On 1 September, US president Joe Biden used a prime-time speech in Philadelphia to warn of the imminent threat to democracy from Trump and his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) Republican supporters, referring to their movement as ‘semi-fascism’. Biden is no anti-fascist or progressive; the Democrats are panicking about the mid-term elections in November.
The mid-term elections occur half-way through the term of the sitting president and are to elect members of Congress and the Senate, the upper and lower houses of the US’s bicameral system. Constituents in a district get to choose between two candidates who can raise millions of dollars to run advertising campaigns and jamborees to dazzle people to vote for them. No wonder the turnout is usually around 40%; the rest simply reject the ruling class’s chosen candidates. Trump continues to hold sway over the Republican party, with 92% of the candidates he endorsed in the primaries being successful.
While Trump and his MAGA supporters are a threat to the working class and oppressed sections of society, both on the streets and in government, the Democrats offer nothing in the battle against them. The Democrats’ only concern is managing the capitalist crisis in favour of the ruling class and looking after their imperialist interests. It emerged that the Democrats spent over $44m financing the campaigns of far-right Republican candidates in the primaries. This cynical strategy used the campaign money raised by a party claiming to protect abortion rights to promote the most bigoted anti-abortionists, on the flawed assumption that more right-wing Republican candidates will be easier to defeat in the mid-terms. The top echelons of the Democratic party sanctioned this campaign, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The 8 August FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was clearly for national security reasons rather than protecting democracy, with documents on nuclear materials and the French President recovered. 18 months on from the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol by Trump supporters attempting to block the outcome of the presidential election, only minor players have been pursued.
Biden poses as a friend of the working class, but since becoming President, with a Democrat majority in both the Senate and Congress, he has failed to implement campaign promises to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, failed to codify the right to abortion, failed to stop voter suppression (used against black people) and abandoned the PRO Act which would expand union rights. While they failed to implement democratic rights to healthcare, improved wages, voting and union rights, and along with the growing poverty (see ‘US: Whistling in the dark’ FRFI 281), the Democrats had no problem obtaining $37bn to increase the size of racist US police forces by 100,000 to protect the ruling class against the inevitable fightback.
The capitalist state in the richest nation cannot meet the needs of its people: tens of millions have medical debts, the same number face evictions, 38 million are food insecure and 60 million are exposed to unsafe drinking water. The people of Flint, Michigan still cannot get safe water pumped into their houses eight years after their plight was exposed. This is repeated across many of the poorer cities in the US. The black majority city of Jackson, Mississippi has recently had a state of emergency declared after flooding left the water system in a state of near collapse, leaving 180,000 people without water. This is not a one-off; Jackson’s water supply regularly collapses after bad winter storms, and during normal service thousands get ‘boil water’ notices. It is estimated that in the US, the water storage and delivery infrastructure requires $2.6 trillion to fix it. Biden’s infrastructure bill package in 2021 was just $579bn, for all infrastructure.
While money for working class needs is opposed, there is bipartisan approval (including the so-called left wing of the Democrats) for tens of billions of dollars to fund the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Bipartisan approval for $3.8bn every year to the racist Israeli state to continue its brutal occupation of Palestine and maintain military supremacy over Middle East nations. Both Democrats and Republicans support moves to surround and build military alliances against China. Attempting to preserve imperialist dominance is the main priority whoever controls the White House, Senate, and Congress. This is the reality of Biden’s ‘democracy.’
The Democrats are trying to use the mass popular fightback against the over-turning of Roe v Wade as a vote winning strategy. This is pure opportunism to divide the movement. Democracy is not a vote every two years, it is a struggle to fight for the needs of the working class against a tiny ruling class and its oppressive state machinery. The Democrats, the MAGA fascists and all imperialist parties are only concerned at retaining their privileges at the expense of the mass of humanity. Imperialism is destroying the environment beyond its tipping points, it creates continuous and increasingly destructive wars and repression, and cannot provide the necessities (decent healthcare, good education, adequate housing, work, food, and water) for the majority. Democracy is the fight for socialism against imperialist and capitalist barbarism.
David Hetfield
