1 week Ago By Daniel Alfonso
Trump blazed to victory in the presidential election. The Republican Party won both the House and the Senate. With lower turnout than 2020 and an increase of the share of independent voters, Trump made inroads in every demographic group.
Harris lost all major swing states. In Michigan, Rashida Tlaib’s overwhelming victory attests to the repudiation of Biden’s financing of the genocide in Gaza. In this article, we will briefly discuss the reconfiguration of both the Republican and Democratic parties in light of the election.
To do so requires going back to January 6, a watershed moment in American politics, which connects the intensity of 2020 to the further strengthening of the Far Right. It is also necessary to discuss the recent dynamics of the labor movement. In the analyses of Trump’s victory, January 6 is treated as a matter of fact.
In most narratives by the political establishment, it is an event that revealed Trump’s hand and made loyalty to the current president-elect the litmus test for remaining in the GOP. It is as though January 6 was merely the result of the influence of new political forces emerging in the GOP after the advent of Trump. Of course it is true that the tragicomic events of January 6 were orchestrated by Steve Bannon and a wide network of far-right militias; much has been said about this.
But this interpretation omits the tensions in class struggle before January 6 and the role played by the Democratic Party throughout 2020 and how this paved the way for the “storming” of the Capitol and the subsequent response of the regime. January 6 was the result of years of “organic crisis” in the United States . The Gramscian concept of organic crisis interweaves three components: 1) the antagonisms between the “representatives” and the “represented”; 2) the questioning of the ruling class as being able to lead the nation; and 3) a crisis of state authority.
The emergence of the organic crisis in the United States was the result of the crisis of neoliberalism, and it propelled different sectors of society into action in the context of this crisis of hegemony. The Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, the Black Lives Matter movements of 2014 and 2020, the rise of Bernie Sanders, and, of course, the arrival of Trump on the scene are embedded in this process. A rearrangement of the two parties has taken place as a consequence.
While no new party formation has yet emerged to seriously challenge the bipartisan dynamic, the 2024 GOP is a new one compared to its 2015 version. The Democratic Party, for its part, has until now stood as the party of the status quo: the shattering of the Obama coalition is the latest and perhaps most consequential expression of this rearrangement of the parties thus far. Before January 6, however, there was BLM.
The massive protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 formed the largest social movement in several decades . Multigenerational Black people marched through the streets chanting “No Justice, No Peace!” accompanied by large swaths of latino, Asian, Indigenous, and white people all around the country. A few unions passed resolutions or staged actions against police brutality and systemic racism.
One of the strongest examples was the work stoppage by longshoremen and Teamsters of the West Coast ports . Bus drivers in New York City and Minneapolis refused to drive protesters to police stations after they were arrested; these actions symbolized the enormous potential of BLM to unleash the energy and creativity of the working class to fight oppression and the bosses. If Biden’s main asset for winning the election was simply not being Trump, this was only possible because the Democratic Party managed to funnel the revolt of BLM to the ballot box in its classic role as the gravedigger of social movements.
The entire establishment of the party was deployed to defend voting for Democrats to bring about justice. Leading the effort was Obama, the ideological leader and main representative of the coalition that was once able to channel the aspirations of the multiracial working class into enthusiasm for a party of Wall Street. The intense and vast operation to channel BLM to the ballot box, resuscitate Biden’s campaign during the South Carolina primary, and negotiate with Sanders after Super Tuesday was in line with the Democratic Party’s role as the bearer of the status quo within the bipartisan regime.
The result, as we know, was that Biden won and Trump lost. The FBI launched its largest operation in history to charge and arrest those involved in January 6, and for several months the Far Right retreated. However, ideologically and structurally, the Democratic Party operation allowed the Far Right to come out of BLM nearly unscathed.
As a snapshot of this, while Derek Chauvin was tried in record time, Kyle Rittenhouse — the young white man who strolled the streets of Kenosha with a rifle in hand shooting protesters and passersby alike — was acquitted; he embodied the anti-Black rage of the Far Right and its sense of impunity. The explosion of the widespread hatred for the police by large swaths of Americans was blocked by the barrage of pleas to a return to law and order. At the center of this operation was the severing of the organic connection between BLM and the labor movement in favor of sowing illusions in the election of the future “most pro-union” President of the United States.
