With the Trump presidency thankfully in its death throes, Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership are in thrall to a dangerous illusion that they can take the country back to the political world of 2015 as if nothing happened. They’re about to learn that they’ve won a Pyrrhic victory.
Joe Biden’s empty campaign may well have won over some suburban Republican voters. But the fragile majority he has likely eked out this time should have been many times larger, and without a more serious reorientation, it won’t hold for long.
It’s good that Donald Trump lost. But the Left now needs to pivot immediately to opposition to the Joe Biden administration.
The corruption of British politics by corporate “dark money” is part of a global phenomenon. But we can’t make sense of that trend without recognizing that capitalist oligarchies have always sought to undermine genuine democracy.
Sweden’s longtime refusal to impose a general lockdown has seen it portrayed as an alternative “model” for coping with the pandemic. Yet death rates in its care homes have been appalling — and as a scandal that broke last month highlighted, much of the blame lies with the breakup and privatization of the country’s once-mighty public services.
A ballot measure to tax the rich failed on election night in Illinois. The person behind the “no” campaign: right-wing billionaire Ken Griffin, who funneled $50 million of his own money to kill the referendum.
Don’t let the gloom of Tuesday’s national elections obscure the remarkable results in lower-level races across the country. Dozens of socialists were elected to legislatures, while minimum-wage hikes, rent controls, and taxes on the rich to fund schools all won voter backing, even in very red places.
It appears Joe Biden will defeat Donald Trump, which is a very good thing. Now, get ready to fight — because oligarchs will concede nothing in their class war.
It looks like Biden won a narrow victory. But when Democratic candidates lose elections, is there any accountability for the Democratic Party operatives responsible? They don’t lose their jobs; they don’t even seem to take a pay cut.
Our work lives are so fissured, our ability to survive requiring such constant and Herculean efforts, that even fantastical narratives portraying the hunt for a steady job as swirling, maddening, operatically dramatic, degrading, bizarre, and never-ending feel just as real as life itself.
If Joe Biden managed to pull off a victory despite his lackluster campaign, it’s in part because the electorate felt the urgent need for a president who would focus on the coronavirus crisis instead of railing against a series of cultural bogeymen. No wonder: most people care more about their material conditions than the partisan culture wars.
The Lincoln Project said it would win over Republican voters from Donald Trump. Instead, Trump consolidated his base as the group burned $67 million that could’ve been spent better on real political organizing.
Democrats based much of their 2020 campaign on support for the Affordable Care Act. But the law has become less popular as the pandemic has exposed its flaws while continuing to enrich insurance companies.
Whatever the final outcome of the election, we know one thing for sure: the pollsters screwed up royally. And the heyday of celebrity pollsters seems to be coming to an end.
For Golden Age Hollywood, Kaua’i became synonymous with paradise. But Anthony Banua-Simon’s new documentary Cane Fire traces the reality of life on the island, from domination by sugar companies to its transformation into a low-wage service economy.
The fire at Greece’s notorious Moria refugee camp left over 12,000 people without shelter, but the new camp built to replace it holds only 3,000. The deliberate overcrowding flies in the face of anti-COVID measures, but it also has a clear political message: asylum seekers’ lives are more dispensable than European citizens’.
British journalist Robert Fisk, who died last week, produced decades of outstanding work, from Ireland to the Middle East. His greatest impact on public opinion came after 9/11, when he mounted a brave challenge to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have steadfastly refused to articulate a compelling alternative political vision to Donald Trump’s reactionary right-wing politics. Trump looks likely to have lost, but without creating an alternative to defeat it, Trumpism could return with a vengeance four years from now.
After a $200 million propaganda blitz, California voters passed the Uber- and Lyft-backed Proposition 22 on Tuesday, permanently excluding online “platform” workers from labor protections. Unsurprisingly, the companies are now talking about extending such legislation nationally.
There’s still much we don’t know, but we can take some key lessons from the elections last night: Democrats’ weak economic message helped Trump, the Lincoln Project embarrassed itself, a ton of grassroots money was set on fire, Americans don’t love Obamacare, and the Democratic courts’ strategy failed.