By Richard Mellor in California
So Joe Biden has chosen California Senator, Kamala Harris, for his running mate. Most people assumed he would pick a woman, most likely a woman of colour, as US politics is all about personalities and identity politics and the issue of racism in the US is on the front burner at the moment thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement. This is probably the most powerful and far-reaching uprising against racism in US history. I am not including here the centuries-long wars that Native Americans have fought against colonization.
There are numerous articles about Biden’s choice, many of them pointing out the inconsistencies in Kamala Harris’ political decisions and rhetoric. Perhaps wanting to appear fair, some writers point to her positive points before stressing her extremely poor record when it comes to the rights of workers and the poor.
Harris put a lot of black youth in prison and I had the opportunity to see her in action when she was the assistant District Attorney in Oakland, California. She prosecuted a young friend of mine and I attended to speak on his behalf. He claimed his innocence and I believed him. He had served 10 months. Had he pleaded guilty he would have been free, but he refused to accept guilt for something he didn’t do. He was sentenced to 18 years. That’s the US justice system for you.
Harris’ opportunistic shifts and relief for big business
Firstly, it is no accident Kamala Harris is a mixed bag, at least outwardly. This is to be expected from opportunists and Ms Harris is a sharp and astute opportunist.
Instead of detailing this history, her opportunistic shifts and weighing up what she did good and what she did bad like some sort of resume, we can tell exactly where she’s headed from what the enemies of working class people say about Biden’s choice for running mate.
In response to Biden’s choice of Harris for V-P, the front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal was, “Wall Street Exhales Relief”. Wall Street is relieved because Biden’s choice is a good one for the ruling class in the USA. The more astute sections of the US capitalist class desperately want their renegade class colleague, Trump, evicted from the White House before he does even more damage to their interests.
And Biden picking Harris as his running mate has thrown a blanket over the Democratic Party’s left wing and let the Wall Street crowd know that the Trump nightmare can be over in January 2021 if Biden is elected. A Biden-Harris ticket makes that a real possibility and as usual, the so-called socialist Bernie Sanders has supported her as a ‘champion’ of working-class people.
Fending off the progressive wing
Not only has “Wall Street cheered” the decision, as the WSJ puts it, but Biden has “fended off the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party that has called for tougher financial regulation”. That Harris and people like her can also be called ‘progressive’, shows how worthless that term is as far as working people go, when describing political currents.
By selecting Harris there is a whole section of Wall Street that believes he has chosen as the Journal say, “….a non-controversial partner – closely aligned with him on the issues nearest and dearest to their hearts – and an asset with big donors” .
Some of Senator Harris’ supporters have claimed that one of her strong points is that she took the big banks to task. I have no real idea what that means. Apparently she criticized them for their role in the 2008 crash when some five million people had their homes stolen from them, (they didn’t “lose their homes” as the media puts it, they knew where they were). But here we are, over a decade later, bailing out the system yet again and the top five banks are making billions in profits. Citi took home $19 billion and Chase $36.4 billion, in 2019.
Bankers aren’t worried about Harris
She is talking of a tax on financial transactions, a demand that has been popular for some time, but bankers aren’t worried at all. “I think she is a reasonable, rational person who has worked in the system….”, Wells Fargo’s head of public affairs, Bill Daley, tells the WSJ. “Is she a progressive? Yes. Is she someone who wants to burn the building down? No. I think she wants to strengthen the building.”.
That dialogue sounds like it’s straight out of Seinfeld and some people involved in various negotiations over banking issues with Harris have said that, “… her efforts to hold banks accountable amounted more to style – seen at times as impeding a resolution – than substance.”, the Journal reports.
Blair Effron is a founder of an investment bank and is confident Ms Harris believes that big business has, “a responsibility to be part of the solution, but she makes clear how we will all benefit with shared prosperity.”
What’s good for business
“She thinks what’s good for business should be and can be good for the country,” said Charles Phillips, co-chair of the Black Economic Alliance and a long-time Harris supporter, again according to the WSJ. “She wants to figure out a way for the system to work for everyone and expand the pie”. It seems that all of these capitalist apologists want an economic system that “works for everyone”. But that’s not possible – and they know it. It all comes down to defining who “everyone” is.
Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris can be their friends and ours as well.
