Introduction. Let’s be clear at the outset: 2024 was Kamala Harris’ and the Democratic Party’s election to lose, and they lost it decisively. Trump and the Republicans will shortly control the presidency, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and much of the lower Federal court system as well.
This result was not pre-ordained. It reveals more of the real political dynamics to say that Harris lost this election than to say that Trump won it. Of course, both statements are factually true. Yet, starting from the perspective of Harris losing tells us a lot about the underlying political dynamic. My goal in this essay is to situate the Harris loss in an historical context that looks back both to the Biden administration as well as further in the past. My hope is to provide a framework that can help Greens and other leftists learn from this retrospective context to develop a strategy that will move us forward.
Election 2024: Harris vs. Trump. If there is one statistic that summarizes the causes of Trump’s electoral victory in the popular vote, it is this: Trump got somewhat more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. The difference? Harris got about 7.4 million fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020. In 2020 Biden obtained 81.3 million votes nationwide while Trump got 74.2 million. 1 In 2024 Harris received 73.9 million, Trump 76.5 million. 2 The number of eligible voters who did not vote in 2024 increased from 80.9 million in 2020 to 89.3 million in 2024, an increase of over 8 million non-voters who apparently saw no meaningful difference between Harris and Trump. Harris’s Wall Street economic pitch fell flat. 3
By comparison, the Green Party candidate Jill Stein got about 767,000 votes, or about 0.5%, about half of what she received in 2016, presumably due to heightened fear of a second Trump presidency, as well as Democratic Party voter suppression. 4 In 2000, to cite another comparison, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received over 2.8 million votes. 5
The historic roots of Democratic Party failure. The mainstream press has dealt almost exclusively with the short term economic and social conditions that allowed Trump to triumph. On the economy, this included especially inflation, social factors including immigration and the decline of white Christian hegemony. While these factors are important, what is largely omitted are the longer term changes that made this politically possible. We ignore them at our peril.
It was Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan who began the shift from FDR’s New Deal policies, continued and supported by Carter’s predecessors Lyndon Johnson, (e.g., Medicare), and even Richard Nixon (e.g., the EPA and OSHA) Carter broke the New Deal chain. As historian David Gibbs has written:
“In using budgetary austerity as a means of controlling inflation, Carter faced a serious constraint: There was a campaign to boost military spending,[…] It seemed that business interests wanted to reduce government spending in virtually all areas—except the military. In response, Carter announced substantial increases in military spending in 1979, the first such expansion in a decade. Meanwhile, the president continued to hold down domestic spending in such areas as education and anti-poverty programs. The promised program of universal health care was abandoned, as excessively inflationary.” 6
It was Bill Clinton, however, who centered neoliberalism as the essential core of the Democratic Party economic policy. As historians Nathan Lichtenstein and Judith Stein have written,
[Clinton] was the president who implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and oversaw the imposition of work requirements onto welfare; who failed to shore up labor law against business assault; who championed the World Trade Organization; who dropped the ball on health care reform; who deregulated not only telecom but also the finance industry, leading more or less directly to the 2008 recession; who prioritized balanced budgets over social spending, privatized large swathes of government bureaucracy, and who claimed that “the era of big government is over,” 7
Little has changed substantively during the Obama and Biden years. Obama’s signature social welfare program, the Affordable Care Act, is, unlike traditional Medicare, based on the for-profit insurance system. Nevertheless, it has been a significant benefit to many who had previously been unable to afford medical care. Biden has continued this neoliberal tradition, leaving working people with fewer jobs, less income, and diminishing hope for a better future for them and their children.
The organized labor movement declined in parallel with the Democratic and Republican sponsored rise of neoliberalism. Labor union density decline began in the 1950’s from a peak of over 30% of the labor force. The decline accelerated during the Clinton years, and has now reached a low of about 10%. 8 Workers’ wages as a share of national income 9 have been falling for over 50 years, while the income share of the 1% has grown 10 (and will almost certainly continue to grow under Trump).Is it any wonder that many workers have turned from the Democrats to support Trump?
The historic failure(s) of the socialist left. Within the last century or so, there have been three periods of significant growth of the US socialist left, broadly defined. This began with the Socialist Party of the Debs era (roughly 1910-1920), the rise of the Communist Party (roughly 1935-1948) and the rise of the New Left and its Marxist-influenced allies (roughly 1965-1975). This leaves aside important but episodic movements, like the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s, antiwar protests of the early 2000’s, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and more recently, Black Lives Matter.
This is not the place to go into detail over these dynamics. It is worth noting, however, that the decline of the organized left following 1975, the parallel decline of the labor movement in the same period, and the union bureaucracy’s close ties to the Democrats, opened the road to the Democratic Party’s full embrace of neoliberalism. The Democratic Party has not faced a meaningful left-wing opposition in half a century,
The failure of the organized left has allowed the Democratic Party to pursue its neoliberal agenda. It has taken for granted a fragmented and disorganized left. This is an open invitation to carry out its neoliberal agenda, unhindered by socialists, communists, trade unionists, and even new leftists. Combining this with the decline of the labor movement, neoliberals thought they had charted a smooth path to continued electoral victory.
