Are we with the Democrats or against them?

Taking the wins, accepting the work ahead

Image by Lorie Shaull

By Tess GC

I imagine that a lot of you, like me, aren’t really sure how you feel about the electoral world right now. While the Democratic National Convention played out in Chicago this week, a large pro-Palestine protest took to the streets, reminding probably giddy convention attendees of one of the defining issues of our time that was effectively ignored on the DNC stage. Watching the convention, I’ve felt a lot of pressure and uncertainty. On the one hand, it’s hard not to be at least a little relieved that we might be able to stop Donald Trump from leading the country directly to out-and-out fascism in November. On the other, it’s frustrating to see the hard work and messaging of the labor Left co-opted by Democratic Party leadership once again, as they trot out the progressive politicians that they themselves ostracized and kept from power in the last few years, and chalk up the diligent organizing that hard-working people have done for one another as “that’s Kamala,” or “that’s Joe.”

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

The debate I’m seeing right now is about whether or not it ultimately hurts Left and working class politics to have our cause taken up by the Democratic Party. There are a lot of important points to be made by those who want nothing to do with the Democratic Party, including how its leadership continues to show their colors through empty words on a ceasefire in Palestine, their continual support of racist, classist, and violent policing and border control, and ultimately their upholding of slight reforms to a runaway capitalist system. 

In a debrief about the DNC, Democracy Now!’s Juan González recently said:

“On the one hand, with the Republicans, you have a party of a white supremacist capitalism, of anti-immigrant xenophobia, of patriarchy and of war on the working class. And now, this past week, we’ve seen the party of multiracial neoliberal capitalism, for a party that seeks a kinder and gentler form of mass deportation and border militarization, and one that is even more aggressive in the imperial policies of the United States than even the Republican Party, if you consider that.”

But taking this premise seriously doesn’t mean all is lost, and the question we can ask ourselves is this: How do we use the Democratic Party as a tool for working class, solidarity programs, instead of being used by them to sanitize their image as the only political home for working people?

I want to make a case that we take a moment to consider that for all its ineptitude, flat-out hostility, and entwinement with wealth and corporations, the Democratic Party’s inclusion of a pro-working people platform, and turns toward policy that really matter to us, is a real win that shows us that what we’re doing is working. Hard-working, everyday people are responsible for pulling the Democratic Party leadership, kicking and screaming, in the direction of not just stump speeches, but some real moves toward pro-worker, pro-people policies. It’s important that those of us who want a better world than electoral politics or the Democratic Party can give us are also able to consider and appreciate the progress that we have made in organizing together so that there’s a politically viable alternative to the Democrats’ usual. The Democratic Party has, to some degree, finally realized that the economic and solidarity based model of the Left actually mobilizes people, and while there’s certainly co-optation in that, there’s a win, too. For all of the noise and takes right now, one thing shines through to me: When our government is friendly to labor and working people, they inadvertently allow us to build power that we then get to decide how to use – without their permission.

While there’s a lot of debate about how progressive or ‘radical’ Joe Biden’s policies have been, it’s true that when it comes to domestic economic policy, he’s been way better than a lot of people expected, and better than recent presidents – and a lot of that is due to the dogged work that the Left has done to push Democrats toward these policies, and show that people want them. This video (you’ll have to ignore the silly title) by

More Perfect Union

does a good job of showing these successes, particularly in a series of bills passed under Biden to bolster public infrastructure and create well-paid and unionized manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Similarly, we see the results of the Left’s pushing, as Kamala Harris announced economic plans, should she become president, that involve lowering food prices, housing prices, medical debt, and drug prices. Are Biden and Harris going to tear down the walls of capitalism and American empire? Hell no, they’re agents of it. But right now they’ve been pushed and pressured and cornered into platforming a further left agenda when it comes to economic policy, and to only see that as a negative doesn’t really help the Left or everyday people.

Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash

Something the political Left often struggles with is acknowledging that we can feel multiple things at the same time, or even that people are allowed to do that. It’s possible to hold a certain standard of what our world and politics should be, while doing what we can to keep some maniacs out of office, who will promptly do whatever they can to make our best organizing efforts illegal, or much more difficult. We can recognize how much the Democratic Party’s leadership is trying to co-opt and lead a people’s movement that isn’t theirs – and that they’ll give us empty promises whenever they can. But it’s also true that in the system we live in, it’s a lot better for us to have laws upheld that even allow us to keep doing the vital organizing we need to do to create something better. Do we want a hostile or non-functioning National Labor Relations Board for the next four years, or is it better for everyone if some of our institutions that do some regulating of capital are functioning?

It’s okay that people feel hopeful about the Democratic Party’s new energy with the Harris-Walz ticket. In fact, discouraging people’s hope isn’t a great strategy. If we want to attract more people to this worker-centric, solidarity based politics, we need to encourage hope that these things are actually possible, and can be successful. That people are excited by the display that the Democratic Party has just put on makes a lot of sense when politics – and frankly the world – have been so bleak for so many over the past year. Some hope coming in the form of actually decent policy moves sounds pretty good to a lot of people right now, and berating them about that doesn’t really help build a movement.

I want to be clear that these wins are currently in the realm of domestic policy. So far, it seems like a Harris administration will continue Biden’s policy of talking about a ceasefire in Palestine while continually arming Israel. As this article by Adam Johnson in In These Times points out, “Harris cannot continue to support arming Israel without conditions while also supporting a cease-fire. As a result, she must be compelled to clarify whether she backs endlessly arming Israel, or an actual cease-fire. She cannot support both.” 

Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash

I unequivocally support the pro-Palestine protesters at the DNC, and if I had been in Chicago this week, that’s probably where I would have been. It’s notable that one of the best unions in the labor world right now, the United Auto Workers, both had a presence at the DNC (President Shawn Fain spoke), and they backed protesters’ demands that a Palestinian voice be given the stage at the convention. They joined the encouragement of pro-labor, pro-people policies, but, at least on this issue, they aren’t afraid to oppose the Democratic Party when it’s repressing and ignoring the people that challenge Democrats’ moral and political authority. A lot of people have realized over the last year that the tools we need to force policy change on Palestine includes being able to exert undeniable pressure on our government – and one of the clearest places we can do that is in unions and organizing that are able to shut down industry. 

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The most immediately effective electoral politics are those that we engage in as close to home as possible – local races for everything from governor to representative to city council to school board. But as someone who has spent a good deal of the last few years only semi-engaged with national electoral politics, I can say that I am excited to see some evidence on the national stage that a behemoth like the Democratic Party – that, like it or not, is a gatekeeper to electoral races in most of the country – can be cornered into finally engaging policy for working people, and allowing in some of the voices they’ve tried to silence. 

For those of us who love to criticize the Democratic Party, and especially to point out what they’re doing wrong, we should ask ourselves when we’ll allow ourselves a win. Of course we want them to take Left policies and actually implement them, not half-ass a working people’s platform that they have no real intention of making succeed, or give us some domestic wins while helping massacre people around the world. But when we make criticisms of Democrats, we also need to consider if there’s anything that they’re realistically going to do that we will take as a win. Tired and embattled organizers have a right to say no to that, but it’s worth considering that for people who are willing to keep pushing the party, such as more progressive unions, that work ultimately helps us, too. It allows more Americans to engage with solidarity politics that meets them where they’re at. A widespread solidarity politics won’t go very far unless it prioritizes bringing people into movements, and wants them to stick around.

If Harris becomes president, then we’ll spend the next four years being shown the gap between what is promised to get elected, and what most politicians are actually willing to do, or are even able to do. But holding their feet to the fire is part of the deal when it comes to electoral politics, whether it’s the certainty that we will have to keep fighting for Palestine, or the reality that we will have to fight for this solidarity centric reality they’re promising. For most of us, our work is where we can each have the most impact: in our communities, building relationships and care with the people around us, and allowing for a multi-pronged approach to building a better world.