The trajectory of the 2024 US presidential elections remains unclear as the Republicans and Democrats scramble to consolidate support amid a tumultuous election cycle. REAGAN GREY reports.
A change of leadership for the Democrats
Current US president Joe Biden’s abysmal performance at the first presidential debate against Donald Trump on 27 June sparked a media frenzy once again calling into question his mental fitness and ability to assume office for a second term at 81 years old. The public uproar following the debate catalysed massive splits among the Democratic Party and its supporters, seeing prominent party members such as former US president Barack Obama urging the president to step aside and allow for another candidate to run at the top of the ticket. This undeniable blow to Biden’s already poor public perception led to an inevitable hit to campaign funding and endorsement. Big ticket donors to Future Forward, a Super Political Action Committee (PAC) threatened to withhold $90m so long as Biden remained the Democratic nominee. A Super PAC is a tax-exempt organisation that can raise and spend unrestricted amounts of campaign donations to forward their chosen political agenda. With the threat of more big-ticket donors jumping ship, the Democrats made a last-ditch effort to salvage their chances of a victory in November. The fallout culminated on 21 July with Joe Biden’s official withdrawal from the race and his subsequent endorsement of US Vice President Kamala Harris as the prospective Democratic nominee. Now it is all but confirmed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be the 2024 US Presidential candidates.
While donors and members of the Democratic party may have breathed a sigh of relief when Harris’s campaign was announced, for the working class, it will only be the same old story. As a self-named ‘Top Cop’ and former public prosecutor, Harris has years of experience upholding the deeply punitive and racist carceral system. More than anything, having served four years under Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will naturally step into her role as the head of the racist, imperialist Democratic party. Throughout their time in office, the Biden-Harris administration has wielded a series of attacks on the left and the working class, going back on nearly all their progressive promises made during the 2020 campaign in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. Democrats increased police funding by $300m in 2023 alone to put 100,000 more racist police on the streets. Biden and Harris cracked down on immigration, deporting more than 1.1 million migrants, stopping another 6.3 million at the border, and enacting an executive order to bar new migrants from applying for political asylum in the US. Amid an affordability crisis, the Democratic administration never budged on raising the national minimum wage of $7.25, which has not changed in 15 years despite soaring inflation. They have continued to stoke the fire of the US war machine, signing a law to send $94bn in aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan in April 2024. Kamala Harris will undoubtedly fall in line, as she has consistently backed the Zionist agenda throughout her political career, denouncing pro-Palestine protests and accepting nearly $200,000 from pro-Israel lobby groups. The Democrats will surely not change their tune as November approaches but will focus their energy on fear mongering against Donald Trump as an ‘existential threat to American democracy’.
Donald Trump claws his way toward reelection
Since his loss in the 2020 Presidential election, Donald Trump has had his sights set on returning to the White House one way or another. His efforts to discredit the outcome of the 2020 elections gave way to the 6 January insurrection attempt on Congress. Trump’s role in stoking the flames of the insurrection led to the second impeachment of his presidency, making him the first president in US history to be impeached twice. Despite Donald Trump’s involvement in four separate criminal proceedings in 2023, Trump has thus far managed to avoid any legal repercussions thanks to landmark Supreme Court decision which ruled in favor of limited immunity for a sitting president, and a Florida judge’s dismissal of the case which could have found him guilty of conspiracy to withhold or conceal classified documents after leaving office.
Furthering his image of invincibility among his supporters, on 13 July, Donald Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt during his presidential rally in Pennsylvania. The shot, less than an inch from being a fatal blow to the skull, has Republicans even more strongly unified behind their candidate, some, including Trump himself, deeming his survival an act of God (although with four sitting US presidential assassinations, and at least ten more attempts in US history, this was hardly an unprecedented event). The Republican National Convention, which commenced on 16 July, presented a unified right rallying behind Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance as they accepted the nomination.
Who has a stake in Trump 2024?
Donald Trump’s voter base demonstrates a contradictory sort of right-wing populism that, in many cases, aligns around his rhetoric and persona rather than his policy. His campaign has been focused on positioning himself as a strong leader who will preserve ‘American Tradition’ in attempts to appeal to a socio-economically stratified voter base. The reactionary sections of the working class who are enticed by Trump’s racist dog whistles and dubious promises to halt inflation have been even further validated by Trump’s running mate JD Vance, who has built his political career off of blue-collar bootstrap meritocracy. His evangelical conservative base is enticed by his ‘pro-life’ attacks on reproductive rights and performative Christian values – Trump having appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices during his first term tipped the judiciary balance in overturning Roe v Wade and has given way to the criminalisation of abortion in 14 states so far. Ultimately, Trump is most aligned with his fellow billionaire ruling class, who are banking on him to come through with corporate and individual tax cuts and continue the trend of deregulation seen in his first term as president. While Trump’s tendencies toward protectionism present a quandary for some sections of the ruling class who are reliant on unchecked globalisation and free trade to extract wealth, his proposed tariffs which focus heavily on Chinese trade are appealing to billionaires such as Elon Musk, who see a window of opportunity for a competitive advantage in the electric vehicle industry. It is yet to be seen whether Trump will leverage enough support and money from his base to become the 47th president, but if so, Donald Trump will undoubtedly carry on the legacy of the Democrats in his racist attacks on migrants, violent suppression of political dissent, and unbridled support for the genocidal Israeli state.
Two sides of the same coin
While the bipartisan electoral system plays out and the ruling class places its bets on which party will best serve its material interests, the working class and the global majority will continue to bear the brunt of the violence that the heads of state inflict from both sides of the aisle. Until there is a unified working class movement that explicitly challenges the bloodthirsty imperialist parasitism of the US capitalist system, the US will continue barreling down a path of reaction and decay. The circus of the 2024 presidential elections is a clear representation of the contradiction at the heart of an entirely undemocratic system, where the US public is once again compelled to participate in an election between two morally bankrupt parties committed only to further engorging the ruling class and upholding the bloody agenda of the US empire.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
