Portside

US President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not seek a second term disengaged the locked gears on the vehicle that seemed to be conveying Donald Trump to inevitable victory in the November 2024 election.

The centrist Democratic Party had been acting like a deer paralyzed by the headlights of the speeding MAGA (Make America Great Again) chariot with its swollen orange buffoon at the wheel. Ominous tracking polls suggested not only that Trump would win a substantial majority in the Electoral College, but that the collateral damage could deliver Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House. Together with the existing far right supermajority on the US Supreme Court and Republican control of most state legislatures and governorships, the stage was being set for the establishment of a blatantly pro-corporate White Christian Nationalist and anti-democratic regime. Unlike after Trump’s surprise victory in 2017, the far right actually had a plan for governing that would cement their proto-Fascist regime in place for decades to come. The Project 2025 document published by the right-wing ideologues of the Heritage Foundation lays out that plan in gruesome detail.

As a sitting President, Joe Biden has done a credible job on most domestic issues. Stymied from achieving his most ambitious goals on social legislation, relief of student debt and energy restructuring, by Republicans and maverick Democrats in Congress or by right-wing judges, Biden nonetheless accomplished enough in his pared-down domestic programme to win re-election in normal times.

However, Biden was beset by serious personal issues that hampered his ability to run effectively on his record. He was never a good communicator, seldom venturing forth in unstaged press conferences or direct appeals to the public. His growing physical frailty came into sharper focus with his disastrous performance in the June debate with Trump. 

The frailties of old age can be mitigated, and mental lapses reduced, by good geriatric medicine and lots of exercise and preparation (I speak from personal experience as an 84-year-old with my own senior moments).  But, like 72% of all Americans, I could no longer believe that Biden was vigorous enough to withstand the rigors of another term as US President, nor to campaign effectively as leader of an anti-MAGA coalition. Donald Trump is nearly as old, but his aggressive bullying narcissistic demeanor is that of a spoiled two-year old brat, not a dotard.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) never much liked Biden, in part because the Democratic Party leadership rallied to his candidacy in the 2020 Democratic primaries to block the ascendant Bernie Sanders. 

Like most of the American Left, DSA opposed Biden’s backsliding on refugee policies and his approval for certain fossil fuel pipeline projects.  But denunciation of the Biden presidency only broke out into a fever pitch with his largely unconditional backing for Netanyahu’s genocidal conduct against civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.   DSA joined the overall pro-Palestinian movement, playing an especially crucial role in helping to organize the campaigns in multiple states to persuade Democratic primary voters to vote Uncommitted rather than for Biden, and in successfully campaigning within several major unions for a permanent ceasefire and an end to military aid to Israel.

The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) helped organize the pro-Palestinian encampments on several university campuses.  DSA elected officials in several cities across the country continue to advocate pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) resolutions on Palestine.

The final push to pressure Biden to drop out of the Presidential race came not from the Party’s Left, but from major Democratic donors, and from Centrist Democrats terrified that their own reelection campaigns in “purple” districts were endangered with Biden at the head of the ticket. Sanders and AOC, along with most of the Squad, have been focused on trying to persuade any Democratic candidate (now officially Kamala Harris) to campaign on a more clearly pro working-class and progressive platform, including cutting off unconditional military aid to Israel.

When Biden finally made his decision to withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Kamala Harris, the sigh of relief from most Democrats and Leftists was palpable. However, DSA’s first official response was grudging and more vindictive than welcoming. (Statement-on-the-end-of-joe-bidens-presidential-campaign)

Not surprisingly, DSA elected officials at the national level have been targeted by pro-Israel lobbyists. Crippled by drastic redistrictions to remove most of his African-American constituency, Jamaal Bowman lost his seat in a congressional district outside New York City to an opponent heavily funded by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Bowman was also the target of negative campaigning from ultra-left sectarians within national DSA, who regarded him as insufficiently pro-Palestinian, though New York City DSA did endorse and canvass for him.

On August 6, another incumbent Squad DSA member, Cori Bush, a working class African-American nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, narrowly lost a Democratic primary in St. Louis to an opponent heavily funded by the United Democracy Project, associated with AIPAC.  Despite strong fundraising from the Justice Democrats, phone banking by the national Working Families Party, and the united canvassing and phone banking organized by local and national DSA, she could not overcome massive negative campaigning against her that ignored her strong support for Palestinian rights, the real reason for AIPAC supporting her opponent.

However, DSA played an important role in the campaign to persuade Kamala Harris to select Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate. Young activists from DSA launched a social media campaign against the selection of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, primarily because of his denunciation of the pro-Palestinian campus encampments and positions favoring private charter schools.   Shapiro had the support of much of the Democratic Party establishment and mass media, and was considered the front-runner because it was thought that his candidacy would help the Democrats win the battleground state of Pennsylvania. But Tim Walz already seems to be an excellent unifying choice for the Democratic Party. He has been an effective governor, winning major gains for working class people in Minnesota despite a very slender legislative majority. Walz also “speaks American”, in a way that should be accessible to alienated white male dudes, particularly in rural areas of the Midwest, who are not necessarily prone to vote for women of color.

The first reactions from the young DSA media activists to Harris’s choice of Walz as a running mate were quite positive (comment on X). Those whose major issue is Israel/Palestine will of continue to demand a clear and effective break by the Biden/Harris administration from the genocidal and aggressive policies of Netanyahu.  This will be the major focus of protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The 30 Uncommitted delegates have already decided to vote “Present” all that is allowed by the DNC rules, but they each chose to nominate a child, woman or man who had been killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza. DSA will support the large Palestinian diaspora communities in the USA in what are hoped to be large non-violent demonstrations outside the Convention.

At the time of writing, the Harris-Walz ticket is polling well, and the atmosphere of gloom and doom that had beset both the Democratic Center and the Left has given way to cautious optimism with the evident rallying of the Democratic base.  Without a faltering Joe Biden to pillory, the Trump-Vance campaign now seems like the deer transfixed in the headlights. But the MAGA base remains intact, and the election may still be so close that the structural advantages Republicans have in the Electoral College might still allow the Supreme Court to tip it to MAGA.

Paul Garver is a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Chartist is the bi-monthly political magazine of the democratic left. In honouring the Chartists of the 19th century, our idea of democratic socialism is as much about the political movement and means of mobilisation used to advance political ideas as it is about the ideas themselves. Chartist seeks to provide a space for those who subscribe to this broad ideal.