In other words, January 6, was only made possible by quelling class struggle. At the same time, this subduing of the potential of BLM to expand into the ranks of the working class gave the regime the conditions to respond in unison to January 6 in the days that followed, defending the institutions of the bipartisan regime. Normalizing the repression of the movement was a crucial part of this response, including allowing anti-protest laws to be passed in the South and going back on each promise to defund the police.
The next fiscal year police departments all over the country had their budgets raised. The years preceding Trump’s victory have seen the reemergence of the labor movement. The illegal and victorious 2018 teacher’s strike in West Virginia — a right-to-work state — marked a significant increase in strikes, coupled with a historic rise in approval of unions.
A new generation of workers, many of them sympathetic to socialism and politicized primarily by Trump’s 2016 victory, made their way onto the national scene and staged labor actions that also defended basic democratic rights . The corrosion of the Democratic Party’s relationship with broader sectors of the working class, as well as the uptick in the labor movement, lent renewed importance to the union bureaucracy. Pressured by and responding to a more combative rank and file, the union bureaucracy managed to make the most out of the situation.
At least two different paths of this renewed relationship between unions and the regime emerged. The UAW, with its more militant tone, pursued a more direct engagement with its rank and file, as well as a willingness to enforce more ambitious methods, at times even employing pro-immigrant rhetoric. Then there is the majority of the Teamsters, led by Sean O’Brien, who also articulates a pro-working class discourse and, at least rhetorically, defends strikes as methods to achieve better outcomes; however, he sets more limited goals and is prone to using the strength of the working class as more of a bargaining chip than actually advancing it.
O’Brien sought a path of his own, meeting with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, donating $50,000 to Trump’s campaign on behalf of the Teamsters leadership, and making a speech at the RNC. It was the first time a union president spoke at an RNC. Fain took his time to endorse Biden, and later Harris, but once he did, he enthusiastically took up the slogan “Trump is a scab,” one of the strongest moments of the DNC.
O’Brien and the majority of the Teamsters come out ahead after Tuesday. Nourished in the neoliberal era, the widespread demand against tiers in the fight for new contracts is one of the most significant aspects of the labor movement in the last few years. It goes to the heart of the divisions between workers that were imposed and naturalized during neoliberalism — it shows that it is possible to unite the ranks of the working class.
The UPS contract negotiation last year was an incredible opportunity to push further for such unity. The majority of Teamsters, however, orchestrated a contract that, while marking important gains, had at its core the division between drivers and warehouse workers. It was possible to make the most out of important sectors of workers who wanted to unite and do so in light of a common struggle, taking further the tendency toward self-organization in a strike for a much better contract.
More than a lost opportunity, it is emblematic of the perspective of this wing of the labor bureaucracy, which is now strengthened by Trump’s victory. Further, Black and Brown workers are privileged targets of Trump. Despite historic favorability (67 percent of Americans support unions and 43 percent want unions to have more influence in the country) and an uptick in unionization, the share of union workers has been declining; in 2023 only 11.
3 percent of workers were unionized. To unite the ranks of the multiethnic working class, defend union and non-union workers, raise the rate of unionization, and create new institutions for unionized and non-unionized workers to fight together are decisive tasks of the Left. It is imperative to challenge Trump in our workplaces and in the streets.
For several years, it was taken for granted that the demographic shift in the United States towards a majority of non-white voters would benefit the Democrats. Added to this, reaching more suburban voters would expand the Democrats’ social base and place them in significant competitive advantage in relation to the GOP. The new GOP under Trump has reshuffled the cards and has gained terrain with non-white voters while strengthening its grip among whites, especially men.
The most consequential aspect of these changes is the GOP’s successful appeal to large swaths of the multiracial working class, specifically amongst Black and latino people. The suburban electoral strategy of the Democratic Party has failed — the party actually lost terrain there — and a large swath of working-class voters has flocked to the GOP. Organic crisis, an international phenomenon, often leads to the formation of new parties.
Mike Davis was right : January 6 marked a split within the GOP. But rather than strengthening a post-Trump alternative and forcing Trump out of the party (a real possibility in the first days after January 6), a new party emerged from within the GOP. Added to a newfound social base, the GOP has gone from a pro-free-trade par excellence party to defending protectionist policies.