It seems that barring a catastrophe, Trump will be out of office by January. Whether he will leave graciously or not we don’t know. What he might do, I will not attempt to predict. Many of those voting for the Democratic alternative, the only alternative we have in the electoral arena, are voting “blue no matter who” which is a popular slogan in these times. In fact, polls show that Biden’s biggest positive asset, and by a mile, is that he “isn’t Trump”.
The dream is that with the Biden ticket, there can be a return to the status quo before the Trump disaster. I sympathize completely with those that take this position and believe that it will give us time to build an alternative, and so on. I just don’t agree with it. All was not well with US capitalism before Trump and that situation will continue when he’s gone.
Declining living standards
For others that think the Democratic Party will reverse the declining living standards and the poverty, racism and environmental catastrophe that global capitalism is preparing for the future, they will be sorely disappointed. The pandemic has changed everything. It has had a very positive affect on class consciousness as those workers who have always been essential are being recognized as such to a far greater extent than they ever were.
They have seen what money can be found when it comes to saving business and they have also seen how the so-called free market capitalist system in the supposed greatest country in the world, has proved inadequate when it comes to social needs and national crises. The drive to keep schools open are all based on saving the economy. If kids and education workers have to be sacrificed, then so be it.
While government deficits are popular now and all the stops are being pulled to prevent a complete economic collapse, this unprecedented stimulus has to be paid for and we know which class will pay for it. The deficit has increased by over two trillion in the first 8 months of this year alone. It is predicted that there will be a tsunami of evictions in the near future. Many employers will not need workers to come back to work and many workers won’t want to come back through fear of sickness. There will be further layoffs as the economic crisis worsens.
Young workers see no future
Those workers, the lower paid, the young workers who see no future, will be testing their collective power and we will see huge class clashes at some point as the US ruling class is forced to impose the costs of the pandemic onto the backs of working people. There may well be some success squeezing some funds from the elite, but we should not fool ourselves, the crisis of capitalism that existed pre-pandemic is still with us.
The situation clearly points to the terrible consequences that working-class people in the US are faced with when it comes to politics. We have only the two Wall Street parties to choose from. There are many other small parties, but a national political party based on working class people, our communities and allies, will have to be built, if we are to challenge the political rule of the billionaires and capital in general. The trade unions have the social structure, thousands of locals around the country, some 1000 county AFL-CIO labour councils and they have the numbers, but their leaders have not been up to the task
Thousands of union members walk precincts, participate in phone banks and the unions have given the Democratic Party billions over the years. I have written blogs on many occasions about why this is so and why the labour hierarchy refuses to break from the Democrats and offer the US working class an alternative. It is the same reason they suppress rank and file movements who try to wage a real fightback of their own within organized labour: it threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labour peace. It is the Team Concept in the political sphere.
100 million don’t vote in elections
There was close to 100 million people who didn’t vote in the last election. A hundred million voters have drawn the conclusion that neither of the big parties represent their interests. With Trump’s exit we will be faced with a continuation of the capitalist offensive because the system cannot show a way out of this mess and cannot escape its own inherent contradictions.
The Black Lives Matter movement has shown how quickly things can change in the face of a movement of mass direct action. In the blink of an eye, the billionaires that own the sports teams (NFL) decided they were wrong about Colin Kaepernick’s mild protest against racism and police violence, when he first ‘took a knee’ at a sporting event. Johnny Cochrane, Melvin Belli and Alan Dershowitz all rolled into one couldn’t have done that. All sorts of money is now being thrown at black colleges and businesses.
The white racist ruling class needs to strengthen the black middle class and black capitalism as a beacon to the black working class with the message “you can work through the system, look at me”. It is what we call a buffer zone, but it might be too late for that old trick to work.
After what we are living through and how heroic those who have worked through it on behalf of all of us have been, it is not going to be easy to impose more austerity millions of US workers. But impose it they must, no matter who is in the Oval Office.
Where Harris’ allegiances lie
Kamala Harris was the smart choice for the Democrats. It will be hard from Trump to attack her as soft on crime. The older black voters will vote for her, even those who have been very critical in the past. If elected, she will be the first black and Asian woman to hold the Vice Presidential office and will be the front runner for the presidency if Biden serves two terms with the possibility of becoming the first Asian/Black woman to occupy the White House as president.
But if we want to know where Kamala Harris’ allegiances lie, we just have to read what our enemies think about her.
Richard Mellor writes for and edits the US socialist website, Facts for Working People, which can be accessed here.
August 17, 2020
