He spoke in front of a gathering of elite donors. People with net worths which allow them breathing-distance access to American leadership needed to be reassured their investments would not go without return. Joe Biden, in front of the only crowd he’s not capable of upsetting with his unique brand of disconnect, played their favorite tune.
Nothing would fundamentally change.
This isn’t some out-of-context gotcha. Around this time last year, when Joe Biden looked more and more like he would fail yet again in a bid to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, this is what he felt was pertinent to stand on as a candidate. Lacking the popular support and enthusiastic fundraising base of his competition, Biden needed these peoples’ money. He was noted at the time for doing far more fundraisers than campaign events.
That’s America. If you have the money to throw around to attend fundraisers at the Carlyle, you get to have an audience with the former vice president of the United States. Your wealth and status afford you the opportunity to watch him grovel for your support to climb that next, final rung on the ladder.
Zero fundamental change is exactly the message Biden wanted to get across to these people. America, as it is, as it was, is an environment perfectly constructed for them to maintain their status. Fundamental change may mean they will go from people with undue influence and exorbitant wealth to just people with moderately-less-exorbitant wealth. No fundamental change is a position they surely will demand Biden is held to. Something he, himself did not want mistaken,
Not a joke. Not a joke.
I understand. Politicians need to pay lip service to people whose support they want. Big donors, historically, are a pretty nice support base to have. The “establishment” wing of the democratic party is a veritable fundraising machine because of their courting of big donors.
The reason this works out for the elite is because they have something to offer Joe Biden. You meet our demands — you get not only our votes, but our money. For a candidate like Biden, whose campaign may owe its life to these donors after a failure to raise much of any other money in the heat of 2019, and who has failed since to attract 97% of the donor base that made Senator Bernie Sanders into a powerhouse, he must tread lightly. Donors don’t accumulate the wealth they throw around without being demanding.
These people are smart. They look out for their own self interests. They throw what they have to offer behind those who will suit their agenda, and they know a lack of their support would sink many hopefuls. They’ve bred an environment in which most candidates must make concessions to their agenda or be cast into deep water with no life preserver.
Why is this exclusively a tactic for the rich?
Why, when Joe Biden needs some enthusiasm around his campaign, lest he only be supported in the public by priveleged liberals touting incremental change, do we make concessions to him? Why do young people insist on sharing “Joe Biden sucks, vote for Joe Biden”-type content to convince anyone to vote for this man? The organizing power of the younger, more left-leaning base of the democratic party has pushed a great number of progressive candidates over the finish line against well-financed establishment picks. At monetary disadvantages of several magnitudes, young progressives are showing that money isn’t everything in politics.
To see what this base is capable of, and in turn spurn everything they stand for, is to reject their support. In an election year rightly billed as one where we are up against a formidable, malevolent tyrant in Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are turning their backs on a machine of enthusiasm. Is there a soul out there that is an enthusiastic Joe Biden voter? I myself turned in hundreds of calls for candidates who share a vision for America that I believe in. What do I tell someone on the other line when I call on behalf of a creepy, decaying old man who tiptoes around upsetting literally a single-digit percentage of this nation’s population? What is in it for me, who wants a livable earth for my one-day children and grandchildren, when calling on behalf of a candidate whose advisers are oil and fracking profiteers? What do I tell someone struggling with medical bills that they can expect from a candidate who flatly opposes the incredibly popular mandate to ease that horrific burden? How can I push a candidate whose hallmark in his younger years was a warpath to defund social security (which he has lied about as recently as March), and whose disconnect with the left today spurred him to say he would increase funding for already-bloated police departments? How?
It is possible to be well-funded and still lose. We need to make Joe Biden sweat out that possibility. His campaign already is down the Hillary Clinton path of offering little else than not being his opponent (while also being personally loathed by many), and I think we underrate how massively dangerous it is to keep pushing candidates who stand against fundamental change in a country where millions so desperately need it. Much less during the health crisis of my lifetime — we are running a candidate whose stance is to fundamentally change nothing; when a few months out of work for millions now means a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, and crucial medicines that keep them alive are desperately out of reach. What do we tell them?
Vote for Joe Biden, he’s afraid to keep pharma executives from adding to their yacht collection.
We are not going to “reach” Biden once he is in office. He would have already gotten what he needed from us. We only hold leverage for as long as his candidacy may crumble if we don’t show up.
I am not saying that I will not vote for Joe Biden. I’m not saying I won’t volunteer for Joe Biden. I am saying that until I see something that resembles a platform I can be bothered to care about, and more importantly an embrace of personnel who push reforms based on fundamental change, I will not commit to anything on behalf of Joe Biden. What the hell do I even tell a swing voter who isn’t convinced of him? That the benefits to his candidacy are entirely peripheral to who he is and what he stands for? That they should care not about him, but about the supreme court? The Trumpian talking point that they should care at all about the people he may put around him?
— If I am to be pragmatic, as we like to pretend mealy-mouthed liberalism is, I will not concede my vote and support to a candidate whose ideology I oppose wholeheartedly. An ideology which abandons the poorest among us, the sick, the forgotten, the unheard. An ideology so bereft of genuine solidarity with a base it takes for granted. When we concede that we will support this in spite of what we stand for, everything we want and hope for, we enable the arduous cycle of a two-party system that ignores the average American.
