Portside

The bulk of US progressives and radicals went into the 2024 presidential race clear-eyed about how catastrophic a second Trump term could be. Organizations ranging from the Working Families Party to the national community organizing networks, from UNITE-HERE, other combative unions and Working America to hundreds of local and state-based power-building groups, from Black Voters Matter and SURJ to Seed the Vote, went all out. They pushed to their maximum “margin of effort” to block MAGA’s bid for power in a way that would build their own strength.

Anticipating a close race, most hoped it would be enough while recognizing that we could lose. But what appeared to be the scale of Trump’s victory on election night delivered a gut-punch both politically and emotionally.

As the days went by and millions of votes not counted by November 5-6 were tallied, a fuller picture of the outcome emerged. As it turned out, the popular vote total was in fact very close, with Trump failing to reach 50% and only beating Harris by 1.5% (49.9% to 48.4%). Far more significant than the switch of some Biden 2020 voters to Trump in 2024 was the fact that millions of voters in constituencies that tend to vote Democratic stayed home. And even in states that voted for Trump, ballot propositions on abortion, raising the minimum wage and other issues mostly resulted in progressive wins.

And the big effort put in by social justice organizations did make a difference. In several battleground states and swing congressional districts, Democratic Senate and House candidates who had been major beneficiaries of progressive canvassing and other efforts out-performed Harris and prevailed.

Still, the MAGA-controlled GOP won control of the White House and the Senate while maintaining their (narrow) majority in the House and trifectas in 23 state governments. Trump’s own statements, and the roster of hatemongers and thugs he has nominated for Cabinet posts, indicate that those levers of power will be used to impose MAGA’s Project 2025 and Project Esther agendas. As we adjust “block the right/build independent progressive power” strategies to meet the grave dangers ahead, the lessons we draw from the 2024 campaign can help us both resist and keep our eyes on the prize of transformative change.

Factors in Trump’s victory

A host of valuable assessments of why the election turned out the way it did have been published since Nov. 5 in the radical and mainstream media. Generally, analysts have sorted the key factors shaping the outcome into three different categories: the context in which the election took place; the problems of the Harris campaign; and what progressives could and couldn’t bring to the fight.

The context element that was cited most often and given most importance was mass sentiment, especially in the working class, that the Biden administration had done nothing to better people’s difficult economic situations, and more specifically to address inflation. Inflation has been a post-pandemic feature worldwide, and it has contributed to incumbent parties of all political tendencies being ousted from power in recent elections. Popular anger over inflation intersects with a growing popular dissatisfaction with everything from job insecurity and problems getting health care to forever wars and “the status quo” in general.  

Other “context” factors include:

• Persistent racism and sexism in the US electorate. Though the GOP made gains among voters of color compared to 2020, the biggest division in voting patterns remains that of race, especially the division between Black and white voters. While 80-85% of African American voters chose Harris, at least 55% of whites went for Trump.
• The scale and effectiveness of the lavishly funded and long-built-up right wing information/disinformation machine. Fox News remains at its core, but Fox is now flanked by an expanding network of podcasters and social media influencers that has made major inroads among youth. The deep investment in MAGA politics by tech billionaires whose companies control our social media feeds and crypto ponzi-scheme hustlers also exploded into view in this cycle.
• The mainstream media’s addiction to covering elections and politics in general as a partisan horse race in which objectivity means giving equal weight to both sides. Even media that editorializes that Trump, MAGA and the GOP are existential threats to democracy practices “both-sides-ism” in their news coverage.

Biden-Harris: myopia and worse

Some observers have argued that this context all but guaranteed that Harris (or Biden if he hadn’t withdrawn) would lose in 2024 no matter what they did. Whether or not that’s the case, it’s impossible ignore a whole series of Democratic leadership decisions that—even beyond being terrible from a progressive point of view—damaged if not doomed their party’s campaign. These include:

• In his 2020 campaign and early in his term, Biden had spoken of being a “‘transitional” one-term President. But he didn’t withdraw early enough for there to be a contested primary which would have allowed candidates to test voters’ preferences. A contested primary would have opened the door for someone to play the role Bernie did in 2020, energizing people with anti-corporate sentiments and affecting the character of the 2024 general election campaign whoever won the nomination.
• Under pressure from Bernie’s 2020 campaign, Biden did accomplish some important things in the first year or two, such as taking steps toward a “Bidenomics/Build Back Better” break with neoliberalism and appointing the most pro-labor NLRB in decades. But he never popularized a compelling narrative explaining how his program would benefit the working class and why tangible results would take some time to appear, and clearly identifying MAGA and GOP billionaires as opponents of pro-worker, pro-poor people economic reforms. Democratic claims that they stewarded the economy well only seemed tone-deaf to people who were struggling.
• When Biden finally did drop out and there was a burst of enthusiasm for the far more energetic Kamala Harris, the Harris team seemed to conclude that the only problem the Democrats had in 2024 was Biden’s age. Having dispensed with that problem, Harris refused to distance herself from administration policy on Gaza or its immigration crackdown. And on economics, where she did put some daylight between herself and Biden, it was to move further away from pro-worker economic populism. Despite a good start in choosing Tim Walz as her running mate, Harris prioritized going after lukewarm-on-Trump Republicans over aggressive efforts to court workers, Latinos, African Americans, young voters, and peace voters, appearing more often with Liz Cheney than, say, trade union leaders.

Progressives not yet at sufficient scale

The progressive ecosystem had more unity and sophistication than we did in 2020 and deployed everything we could to beat MAGA. We leaned into this effort even though most of us were furious at—and constantly protesting —both the Biden administration and the Harris campaign for enabling genocide in Gaza and going backward on immigrant rights.

