Introduction
I’ve been thinking of writing this diary for a while, but I decided to wait for Biden’s cabinet appointments first—who knows, maybe he’d surprise me. But enough of them have come in at this point that a judgment can be made: all in all, they’re...okay. The modus operandi seems to be leaking that they’re considering either someone roughly in the middle of the Democratic Party consensus, or an awful corporatist, and winning plaudits when they choose the former because, hey, it could be worse, right? Nobody connected with Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren seems to have been seriously considered for any remotely high-ranking position, but really, why would you expect any different? The conservative wing of the Democratic Party got their guy in the primary, thoroughly crushing the liberal/progressive/socialist wing in the process. What reason do they have to give the left any substantive concessions? After all, we don’t have anywhere else to go.
Some might argue it’s too early to judge—after all, Biden hasn’t even entered office yet. This ignores that Obama’s first batch of cabinet nominees strongly foreshadowed the future course of his presidency. In fairness, Biden’s nominees aren’t as bad as Obama’s; I may not agree with Janet Yellen, but she’s lightyears better than Timothy Geithner. But the point is that the process that led to Biden’s picks will be the same process that influences all his other decisions while in office. With this in mind, the question becomes, what does this slate of nominees demonstrate about Biden’s priorities?
Overall, I think it’s pretty clear. The Democratic Party is currently deeply divided between a progressive/socialist left, largely representing the Millennial and Z Generations that have been left behind by contemporary global capitalism, and a centrist/corporatist right, largely representing the middle-class suburban voters that have swung toward the Democrats in recent years, especially in 2018 and 2020. Biden, who won the primary by being the only candidate who could combine one of these wings with another large voting block (Black voters, in his case), appears to be committed to towing the line of this divide, doing his best to keep both sides happy. Or happy enough to not openly go to war with each other, at least. But is this high-stakes tightrope act even possible, much less desirable?
DailyKos and Me
I’ve rarely visited this website over the past few years, but I used to come to DailyKos all the time—indeed, it played a fairly pivotal role in my political development. When I was a teenager in the mid-2000s, I was more or less a libertarian, albeit one who cared far more about social issues and civil liberties than economic policy (hence causing me to despise Bush). I started shifting left in 2007-08, at least partly because my support of Barack Obama (the first politician I was old enough to vote for) caused me to visit a number of liberal websites for election news, DailyKos prominent among them. After Obama’s election made the American liberal/left largely segregate into “emoprog” (Obama critic) and “Obamabot” (obama defender) camps, DailyKos was one of the few places where you could find both sides battling it out. I was an emoprog myself, but I appreciated that a lot.
The site started shifting around 2012 or 2013, though, slowly but surely becoming more aligned with Barack Obama’s politics and the Democratic Party establishment in general. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to provide hard, concrete evidence for; all I can give you is my own feelings and experience. The front page started adding more and more open “Obamabot” writers, while the only true “emoprog” was Meteor Blades, and even he was mostly a holdover from the site’s early days (no offense to Meteor Blades himself, whom I hold a lot of respect for). Markos himself started openly aligning with them too, and (as is his style) tended to dismiss and insult those on the “other side.” I think the trend became clear to me after the Edward Snowden revelations, which the management openly and strongly came down on the side of “we already knew this, and anyway it doesn’t matter, and anyway we can’t afford to damage Obama politically.” There were obviously a lot of users who did care and thought the revelations were extremely important (myself included), but they were very much the minority, and I started to get the impression that this site wasn’t for me anymore.
Saying things like this, I feel like I’m describing some dumb middle school drama. And there’s always an element of pure interpersonal drama when any community goes through these arguments and fissures. There’s definitely a few individual users here who rubbed me the wrong way so much that I still remember their usernames years later, a faintly embarrassing thing to admit (no, I won’t be saying who they are). But of course, this website isn’t just a social group; it’s also a political organization hoping to achieve real, positive change in this shitty world of ours. This drama shit was a reflection of a real political divide within the American “left.” There are those, like me, who first and foremost prioritize our ideological commitments, and are willing to harm the Democratic Party to accomplish them. And then there are those, like this site’s management, who first and foremost prioritize the strength of the Democratic Party, and are willing to sacrifice their ideological commitments if it will increase the odds of the party winning elections.
