New York Times Features Socialist Calling For 'Enthusiastic' Vote For Biden

 

The Democratic Party and its affiliated media outlets are insisting that all political energy must be directed toward the election of Joe Biden.

This line comes not only from the Democratic Party itself, but also from ostensibly “socialist” or left organizations that surround it. The leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) circulated a letter earlier this month pledging to go all out to ensure as large a possible turnout for Biden. Wednesday evening, Adolph Reed, a leading left academic and DSA member, insisted: “Obviously, we need to do whatever can be to try to bring about a Biden victory.”

The “left” argument for supporting Biden was summed up in an op-ed published in the New York Times on Tuesday. The column, written by freelance journalist Zeeshan Aleem, was published in the newspaper’s print edition under the headline, “Why Socialists Should Vote for Biden in Droves.”

The decision by the New York Times, the main newspaper of the Democratic Party, to commission the column from Aleem expresses a desire to cover all the bases the Democrats who to appeal to. 

 

There is nothing original in the arguments of Aleem. The politics of the middle class is, as a rule, determined by the most shortsighted and pragmatic calculations. Incapable of basing their politics on a scientific analysis of economic foundations of society, hostile to any serious examination of class interests that determine the actions of the state, opposed to a critical examination of the programs of political parties, and, especially, angered by any attempt to draw upon the lessons of history in the formulation of strategy and tactics, the political representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie trail in the wake of the ruling elite.

Their economic dependence upon the ruling elite is reflected in their incapacity to formulate an independent political program and orientation. These well-known reactionary characteristics of middle-class politics, to which Marxists have frequently called attention, usually find their most miserable and cowardly expression in their attitude toward elections. All pretenses of political independence from the politics of the corporate-financial elite—even those that have been advanced with socialist phrases—are abandoned. The politics of “lesser evilism” is proclaimed to be an inescapable necessity.

“If you were to think up a nightmare for the socialist left,” Aleem begins, “it would be hard to think of someone more horrifying than President Trump.” However, he worries, “in some quarters of the left there are signs of hesitation about voting for Joe Biden.”

 

“Leftists,” Aleem insists, should not only vote for Biden, they should do so enthusiastically. “Politics,” he writes, “is about the balance of power in society—between capital and labor, between elites and the marginalized.”

How, exactly, is a vote for Biden going to shift power in society from capital to labor and from the “elites” to the “marginalized”? Completely absent from Aleem’s column is any actual analysis of what the Democratic Party is and the class interests that it represents.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military. Indeed, as the election approaches, Biden’s fundraising in the third quarter has benefited from an influx of money from the finance industry, which contributed more than $50 million to the Democrats’ campaign in the third quarter, as opposed to $10 million for Trump. Politico headlined a recent article on the attitude of the markets to the election: “As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street grows giddy about Biden.”

Biden has the support of some of the leading war criminals of American imperialism—who have wreaked havoc on the “marginalized” throughout the world: John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to Honduras during the US-backed war against the Sandinistas, former Ambassador to Iraq and former Director of National Intelligence; Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA implicated in constructing “black site” torture centers under Bush; Colin Powell, one of the leading architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and countless others.

This is the campaign that Aleem claims that socialists must support “without apology or embarrassment—and even with some excitement.”

According to Aleem, the election of Biden will produce a “political terrain more conducive to change,” creating conditions for “socialists to go on offense and push for a Medicare-for-all system” and a “Green New Deal.”

The policy of a Democratic administration, however, will not be one of social reform but of austerity.  Aleem does not note that the eight years of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, were not years of social reform, but a massive bailout of the rich following the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Indeed, it was the legacy of Obama, along with the right-wing and militarist character of the Hillary Clinton campaign, that allowed Trump to posture demagogically as an opponent of the status quo.

Significantly, among the words that do not appear once in Aleem’s column are “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” “unemployment,” “poverty,” “hunger,” or “homelessness.” Nor is there any reference to war and militarism.Aleem claims that a mass turnout for Biden “could also tip the outcome of competitive down-ballot races” and “help ensure that Democrats win back control of the Senate.” But who are these “down-ballot” Democrats?  While there are occasional 'socialist' flavored candidates many are simply pro-FBI or pro-CIA 'patriots.' 

Then there is the claim that electing Democrats is necessary to counter the “unique threats that Mr. Trump poses to democracy,” including through his “politicization of the Justice Department and calls for violent crackdowns on protests.” A “massive left-wing mobilization” is needed, Aleem writes

 In his Times column, Aleem refers to “a very fringe view on the left” that opposes support for Biden.

 Aleem claims that the “left” is “investing in its own electoral future by taking voting for Mr. Biden seriously.” By becoming “a consistent constituency rather than a periodic threat to potential turnout numbers, [the left] will have more leverage over the party establishment.”

Aleem claims that figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have succeeded in shifting the Democratic Party to the left, this too is a lie. In fact, the more deeply Sanders embeds himself in the Democratic Party leadership, the greater the contempt with which he and his supporters are treated. Indeed, Biden takes every opportunity he can to declare that he was the one who “beat the socialist” Sanders.

Aleem concludes by declaring, “A sophisticated and strategic left—a left that strives to win power—knows how to pick its fights and its adversaries.” Voting for Biden, he states, “is one of the simplest and most tangible ways to tilt the playing field and offer some protection to the vulnerable…. Socialists should fight like hell to get Mr. Biden into office—and then fight him like hell the day that he becomes president.”