But even with highly motivated canvassers and phone bankers, financial support for many groups from the increasingly sophisticated Movement Voter Project, and major efforts by electeds like Bernie and AOC, the social justice camp lacked the sheer numbers and media reach to compensate for an unfavorable context and out-of-touch Democratic Party campaign. And though most of our work stressed both the ‘block MAGA” and “build toward a better future” components of progressive politics, it is likely we overestimated the impact of “block MAGA” side on an electorate deeply dissatisfied with a status quo with which Harris was identified.  

And it is not just a problem of size, money, and some ineffective messaging. With a few exceptions—mainly in the labor movement—progressives are not embedded enough in large organizations of working-class people that are membership-driven and tap into the energy and creativity of those who are exploited and oppressed. But for building durable power, there is no substitute for a political culture where radicals who are embedded in the workplaces, neighborhoods, and cultural and religious institutions of working-class life act as catalysts to unleash the energy, combativity, and all-around political leadership potential of their co-workers, neighbors, and others with whom they share the same conditions of life. 

A measure of left consensus

Different analysts weigh the factors listed above and others differently. And current opinions are likely to be modified as more data from exit polls and other sources comes in. But on a few key points, there is a measure of emerging consensus on the broad Left.

First is that a significant majority of the US population (including but not only those registered to vote) believes the country’s current political and economic arrangement is not working for them and wants major change. Electoral campaigns that do not offer a big-change program but rely mainly on hammering the opponents will not excite large numbers and are unlikely to succeed. A step-back look at the 2024 election indicates that a majority of people do not support MAGA’s agenda. But all the factors above combined to make the 2024 election more of a referendum on the status quo than on the specific kind of change MAGA offered. The candidate identified most with the status quo —Harris—lost. Trump’s narrow victory does not confer a mandate for the MAGA agenda. But turning broad anti-MAGA sentiment into effective resistance when MAGA holds so many levers of political power is going to be a huge challenge.

Second is that social justice partisans will not be able to stop MAGA from doing tremendous damage to the global majority and the planet itself unless we are rooted in the working class and project a vision for change that reaches and attracts the majority of workers. Indeed, the “we must organize in and win support from the working class” perspective is becoming all but universal on the broad Left and (in a different form) among some mainstream Democrats. This is a good thing, although it is important to note that some versions of this view downplay or outright run away from the fights for full equality for all specially oppressed groups, deploying the term “identity politics” as an epithet and justification. But a version of working-class politics that does not stand for “an injury to one is an injury to all” (and/or does not apply that standard internationally) is a dead end. 

Third is that there is a lot at stake in the current contention between progressives’ diagnosis of why Harris lost in 2024 and the stance of most current Democratic Party leaders who blame everything and everyone but themselves. While a bold program of electoral reform (end voter suppression and gerrymandering, abolish the electoral college, explore ideas like ranked choice voting and multi-member House districts) must be part of our agenda, for the near future we are still stuck with the two-party system. Even as we unite with all forces willing to resist MAGA, contention within the block-MAGA front is likely to sharpen between progressives and centrist and pro-corporate Democrats. Building our independent strength will be crucial to navigating that terrain.

Stepping back further, and looking ahead

Beyond those points, the election brought into sharp focus the extent to which US democracy has been undermined since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and the degree to which wealth inequality (and especially the expansion of the billionaire class) has grown since the 1970s—and the deep interconnection between these two developments. The Federalist Society’s capture of the Supreme Court enabled voter suppression, gerrymandering, and with the Citizens United decision, a green light for big money to flow into electoral campaigns. These changes—essentially a shift in class power—facilitated de-regulation, changes in tax laws and other measures that favored the rich. In short, the system is more structurally biased against democracy and equality than it has been at any time since the end of Jim Crow.

Put bluntly, the system is rigged, so much so that calling it an oligarchy is gaining traction even beyond the Far Left. Every democratic right we have on paper—to vote, to protest, to organize a union, to receive equal treatment under the law— had to be won with blood, sweat and tears because ruling elites knew they were weapons that could be used to undermine their power, and every one has been weakened by decades of assault. Now an intensified assault on the remnants looms. Stressing the vital connection between defense and expansion of democratic space and the material conditions of life for the vast majority—and finding ways to make the connection real in the lives of the majority—is crucial for putting resistance to Trump 2.0 on a firm foundation. And, if and when we succeed in ousting MAGA from power, it will be central to formulating a path to deep structural change.

And though the conversation about what happened in the election will continue, the focus now shifts to resistance strategies for the next difficult stage. Preparing for future elections will be part of the mix, but the focus for the next year at least will be on non-electoral action, including showing our commitment to resist by going into the streets in large numbers.

For specific strategies and tactics, we will draw on the expertise of those who have participated in and/or studied the experience of movements against authoritarianism here and in other countries. (Among other resources, you can check out materials like this from the Horizons Project or follow the Anti-Authoritarian and Block & Build podcasts from Convergence.)  And leadership in mass action in defense of targeted constituencies will largely come from organizations with experience and expertise fighting on the battlefronts that MAGA is promising to prioritize— immigrant rights, trans rights, voting rights, protesting US backing for Israeli genocide and against US militarism and empire-building in general.

It will be a difficult time. But partisans of peace, equality and justice in this country have fought authoritarianism before. The abolitionist movement, general strike of the enslaved, and a Union Army combined to defeat the Slave Power. After the overthrow of the post-Civil War Reconstruction governments (which W.E.B. DuBois called “abolition democracy”) our political forbears faced 80 years of Jim Crow—US-style fascism. Then the Black-led Civil Rights Movement took off and produced a second Reconstruction, breaking the white monopoly on political power and sparking the host of 1960s movements that brought the US closer to a one-person, one-vote democracy than it had ever been.

Now it’s our turn to resist with a renewed margin of effort—and prevail.