It doesn’t really matter who leads the Democrats
When people board a train, they don’t check the driver’s race, gender or musical tastes, expecting that any of these might alter the journey’s final destination.
“That old white mumbler was going to take us to the city. Now there’s a Black woman in the driver’s compartment; I guess we could end up anywhere—perhaps a place where life is great and easy and everyone is good-looking.”
No-one ever said that.
When it comes to US politics and the political vehicles of the ruling class, the same general rule applies: the trains run on tracks laid by the rich and powerful, and the drivers are methodically tested over decades to ensure they know every bend and can deal with unruly passengers if required.
Whether it’s the Democratic locomotive or the Republican one, the destination is always the same: Crapsville, where wages are low, universal health care doesn’t exist, cops and prisons are everywhere, and money flows upwards into the pockets of billionaires and to fund the military-industrial complex.
There are occasional exceptions to the rule, such as Donald Trump’s derailment of the Republican Party. But such events are extraordinarily rare, even unique. And even then, Crapsville is still the destination.
The opposite of rare and unique is Kamala Harris.
A career prosecutor whose professional life was about filling prisons with poor people. A vice president who has gone along with the genocide in Palestine. More than anything else, however, Harris is an establishment Democrat. That doesn’t sound as incriminating as other charges brought against her. Yet it supersedes them.
US politics is often obsessed with the identity and character of potential presidents. Obviously, politics has a moral dimension that cannot be divorced from the records of individuals seeking office. But the myopic focus on whether someone is considered suitably “qualified” for office on character grounds—or whether their racial or gender identity will be a sign of social progress if they are elected—distracts from the core issue: the nature of the ruling class and the character of its political parties.
Over the last several election cycles, the Democratic Party has become the preferred political vehicle of the US ruling class—the country’s most powerful individuals. The party represents most of the richest congressional districts, receives the lion’s share of political donations from multinational capital and is now known as the party most linked to (and supportive of) the intelligence agencies and the surveillance state.
The US ruling class isn’t just a group of people who have done a little better than the rest, by birth or otherwise. It is an interventionist beast that attempted 72 international regime changes, including coups, in the four decades after World War Two (according to investigations by Lindsey A. O’Rourke, an assistant professor of international politics at Boston College).
It’s responsible for tens of millions of deaths worldwide through its military aggression against countless countries, the latest being Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
It’s a ruling class that, despite presiding over the most prosperous and productive economy in human history, refuses to grant the mass of its own population basic dignities such as universal health care or a living pension in retirement.
It is one of the most ruthless, violent and selfish social groups ever known in human history.
To the extent that a character assessment of Harris is warranted, it should not be to determine whether she is fit to lead the Democrats. It ought to question the basis of her success in gaining the presidential nomination.
One could ask what sort of character would want to lead the political vehicle of one of the most vile and destructive social strata in the world, would want to lead a party of genocide, would want to take the helm of an institution responsible for gross inequality and poverty across the United States and indeed the world.
The answer to that question is “many people”. And not just sociopaths. Plenty of good-hearted people would like to improve US capitalism and believe that working through the Democrats is a way to do so. Anyone involved in politics long enough knows that there is no shortage of deluded people—on both the left and the right—who think themselves capable of shifting the immovable.
The more pertinent question is what sort of character would be accepted by the Democratic establishment and would have the ruling class emptying its pockets in a funding drive to back the election campaign.
The answer is someone who has already proven that she’s one of them.
