A Progressive Take on the Harris Coronation.

Biden’s carefully orchestrated punt came on the heels of the Republican National Convention, an assassination attempt on his rival for the presidency and ongoing fallout from a disastrous debate appearance when the entire world witnessed the worst kept secret ever: Biden is not and has not been up to running the executive office for quite some time.

The ads had already stopped after the attempted assassination. Rumors of a defiant Biden closing ranks were circulating. He’s angry with Obama. Angry with Pelosi. Oh, the betrayal. Forget that he said he would be a one-term president. ‘I wanna stay. It’s my job and you’ll pry it from my cold dead hands like a rifle in Charlton Heston’s hands.’ And now he’s the most patriotic narcissist since John McCain. You sir are a patriot for stepping down. Now step aside.

Whatever. Now the jig is fully up. They left it as close as possible to the convention so that one major nagging reality would circumvent all of the possible scenarios. The DNC had $92 million reasons to hold this announcement. That’s the amount of cash on hand left in the Biden/Harris coffers. Not Biden’s coffers. The Biden/Harris campaign, which means that if she’s the anointed one then she gets to determine what happens with that money.

And so the decision has been made for us once again. And immediately the mainstream liberal media went into overdrive selling us on the fact that 1) there’s not enough time for an open convention, 2) the money is pledged to Kamala so the decision is hers and 3) won’t it be just desserts for Trump to lose to a Black woman?

Watch for yourself. Watch all of the major liberal pundits on mainstream outlets repeat these claims over and over and over again.

So let’s get all of the talking points out of the way.

The DNC couldn’t push Harris out of the way because she’s half the ticket. Not to mention she’ll be the first woman of color in the position to become president. It would be rude and unseemly and oh so undemocratic to pull the nomination from her and run an open convention.

Really? That’s the part that’s undemocratic? Running a closed convention with a fait accompli nominee who ran last in the presidential primary in 2020, polls just as terrible as the person she’s replacing and stands for literally every single unpopular position that put Democrats in this place to begin? This is literally the most undemocratic thing you could do.

But why are the progressives in the Squad lining up behind Harris now? If you’re such a progressive, why aren’t you supporting this move as well?

As I’ve said before, there’s no margin in progressives standing on the front lines of calling for the removal of Biden or denouncing Harris. Why? Because the convention has been ruined by Superdelegates. Just watch our video from last week. If the progressive mount an offensive in the open, they will be accused of spoiling the race when Harris eventually loses to Trump. And more on why that’s going to happen in a moment because that’s really the point here.

The progressives have a chance to make a good showing at the convention with organic floor nominations and speaking slots to normalize some new faces and some old ideas. But the convention is a wrap folks. It has already been decided. So rather than be the patsies in a losing election year, the progressives aren’t allowing the establishment to hang this upcoming drubbing around their necks.

We’re fighting for midterms and 2028 now because the establishment has made up its mind and we’re not in the mix.

But what about the Supreme Court?

What about it? What about when Merrick Garland was blocked by McConnell? What about when RBG wasn’t politely asked to step down when we could have done something about it? What about the Democrats on the judiciary making all of Leonard Leo’s nominees for the court pinky promise that they would be good, instead of giving them the Robert Bork treatment? What about the clear, albeit thin supermajorities over the years that would have allowed them to codify Roe into law rather than leave it hanging by a thread on bad precedent?

You can’t keep pulling the football away from us.

But Trump is an existential threat!

Couldn’t agree more. His last term was a disaster and now he knows where all the bodies are buried and has the code to the men’s room in the Oval Office. You better start paying attention down ballot and putting some stuff on the agenda that resonates with people such as:

• Expand the child tax credit as a direct payment again.
  
  
• Use those lame duck powers to wipe out student debt, or at least put forward a plan to refinance all student loan debt at reasonable rates to put private lenders out of business.
  
  
• Expand Medicare and Medicaid and force private insurers out of the marketplace.
  
  
• Increase the minimum wage.
  
  
• Implement a windfall tax on corporations responsible for crushing consumers as they rack up historic profits.
  
  
• Demand a ceasefire in Gaza and create an independent commission to rebuild Gaza, force Israel to remove settlements in the West Bank lest they lose funding from the United States entirely.
  
  
• Put forward a comprehensive plan to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and deploy massive economic support in LAC nations to address the root causes of immigration.
  
  
• Universal background checks.
  
  
• No more fossil fuel subsidies.
  
  
• Greater union protections.

In other words, all of those things that poll really well and make an actual difference in people’s lives.

Instead, we’re running an ideological replica of the candidate for the person who lost the plot on all of these things. All you hear from the Democrats right now is fear. That’s the playbook of the insurgents, not the incumbents. Think about all of the talking points and fundraising emails. It’s all about Project 2025, abortion access and general fear mongering around Trump’s statement that he’ll only be a dictator on day one. And now they’re on message talking about how old Trump is. They’re rolling back all of the things that made people sick about him personally and ignoring the one thing that is nearly universal among voters around the country. Black or white, Jewish or Muslim, working class or upper middle class, old or young: Economic insecurity.