We have leverage in this moment. It can be widely acknowledged that an employment-contingent healthcare system is a stain on our society. We are in the midst of a health crisis that has wiped out jobs nationwide. The obvious answer, and that which most of the rest of the world has figured out, is to guarantee healthcare to all citizens. The cost of our current system is filled with glut, and is upheld by people who profit off of this glut. Why then are you so quick to support the candidate who flatly says he wants to uphold this? Why are you supporting the candidate whose running mate has flip-flopped on this issue? You have leverage now, when they need you. Hold out on them. Make them sweat. Make them commit to something.
If you can acknowledge that our carceral state is a blight on our democracy, that black people in this country have faced so much unneeded struggle in the interest of racism and greed, why then do you support the candidate whose 1994 crime bill spiked our prison population and set America back by decades in eliminating racial injustice? Why are you so quickly singing the praises of his running mate, who jailed the parents of students who skipped out on underfunded schools that weren’t helping them get anywhere?
The lack of enthusiasm for Biden’s campaign is palpable. The current young base has proven itself capable of ramping enthusiasm to incredible heights. He is running on simply not being Donald Trump. This is a tenuous formula for winning, and if we acknowledge Trump for the menace he is, a strategy that neglects a bright movement of eager volunteers seems to ignore the precariousness of the moment.
The VP pick of Kamala Harris was a foregone conclusion for weeks, and upon its announcement I am baffled at the positive response from many people who want the same policies I do. Sure, it is historic to see a black woman take such a prominent spot, but are we really going to act like the color of Harris’ skin has precluded her from contributing to America’s ills? The self-proclaimed top-cop in California fell out of favor in her own presidential bid with lightning speed, in part because of her antiquated views on police and flimsy claim that she acted as a progressive prosecutor in her DA and Attorney General days. Harris had the opportunity to crack down on predatory financiers in California, and even set up a task force to do so, but followed through on nearly none of her promises to help poor communities being pillaged by scammers. Kamala’s record of pursuing and upholding wrongful convictions, viciously resisting prison population reduction, and protecting problem cops is well-documented. Why then, are we welcoming her spot on the ticket with open arms, rather than holding her to account to be better on these issues in the future? Why is the Democratic platform being guided along by people whose only brushes with left-of-center ideology come in the form of lies they tell in debates?
Even more of an affront to progressives, the Democratic National Committee has decided that its national convention should cede time from a young powerhouse of progressive ideals in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, allotting her just sixty seconds of pre-recorded airtime, in order to grant massive platforms to two white men who have represented the republican party in John Kasich (who raised taxes on the working class while cutting them for the wealthy, who opposed an increase to the minimum wage, who cut funding for education and nursing homes, and who vehemently opposed collective bargaining and workers rights) and plutocrat Michael Bloomberg (who spent more than the combined lifetime earnings of an untold amount of Americans in an ill-fated presidential bid, who silenced untold numbers of accusers of his creep behavior, and who subjected explicitly outlined numbers of innocent minority New Yorkers to NYPD overreach). What does John Kasich offer other than to give a pat on the back to republicans who recognized that supporting Trump is gross? What does Michael Bloomberg offer other than a nod to the handful of oligarchs who control an outrageous percentage of American wealth? We are looking down the barrel of four more years of unabated fascism, and these people are courting ashamed republicans instead of people who actually need help.
I understand that Donald Trump is a unique evil. His brand of politics is racism-stoking, radical opposition to the establishment. Can you not comprehend that an effective counter to this ideology is not going to be enduring a Biden presidency which fails to address the ills of our society? Do you not realize that Donald Trump is paving the way for a second generation of nationalists, ones who are not as obviously impaired, and who have the savvy to take this country down an even darker path? Do you not realize that a nation of white people indoctrinated to suspect that the establishment is working against them and that minorities are stealing from them will respond positively to these racist cudgels en masse when Bidenist austerity leaves them with their same crappy lot in life?
Or do you think that we may reach people disillusioned with the political process by getting a candidate who will wholeheartedly fight for normal people, not his rich donor base? Don’t you think that Republican skeptics who fear big government may be reachable by acknowledging that our traditional two-party heritage is enabling the worst type of big government — the largest carceral state in the world, a military budget which enriches arms contractors and leaves our veterans destitute in our streets, and a tax bill that does little or nothing to improve the life of a taxpayer?
Left-wing organizing power is proving to be mightier than dollar bills. Investing in our votes and support should be a priority. Stop handing it over because the Democratic establishment is counting on Trump’s malevolence to convince you to vote against your own interests.
Joe Biden and the DNC’s hostility to progressives is not an effort in pragmatism, it is Biden fulfilling his promises to wealthy donors and the committee enjoying its incestuous cooperation with elites that has festered for far too long. This strategy will not secure more votes, it will maintain the status quo. This is not the party of the people until it intends to represent something that the next generation can be enthusiastic about — and convince others to be enthusiastic about.
Do not let the evil of Donald Trump distract you from the inadequacy of Joe Biden. Our leverage to influence his commitments is now. Do not let that slip away lightly.
In Joe Biden, I see a man whose faculties are slipping and who stands for nothing that I do. I see him paying lip service to progressive ideals but seeking advisement from people who profit off the opposition to policy I support. Maybe I’ll put in a vote for that. I certainly won’t pick up the phone.