The final rupture, of course, was the 2016 primary, which—while perhaps not quite as vicious as the Obama/Clinton wars of 2008—reflected the deep, unbridgeable divide that had grown during the 8 years of Obama’s presidency. When Markos openly declared serious criticism of Hillary Clinton verboten after (IIRC) March or so, he drove away many (most?) of the Sanders supporters, and while some came back and some remain, the centrists have ruled the roost here effectively unchallenged since.
Which is fine, Markos can have whatever website he wants to have. But if even a (relatively) niche website can’t keep together a (relatively) small group of (relatively) like-minded liberals, what hope does Joe Biden have in keeping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Manchin in the same political coalition?
Technocracy vs Populism
While I’m frankly not particularly proud of any of the diaries I’ve written for this site, the best one is unquestionably this one, which I wrote during the 2016 primary. The writing style is pretty tortured and boring so I don’t recommend actually reading it, but the upshot is that what really divided Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—or, more to the point, what divided their supporters—was this:
Sanders believes that change should be achieved by a mass movement, while Clinton believes that change should be achieved by a small group of experts.
Or, in other words, Clinton supporters believed in change via a small number of intelligent, educated, experienced, “competent” experts taking power, while Sanders supporters believed in change via a broad movement of ordinary people forcing politicians to meet their demands. This remained true for the 2020 primary. Even Warren supporters, despite theoretically agreeing with Sanders supporters on the actual policy, favored this sort of technocratic rule by experts; after all, Warren’s selling point was how smart and experienced she was. You can also see this by how Biden’s appointees are mainly being praised for their “experience” and “competence,” and not, you know, the actual things they’ll actually do while in office.
Centrist liberals are fond of insisting that, while of course they agree with the goals of the Bernie/AOC wing of the party, the country just isn’t ready for them; change, they say, is necessarily slow and hard. What this ignores is that rapid change is perfectly possible, as long as you have a huge mass movement that pushes for it. Obama had the beginnings of such a movement behind him in 2008, but as Sanders has also observed, he shunted it off to the DNC and let it wither on the vine. Sanders had the beginnings of a mass movement in 2016 and 2020, but centrist liberals opposed him vociferously at every turn. At some point you just have to conclude that centrists aren’t “pragmatically” disagreeing with “tactics”; they are just ideologically opposed to a grassroots, working-class movement gaining real power in American politics. They trust the Democratic Party elite, the Obamas, Clintons, Bidens, Warrens, and Harrises, instead.
Pushing Biden Left
A common refrain during the election was to just swallow your tongue, vote Biden, and “push him left after the election.” But what exactly does it mean to push Biden left? An example from the Obama years is instructive in this regard.
During Obama’s entire presidency, the only real high-profile issue he was “pushed left” on was gay marriage. Obama publicly opposed it in 2008, but eventually switched and publicly supported it in 2012. (Of course, as was easy to guess even at the time, he was always privately in favor.) This change happened due largely to intense pressure from gay activists, including rich donors who threatened to withdraw their financial support unless they saw real progress, and high-profile protests such as chaining oneself to the White House gates. All this, for a policy that Obama not only privately agreed with, but also one that didn’t materially damage any of the party’s supporters or donors. So what do you think it would take to “push Biden left” to accomplish, say, Medicare for All or the Green New Deal?
Oh, and it’s been largely forgotten now, but there was a lot of backlash to these protests, with many Obama defenders insisting that gay activists need to get in line and stop protesting Obama because he’s trying his best and do you prefer the Republicans? (And don’t get me started on the backlash to pro-immigration activists, an issue that Obama never seriously moved on.) Anyone who criticizes Biden from the left is going to face the same backlash, the same calls to shut up and fall in line because you’re harming the Democratic Party and you need to give Biden a chance/save your fire for the Republicans/focus on the midterms. As I said earlier, for party partisans, the political fortunes of individual politicians take precedence over the material policy they (claim to) believe in.
