Bill Mullen analyses the need for a break with the reductive politics of the “lesser of two evils.” A bold hopeful and revolutionary alternative must emerge from the pits of political mediocrity and authoritarianism associated with the duopoly parties of the US. But this politics needs to find its feet in locating the alternative itself and build around it a programmatic analysis of the path forward.
U.S. presidential politics have historically developed along what Socialists call the “lesser of two evils” axis Liberals, progressives, and those left-of-center are usually browbeaten by the Democratic Party, ultra-leftists, and themselves into voting against the conservative Republican candidate by exaggerated claims of looming fascism or authoritarianism.
Donald Trump’s caricatured authoritarian personality coupled with his egregious racism, sexism, and xenophobia gave the “lesser of two evil” scare potency in both 2016, when he defeated Hillary Clinton, and 2020, when he lost to Joe Biden. This year, U.S. presidential politics has presented a twist on an old formula: Kamala Harris is presenting herself not as a lesser evil to Trump but the more joyous face of a new, dangerous reign of American reaction. Her candidacy represents a sharp, continuing rightward shift in U.S. politics which the threat of Trumpism has both produced and given cover for. The situation calls for new analysis and strategy by revolutionary socialists.
In her recent debate with Trump, Harris staked out a number of classical right-wing positions: a protector of small business; pro-law, pro-cop; tough on immigrants, border-crossers, and criminals. She promised Israel an endless stream of weapons while repeating grotesque and debunked allegations that Hamas committed mass rape on October 7th. Harris also came out hard for fracking and fossil fuels, completely ignoring the ongoing capitalist climate disaster. On abortion, she declared support for women’s “bodily autonomy” while offering no commitment to restoring federal abortion rights. These rights have been frittered away by the Democratic Party, which has held the White House for twelve of the last sixteen years—the era of Roe V. Wade’s disappearance. Harris also steered away from any endorsement of labor unions or workers’ rights, and failed to address matters of significant importance to poor and working-class communities facing crises of drug and alcohol addiction without protections of health insurance or health care
Harris’s fundamental casting of herself as a friendly voice of discipline and reaction—she cheerily boasted of possessing a gun—was underscored by rhetorical appeals to the right and even far right: she noted that 200 leading Republicans had endorsed her candidacy, and heaped praise on the “late, great, John McCain,” an ardently militaristic former Republican senator and presidential candidate who gave full-throated support for U.S. imperial adventuring, including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain made headlines for once singing about the bombing of Iran to a Beach Boys song
Harris’s moves are consistent with the Democratic Party’s ongoing surge to the right and proud capture of the mantle of Party of Capital and War. Indeed, Democrats like Barack Obama and Joe Biden have played a key role in rehabilitating the image of U.S. war criminal George W. Bush, cheerleading a form of imperial nostalgia meant to solidify the party’s nationalist and imperialist bona fides. Harris underscored these too during the debate, using hawkish neo-Cold War rhetoric to promise upgraded competitive malice towards China, a continued U.S. global war against “terrorism,” and an if-necessary military challenge to Vladimir Putin.
Harris and the Democrats endeavor to solidify its position as the hegemon of U.S. imperialism has worked at the top levels of power in America: former Vice-President Dick Cheney, lead architect of the war against Iraq and the war on terror, recently endorsed Harris
So too did Bush White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who provided justifications for the use of torture against so-called terrorism suspects Mainstream media have depicted these endorsements as evidence that Trump has driven many Republicans out of the party. But there is a deeper political story to be told here of U.S. imperialism and the ruling class reconsolidating under the Democratic Party banner as a culmination of inter-imperial rivalry with China and support for Israel’s genocidal war—two Democratic party planks since the Obama era coming home to roost. Put another way, there is a ruling class realignment taking place in the U.S. which continues to shed any vestiges of social welfarism while doubling down on economic discipline and political violence against the working-class and the oppressed globally. This is a kinder, gentler version of strong-arm neoliberal rule that has pushed the far right to the center globally: from Modi’s India to Meloni’s Italy to LePen’s National Rally party in France. If as the Left has always argued liberalism continually widens the door for far-right politics, that moment is now seeking flowering and accommodation under the banner of Harris/Walz “centrism.”
