on. When economists “analyzed more than 130,000 earnings calls of publicly listed U.S. companies [they] found that businesses can coordinate price hikes around cost shocks. This enabled companies, by and large, to pass on or amplify the impact of the initial cost increase in response to shocks in [for example] the wake of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. In other words, the sudden news of cost shocks, like the onset of a pandemic and war, grants companies more freedom to coordinate price hikes across sectors because they realize that their rivals are very likely going to do the same.” [our emphasis] So the data show that “price gouging” is not a savage act of an individual capitalist but a coolly calculated, opportunistic and routine practice across sectors. New York Times op-ed

History Rhymes in MSG
Trump’s pre-election rally in Madison Square Garden was infamous for the ugly bigotry that suffused it (though unfortunately it did not dissuade his voters). Our comrade Kurt S offers this archive article from People’s World, “22,000 workers in Madison Square Garden forge united front against fascism” about a 1933 rally in the same venue, providing a reminder that the resistance to fascism begins with building a united front.