The polarization around the 2024 US elections creates tensions among socialists, as well as the general population. We have to discuss the elections, pose questions, and advance hypotheses, but we should be patient with each other in doing so. After the elections, we’ll be on the same side, facing whatever comes.
If I thought the election of Donald Trump and the Republicans would destroy US bourgeois democracy, and the election of Kamala Harris and the Democrats would preserve it, I’d draw the conclusion some socialists do: Advocate a vote for Harris and the Democrats. I don’t think either premise is true, so I draw a different conclusion. A Republican victory won’t destroy bourgeois democracy in the US, and a Democratic victory won’t preserve it.
The 2020 US elections had the highest turnout since 1952. Just over a third of those eligible to vote cast ballots for Joe Biden, just under a third cast ballots for Donald Trump, and the remaining third didn’t vote. As a result, the Democrats narrowly won the presidency and won a slight majority in the House and Senate.
The elections this year are likely to be even closer. Voters are unhappy with the Biden administration. Normally, this would doom the incumbents. The Democrats have a chance only because a majority of the population supports abortion rights, and the Republican Party does not.
If Harris and the Democrats win the 2024 elections, they’re almost certain to lose the 2028 elections. Not because of what Jill Stein or Cornel West do, but because of what the Democrats fail to do.
The Democrats are the lesser evil to the Republicans, but apart from rhetoric, little changed from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. Government policy remained largely the same, not only on militarism, war, and the economy, but also on policing, immigration, and the environment.
The Republicans will win in 2024 or 2028, but that won’t mean the end of bourgeois democracy in the US. Democracy is still the best shell for capitalist rule, and the two-party system works well for the capitalists. The government can do only what a preponderance of the ruling class wants it to do, and the alternation between Democrats and Republicans keeps 150 million people tied to what they regard as the lesser evil.
In this situation, the highest priority for socialists is to continue to raise the perspective of escaping the two-party system through a mass working-class party. The most important electoral step we can take this year is to maximize the vote for Jill Stein and Cornel West, whose candidacies, while imperfect, expose the shell game of the two-party system and provide a way to protest it.
After the elections, we will need to fight whoever wins the elections. Resistance was possible under both Trump and Biden. In fact, it was politically easier under Trump, since the Democrats weren’t running interference for him. It will be possible under Trump or Harris. That should be our focus.