When Biden won in 2020 it’s because Trump bungled a global health emergency. And yet he still got 74 million votes, which was 11 million more than he got against Hillary Clinton. It took historic turnout from voters who were burned out by Trump’s erratic behavior and our general unease from the pandemic to get this guy out of office.

After two impeachments, former staffers sent to prison, an insurrection, multiple indictments, felony convictions that finally stuck and even an attempted assassination, and this guy is still standing and ahead in the polls. Why? Because when Americans are asked one simple question—were you better off under Trump or Biden—the answer is resoundingly the same.

(Hint. It’s not Biden.)

It’s not about jobs if your job doesn’t pay enough to cover the bills.

The historically socialist programs under Donald Trump because of COVID—yes, I said socialist—are what made his years economically palatable and people nostalgic. Because of the socialist child tax payments, welfare relief, extended unemployment benefits, eviction moratoriums, student debt payment moratoriums, bankruptcy protections, free healthcare and free vaccines, Americans briefly got a taste of the awesome power of the American purse when it’s put toward general health and welfare, instead of corporate subsidies and warfare.

Under a second Trump term the last vestiges of these programs, to the extent that they even still exist, will be stripped away and replaced by even more corporate friendly measures, deregulation for the donor class and incarceration, bankruptcy and general punishment of the working class.

All the while the media will breathlessly sell you on the optics. It’s good versus evil, black versus white, old against young, the past versus the future. Soaring rhetorical flourishes that amount to nothing when you can’t pay your mortgage or rent, your credit cards and student loans. That’s what the pundit class and establishment doesn’t understand. We’ve said from the beginning of this tortured affair that what matters come election time is how Americans feel about their economic prospects. Not whether they have a job. It’s not the same thing.

Are they riding the wave, treading water or under it? That’s all. That’s the majority.

The democrats want us to believe that bottom up middle out is working, and it might very well be working for the corporate class, but there’s a reason those big financial packages they passed way back when were spread out over ten years. The Infrastructure Bill was passed at the end of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act was toward the end of 2022. Both have a ten year outlook and invested heavily in infrastructure related projects and some poverty alleviation measures that need years to roll out and pay dividends for American workers. Democrats not only needed these to take root faster, but they needed to guarantee that they would hold onto at least the White House so they couldn’t be overridden by new legislation in Congress.

In their haste to fuck progressives and pass these bills, they took out everything that was meaningful to progressives to teach them a lesson. It was childish. They abandoned core Green New Deal initiatives; made important but only marginal gains on prescription drug coverage for seniors; punted on punishing corporations for collusion and gouging; abandoned the $15 minimum wage; removed all talk of Medicare for All from legislation or policy positions; didn’t codify Roe into law; walked away from expanding welfare benefits such as paid family leave or direct child tax credit payments.

They held these out as carrots for progressives and beat them with a stick whenever they asked about them. All because they wanted to show who was in control and put an end to the Bernie movement once and for all.

And did they ever.

And now you want our help? Again? Running a candidate from the same ticket that did all of this? A ticket that funds and supports the war in Gaza, leading to a historic collapse of support among voters of color and Arab descent? A ticket that closed the border to appear tougher than even Trump on immigration, instead of fighting tooth and nail for a pathway to citizenship, thus leaving millions of undocumented workers under threat of imminent deportation? A ticket that never once pressured the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates like Trump did when he was in office? That let the fossil fuel companies get away with documented price fixing and collusion all the while expanding oil and gas leases? That continued to allow big tech companies to harvest and sell our data? That did the bare minimum on student debt relief even though it was always and still is within their purview to pursue large scale debt relief?

So, yeah. Forgive me if I’m not excited.

The DNC and the donor class were so focused on extinguishing the last vestiges of leftist populism under Bernie that they forgot who they were supposed to be working for.

I know people who say that they would vote for a tuna can over Trump and I completely understand. I also understand that when Trump survived that assassination attempt and raised his fist in defiance that it gave cover to all of the middle of the road Republicans who didn’t want to admit in polite company that they want another tax cut to say, “gotta hand it to him, he’s tougher than I thought.”

Not so long ago we thought we would make history by electing the first woman president with Hillary Clinton because she was running against a pig. Well, guess what? In August of 2016, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating was around 56%. As of July, Harris’ is 51%. More than half of likely voters found Clinton unfavorable. More than half now find Harris unfavorable. So what about Donald Trump’s unfavorable ratings? Doesn’t matter. His were higher than Hillary’s and they’re higher than Harris’. He’s the greatest political anomaly in American history.

Last time it took a pandemic to get him out of office and his supporters were so fucking energized they turned out 74 million strong and then tried to overthrow the government. Do you really think there’s that much energy on the democratic side this time?

As I’ve said a thousand times. Progressives lost this race a long time ago when none of our agenda items made it to the ballot, the DNC foreclosed on the primaries, and put the donor class ahead of the working class. But sure, on the one day of the year that you seem to care about, a lot of us might still show up. And hold our noses. And we won’t say I told you so when Arab Muslims in Michigan don’t show up, when Black working class voters stay home because you sold them a bill of goods again, when disenfranchised Obama-turned-Trump voters stay with Trump, or vote for RFK Jr. Good luck with that. With all of that. Sincerely.

Image Sources

• Shaleah Craighead, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Adam Schultz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Lawrence Jackson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.