Since July, the presidential race between current US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US President Donald Trump has been nothing short of a reactionary cir- cus. With celebrity performances and endorsements at both parties’ conventions, media diversions, and millions of dollars spent to convince the public to participate in an election between a genocidal cop and an overtly racist billionaire felon, the post-November outlook is bleak. REAGAN GRAY reports.
On 10 September, the second presidential debate took place with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump meeting for the first time. What transpired was 90 minutes of uninterrupted bickering and boasting about which candidate supports Israel more, opposes China more, which will impose harsher immigration restrictions, and which has done the most for the ‘American’ people. Trump, frustrated that he was fact checked after spewing his typical racist lies, such as the absurd assertion that Haitian immigrants were eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio, has since declined another debate before November, leaving the outcome of the elections that much harder to predict. Current polls suggest that Trump and Harris remain neck and neck just one month from election day.
More protectionism
Donald Trump’s economic plan for the country will resemble his previous term, positioning his campaign once again toward protectionism by focusing on strengthening US manufacturing, being tough on global trade, and cutting corporate tax and regulation. This will include a blanket 20% tariff on all imported goods, 100% tariff on cars manufactured in Mexico, and a heavy focus on curtailing Chinese trade with a proposed 60% tariff on all Chinese goods. While the Biden administration embraced protectionism over the past four years, leaving many of Trump’s trade policies in place from his first presidency, these promises are a clear acceleration toward isolationism. The reality is that US industry has been falling behind for two decades. In 2010, the US was replaced by China as the world’s leading manufacturer, and now the US is scrambling to keep up with efficient foreign production of crucial computer technology such as microchips and electric vehicles. Trump has tapped into this panic and is attempting to reassert US imperialist dominance on the world stage.
Trump plans to scrap Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which gives huge subsidies to businesses to invest in ‘green energy technologies’ and will instead reduce corporate tax from 35% to 21%, with an additional 5% cut for companies who produce domestically. This sweetens the deal even more for the big business sections of the capitalist class such as Silicon Valley venture capitalists and gas and oil magnates who are following the path of least resistance to their bloated profits. This is of course reflected in Trump’s donor list, which includes Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman, one of the most prominent billionaires on Wall Street; Harold Hamm, a massive oil and gas magnate who designated himself an ‘oilcrat’ rather than proclaiming any specific partisan loyalty; and of course Elon Musk, who welcomes Trump’s anti-China trade policies, as this strengthens the competitive advantage of his electric vehicle company, Tesla.
Harris’ ruling class endorsements
Harris, who raised $200m within the first week of announcing her candidacy, has similarly pulled tens of billionaire donors and endorsements from elites who prefer the stability of the more palatable liberalism that she promises. Harris and the Democrats have also focused heavily on younger voters, employing a celebrity army including Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey to appeal to her target demographic through media campaigns. Her political endorsements, however, are perhaps the most telling for the direction of her potential administration.
At the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris reinforced her commitment to centrist politics, platforming six Republicans, including Ana Navarro (daughter of a wealthy Nicaraguan landowner who joined the violent, US backed counter-revolutionary Contras). In her address to the country, Harris flexed her commitment to militarism, vowing to continue to arm Israel and bragging that the United States will remain ‘the strongest and most lethal fighting force’ in the world. This performance has since garnered endorsement from over 100 Republicans. Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s former Vice President, is at the top of the list among many other Republicans who have served under Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. The list also includes two former defence secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S Cohen; former president of the World Bank, Robert B Zoellick; former CIA directors Michael V Hayden and William H Webster; and former director of national intelligence, John D Negroponte. This war-criminal apologist section of the ruling class sees Harris as a stable imperialist leader who has a proven track record of securing the US’s military interests abroad while maintaining a ‘respectable’ demeanour.
What do these elections mean for the working class?
Amidst an affordability crisis, a predatory private health and social care system, a housing crisis, and increasing unemployment, much of the working class in the US is desperate for financial relief which neither candidate will deliver. Trump’s plans such as increased trade tariffs will likely increase the cost of goods, denting the wallets of the working class more than anyone, while lining the pockets of rich US business owners. Harris will not lift a finger for the working class. Instead, when asked about her economic plan to alleviate the strain felt by vast sections of the population, she doubled down on her commitment to the ‘middle class’ and small business owners, boasting about her proposed government assistance for first-time home buyers and her commitment to creating more ‘good union jobs’, making clear her plans to buy off the better-off sections of the working class in exchange for their votes.
The rest of the working class, as always, gets thrown to the wolves. Sixty-five per cent of people in the US report living paycheck to paycheck, having little to no social assistance or even healthcare. As of 2021, 24 million people do not have any health insurance at all, and over 20 million people have medical debt, 14 million of whom owe over $2,000. Whilst Donald Trump claims he has ‘concepts of a plan’ for future healthcare reform (unlikely), Kamala Harris has completely abandoned her Medicare for All position, and has resorted to riding the coat tail of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), which the Biden-Harris administration did little to strengthen in four years other than a long overdue insulin price cap.
Both candidates are doubling down on racist immigration laws, fostering more racist hostility toward migrant workers. Both candidates will increase police spending while black and brown people continue to be disproportionately incarcerated, executed and murdered by police. On 25 September, Marcellus ‘Khaliifah’ Williams was murdered by the state after 20 years on death row for a crime which DNA evidence proves he did not commit. This is one of 44 state executions scheduled for 2024. Neither candidate bats an eye at this; systemic murder is just commonplace for any potential leader of the US, who never fail to actively fund state-sanctioned slaughter abroad and foster state racism and violence at home.
The illusion of US democracy
Harris and the Democrats are attempting to conjure up a sense of urgency among eligible voters, claiming that to vote for her is to defend ‘American democracy’. This rhetoric is laughable given the entirely undemocratic nature of the US electoral system. For one, the Electoral College ensures that the presidency is not determined by the popular vote, but by 538 legislator appointed ‘electors’ who are not even required to reflect the majority votes of each state (as was the case for George W Bush in 2004 and Donald Trump in 2016). Further, voter suppression tactics such as gerrymandering (intentional carving up of voter districts to favour a certain party), discriminatory ID requirements, limited voting precinct hours and locations (which exclude vast numbers of working-class people) etc, are all weaponised by both parties to ensure that the interests of the petit bourgeois and ruling classes are not derailed by ‘mob rule’. Those who do manage to jump through the hoops to exercise their vote are limited to a choice between one of the two kleptocratic parties, because any third-party option is actively barred from ballots and debates through absurd bureaucratic restrictions. This election cycle is no exception.
With progressive third-party candidates such as Jill Stein of the Green Party and Claudia de la Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation gaining traction among left leaning voters due to their principled stances on major issues like Palestine, the Democrats have focused their efforts and resources on squashing these candidates who they see as a threat to their chances of a victory in November. Their tactics range from theatrical slander (attempting to frame third party candidates as ‘predatory spoilers’) to legal action to keep these third parties from being listed on ballots. The Democrats will do anything to guarantee that there is nowhere else for voters to turn. This just reinforces what we already know: that participation in a bourgeois election will not be the route to political change in the imperialist US. It will take a mass revolutionary movement of the working class who have decided that they will no longer tolerate the duopoly.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 302 October/November 2024