Harris’s habitation of fresh-faced reaction also completes the alchemizing of race and gender into a new tool of state warfare against the world’s working classes and poor. Republicans like George Bush strategically used minority leaders like General Colin Powell to market and drive the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq (Powell notoriously carried water for the Bush Administration’s debunked claims about Sadaam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”). Barack Obama inherited this race mantle seamlessly as the first Black U.S. president, deporting more immigrants than his Republican predecessor, glorying in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and backing the police against the Black Lives Matter movement. Obama’s first major policy move as President—bailing out the banks, while offering a pittance of relief to U.S. workers during the 2007-2008 capitalist crisis—foretold his capacity as a “Black face in a high place” to represent and defend the ruling class against all comers. Multicultural or intersectional imperialism, to use Charisse Burden-Stelly’s apt phrase for the Harris candidacy, is now a dominant paradigm in U.S. politics.
What does this mean for the U.S. working-class and revolutionary socialist left? First, it requires recognizing that hundreds of thousands of people, especially among the downtrodden and oppressed, are well-past the trap of “lesser evilism” as a seduction. Never in recent U.S. history have so many in the U.S. been less fooled. Leading the way in this recognition are Arab and Palestinians who immediately after the U.S. made its bloodlust support for Israel’s genocide apparent began the “uncommitted” voting campaign to reject the Democratic Party. The seriousness of this challenge was on display this past summer when the “People’s Conference for Palestine” convened in Detroit, Michigan This coalition of mass Palestinian organizations constituted an endeavor, in some ways like the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party movement in 1964, to coalesce a formation in challenge to the Democratic Party based on its exclusionary forms of domination. Many Arab and Palestinians this year will likely vote where they can for so-called “Third Party” candidates like Jill Stein of the Green Party who has openly opposed the U.S. genocide. Still others may support African-American theologian, scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West running with BLM organizer Melina Abdullah running as independent candidates for the Presidency. However, restrictive U.S. election rules and funding requirements (created and administered by the two U.S. ruling parties) to appear on state and federal ballots mean neither has a chance of winning.
The recently held national Socialism 2024 conference in Chicago showed some recognition of the opportunities available for the revolutionary Left in this conjuncture More than 2,300 people attended the conference, the largest in the U.S. in recent memory. The conference was driven by the politics of Palestinian liberation and anti-genocide: session after session attacked the U.S.-Zionist partnership. Leading Palestinian activists and intellectuals like Noura Erakat, rank-and-file graduate student organizers like Sherena Razek, and anti-Zionist Jewish writers like Maya Wind all advocated for an expanded Palestinian BDS movement from below while debunking support for the Harris/Walz administration as a free pass for genocide. Yet the Socialism conference as a whole clung to without advancing new analysis of the “lesser evil” argument. The calls to not vote Harris/Walz were not matched by programmatic analysis of how the revolutionary left can and should rebuild its forces, even as thousands are seeking a real political alternative to the status quo.
This remains then the fundamental task of the revolutionary Left. Between now and the November election, unflagging thought and planning should be given as to how to combine the best forces on the revolutionary Left into a new fighting whole. This task will become especially urgent given either possible outcome in November: a Trump victory will revive and reignite the proto-fascist forces on the ground that have supported him since 2016, and open the floodgates for a raft of repressive mechanisms he has already promised if elected A Harris/Walz victory will only normalize the Palestinian genocide further, while sanctioning the Democratic Party’s rightward-lurching hegemony. Indeed those “lesser evilists” warning about a Trump victory based on repression of dissent could hardly come up with a better model than the vicious, violent, nation-wide crackdown on Palestinian protesters this past Spring fully endorsed by the sitting Democratic Party. That crackdown has resulted in arrests, bodily harm, criminal charges, expulsions, mental health breakdowns, suspensions, and a new regime of Zionist repression from the halls of federal government down to the smallest workplaces in America not to mention University campuses.
What is also true is that either a Trump of Harris/Walz victory will push thousands of people in the U.S. closer to revolutionary politics: the former because of the more naked threat of hyper-authoritarian rule, the latter because of predictable disillusionment as Harris and Walz continue to arm Israel, deport immigrants, fail to redistribute social welfare, and stand back as the U.S. working-class descends further into worsening work conditions and standards of living. Harris has already tipped her backward-looking hand in this direction, glorifying the murderous U.S. invasion of Iraq on the anniversary of 9/11.
It is worth remembering that it was the false promises of Obama progressivism combined with ever-increasing economic immiseration which generated the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements and the rise of Democratic Socialism in the U.S. We should be prepared for history to repeat itself in different guise, and to build from lessons learned and new analysis the revolutionary socialist movement we desperately need.