Furthermore, Trump and the party have gained a forceful ally, Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth and a fiercely anti-union capitalist. This is a crucial contradiction of the Trump administration: while the GOP has made inroads in the working class, Trump will govern based on the support of staunchly anti-union capitalists. His administration, which has nothing but attacks in store for the working class, will collide with more active workers and the ongoing uptick in strikes and labor actions.
It remains to be seen whether Trump maintains the inroads he has made with Black and Brown workers given his racist, bombastic rhetoric. The dynamics within the bipartisan regime changed as well after January 6. The Democratic Party increasingly took it upon itself to defend the institutions and the political regime that were ever more despised by increasing sectors of people.
Eighty percent of Trump voters in 2020 did not believe Biden was a legitimate president, but the buck of discontentment did not stop there. It is an ingrained aspect of the political scenario. Whatever the changes the Democratic Party might undergo as a result of this defeat, it will remain a pillar of the bipartisan regime.
More than that, it will continue to be the party of order; while this was once a political choice to contrast itself with Trump, the Democratic Party will now have its hand forced by Trump in the next administration. In a balance sheet of Harris’s loss , Bhaskar Sunkara expressed a widespread explanation for her defeat: the lack of economic populism coupled with moderation on identity politics. This embraces a flat understanding between exploitation and oppression, mixing the vital criticism of liberal identity politics with turning our backs on gender, race, and other types of oppression.
But while he focuses on the (important) shortcomings of the campaign, Sunkara puts aside how the Democratic Party was instrumental in the strengthening of the Far Right. The media and the Democratic Party are trying to convince workers and the oppressed that their task is to hold on, take a deep breath and ..
. vote in 2026 and in 2028. The crisis in the ranks of the Democratic Party is steep.
Harris had less votes than Biden did in 2020. Trump also made inroads with independent voters, with 45 percent of them voting for Trump and 50 percent voting for Harris; this represents a 4 percent gain for Trump compared to 2020. Acting as the guardian of the regime in the midst of the organic crisis has come with political costs.
The Biden administration’s response and that of the Democratic Party in general to the re-emergence of the student movement stands out as one of the most damaging to the party. Thousands of students in hundreds of universities risked administrative sanctions (in a debt-driven system of higher education) and arrests to protest against Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Dozens of professors locked arms at several universities against police repression, from Columbia to UCLA.
At UCLA, pro-Israel “protesters” attacked students and the peaceful encampment in the middle of the night — with the blessing of the police. In true Democratic fashion, the first statement by the White House defended the right of the Zionist protesters to attack pro-Palestinian student activists. No wonder the party lost terrain among the youth.
The estrangement of the party from its historic base stands out and it will be the main challenge of the party over the next few years. There are limits to this, both domestic and international. The party will continue to play the role of guardian of the regime in the next Trump administration.
The relationship between the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party will be vital to this endeavor, as will the party’s relationship to progressive organizations and NGOs. However, the Democratic Party is weakened now that it is outside the White House. But this creates an opportunity for the millions of people in the social movements and the labor movement who are discontent with the current order, if we take conclusions from the last eight years.
The DSA grew exponentially after 2016, engaging with pro-socialist and anti-Democratic establishment sentiments among a new political generation. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) did not endorse Biden or Harris explicitly, but there was no orientation not to vote for Harris. On the contrary, voting for Harris was considered a valid tactical move.
Any political orientation that requires remaining in the Democratic Party — whether it is a clean break, a dirty break, or any other variant — can only keep fostering illusions, against all evidence and precedent, that the path towards a party of the working class passes through the Democratic Party. Rather than contributing to the safeguarding of the Democratic Party, this is an opportunity to foster class consciousness and class independent politics and build a party of the working class that fights for socialism. Trump’s administration — which will govern with a stronger executive, having been given carte blanche by the Supreme Court — will be anything but stable.
The undercurrents of the overall political scenario do not fit into a picture of years of passive malaise topped with electoral victories for the Democrats in two and four years. Though the situation is open, we are entering into a moment prone to rapid and intense changes. The future rests on class struggle, and the socialist Left has an important opportunity to make way.
2024 Election Black Lives Matter Donald Trump Far-Right Joe Biden Labor Movement.