But now, to paraphrase Malcolm X, the chickens have come home to roost. Fifty years of neoliberalism have driven a wedge between the Democratic Party and the base that the party establishment counted upon for electoral majorities.
In parallel, a path has opened to the realignment of the Republican Party. The full embrace of far right-wing MAGA Trumpism has shifted the blame from neoliberal capitalism on to immigrants. Trump is now seen by many as clearing a path out of the neoliberal failure, however illusory that may be.
Looking towards the future. As we approach 2025, we are entering into an apparently new political period. The Trump regime will soon regain political power better prepared than it was eight years ago. The Democratic Party is, at least for now, a spent force. The Left is weak and divided.
Popular resistance to the worst of Trump’s policies is inevitable, as is repression from the Trump regime. There are several areas where resistance to Trumpism (and capitalism more generally) is likely to arise.
- Immigration. Trump appears ready to resume workplace raids. He also apparently intends to call a state of emergency, allowing the US military to establish internment camps for the undocumented, reminiscent of camps for Japanese-Americans of World War II (or even worse).
- Palestine solidarity. The development of campaigns in solidarity with Palestine has been one of the few bright spots in the US political landscape of the last year. This largely youth-led movement has returned resistance to the campus and has been met by apparently coordinated repression.
- Working class resistance. After 50 years of neoliberalism, working class resistance has taken two forms. First, there is the electoral shift towards Trump among some sections of the class. Second, there is the modest (yet real) uptick in trade union militancy. This may be seen in the campaigns for union organizing (for example Amazon and Starbucks), and also in an uptick in strikes, some of which, like the rail workers, were sabotaged by the Biden administration.
- Climate crisis. Trump and his climate-change-denying allies are poised to follow Biden in expanding significantly fossil fuel output at the expense of renewables. We have little time to reverse the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
- Political democracy. We should not lose sight of the inherent failure of the flawed electoral system that brought Trump and his followers to power. The call for ranked choice voting, proportional representation, and public financing of electoral campaigns should find a receptive audience.
Green Party organizing for the future Butch Ware, the Green Party’s 2024 vice-presidential candidate, sketched out some goals in anticipation of his 2026 California governor’s race. Having made some modifications and additions to account for the differing context (for which I take sole responsibility the blame), these may serve as a starting point for a discussion of Green Party strategic goals. 11
- We need to find ways to improve coordination both within the party and within the broader left, from the local to the national level. We should seek coordination with like-minded groups and individuals as well, both through activism and through electoral politics. New Green Horizons is one potential medium to facilitate discussion among Greens at all levels throughout the US and internationally.
- We need to fight to win. It is not enough to simply run symbolic electoral campaigns. We are not a once-in-four-years party. Our history demonstrates that we can win, especially at the local level. 12
- We need to develop our volunteer base to provide a repository of experience, able to be called on, both to organize a demonstration or to staff an electoral campaign. Discussions of politics, history, and practice at all levels and among all Green activists must play an important role in this process.
- We need to expand our demographic base. The 2024 election opened new demographics to our base, especially among supporters of Palestine solidarity, including among Muslim Americans, Latinx, African Americans, and youth. We must find ways to reach the millions of eligible voters, especially within the working class, who are so alienated from the two-party system that they do not even bother to vote.
- We must expand our donor base. The Green Party is built largely on volunteer labor, but even a volunteer-based party needs money. Election campaigns, if they are to be successful especially at the state and national levels, but also at the local level, need adequate funding. Yet we often scrape along at the bare minimum, or typically even less. It should go without saying (but I will say it anyway) that we will not accept dark money or corporate funding.
- We need to combine activism, political education, and electoral work. These are three aspects of the same project. In addition, helping to build the alternative solidarity economy (such as mutual aid networks, cooperatives, and community gardens, for example), gives us the opportunity to spread our message among those who share many of our values and are likely to vote Green.
As Trump prepares to take office, The near-term future may seem bleak. We should recognize, however, the potential support that Greens have among the American people. In 2021, 66 percent of those surveyed thought the US economic system needed to be completely reformed or needed major change. 85 percent held similar views regarding the US political system. These or similar views may have motivated some to support Trump in 2024, but this is based on a dangerous illusion. Our challenge is to merge this critical alienation with a Green way forward.
Notes
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
- https://www.cookpolitical.com/vote-tracker/2024/electoral-college
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/us/politics/harris-trump-economy.htm
- https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_2024
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader_2000_presidential_campaign
- https://www.compactmag.com/article/americas-first-neoliberal-president/
- https://jacobin.com/2023/08/a-fabulous-failure-review-bill-clinton-neoliberalism-capitalism
- https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-and-the-us-economy
- https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/a-new-look-at-the-declining-labor-share-of-income-in-the-united-states
- https://inequality.org/facts/income-inequality/
- Speech to Green Party California General Assembly, Nov, 23, 2024. The meeting was held online and the Green Party California has retained a recording.
- https://www.gpelections.org/