The Font of Rage
Much disproportionate attention has been paid to Bernie Sanders supporters, the notorious “Bernie Bros,” behaving badly online. But there is some reason for this attention. Bernie supporters were often extremely angry. I count myself among that number, as well. I’ll attempt to explain why.
The recession never really ended for most millennials. Many of us took on large loans to go to college, under the promise that it would lead to a good job. But it didn’t—our jobs are largely shitty and low-paying, and that’s the lucky ones; the unlucky ones work in the “gig economy,” without even the thin benefits and protections granted by our labor laws. There’s no real hope for advancement. The prospects of ever building up significant savings, much less owning a house, are increasingly remote. And climate change is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, promising that unless huge, radical, and rapid changes are made over the next decade, our lives are sure to get even worse—far worse—than they are right now. And even those of us in relatively good straits (I’ll admit, I’m one of them) tend to have friends and acquaintances who are not. Basically, our future was stolen from us.
Some might say this perspective is privileged. There are many Americans, largely poor Black and Latino Americans, who could not even go to college, who never had any hope of a good job, savings, or a house. This is true as far as it goes. The evidence suggests that the Sanders movement, and especially the still small but burgeoning socialist movement, is largely made up of the downwardly mobile, not those trapped in generations of poverty. But that is irrelevant. Your life doesn’t magically become better just because someone else has it even worse. More importantly, the policies these young leftists and socialists are pushing to help themselves would also help those mired in generational poverty—indeed, would help them far more than the half-baked slop the Democratic establishment has on offer. There is no reason to divide these two groups. They are, rather, natural allies.
The Democratic Party center is fond of saying that by criticizing their politicians, you’re actually criticizing the Black voters (or, sometimes, Black women specifically) who form their “base.” This is, frankly, disingenuous bullshit. The average Black voter has zero influence over Democratic Party policy and everyone knows it. We can argue for days on end why Black voters largely went for Clinton in the 2016 primary and Biden in the 2020 primary, I certainly have my own theories, but “voting for someone” and “having power over them” are two extremely different things. For proof, look no further than Obama himself, who received overwhelming support from Black people and rewarded them by overseeing a massive decline in Black wealth while chastising Black activists for expecting any better. There is little overlap between the groups that provide the Democratic Party with votes, and the groups that actually influence Democratic Party policy.
All in all, I constantly harbor a deep, simmering rage because, not only has my future been stolen from me, not only does practically nobody in power care about me or those like me, but centrist liberals and partisan Democrats claim to be on my side while constantly tell me it’s childish and privileged to want anything different.
Where to Place One’s Faith
I’ve been pretty harsh on the centrist liberals and partisan Democrats in this diary. But honestly, I sort of get where they’re coming from. You cannot do anything politically by yourself, you need allies—allies you can trust to have your back when the chips are down. The centrist liberals and partisan Democrats place their faith in the Democratic Party because they do not see an alternative. This is understandable, because the only real alternative is a mass, grassroots movement that unites the working class across race, gender, sexuality, and all the rest, and such a movement does not currently exist. Placing one’s faith in the shimmering hope of a dream yet to come can seem ridiculous, when compared to placing it in real, physical people who are in power right now.
But this is a false distinction. Party partisans are also placing their faith in a far-off dream, the dream that eventually, someday, somehow, the Joe Bidens and Kamala Harrises of the world will be able to do what they “really want” to do. The problem is not just that Biden and Harris have long track records of screwing over the poor and powerless for their own political gain. It’s also that we simply don’t have the time. Climate change is happening, and soon. Like the coronavirus, it does not care about our provincial political concerns. Either we do what needs to be done to fight it, or we’ll perish. And the Democratic Party establishment has no desire to or interest in seriously fighting it.
So there isn’t really a choice, in the end. Either you place your faith in the American people and believe that they are capable of uniting and fighting for their shared interests, or you’ve given up. There is no in between. Nobody’s coming to save you.
