The Circular Firing Squad

The old-guard needs to go

This ain’t it.

Yes, it was an extremely difficult election season for Democrats—from corporate media’s attacks on President Biden to the debate in June; then the uncertainty surrounding Biden’s fate at the top of the ticket and his withdrawal from the race; and, obviously, the results last week—especially in the wake of what was a quite exemplary campaign run by Vice President Harris.

There are many and complex reasons why we have ended up here, so it’s been extremely disappointing to see the usual suspects (and some I didn’t anticipate) blaming Democrats for everything that has gone down.

For a significant sub-set of Democratic operatives and pundits, the post-mortems have focused almost exclusively on what Democrats have done wrong, while entirely failing to take into account global trends, entrenched beliefs among American voters, and decades’ worth of right-wing disinformation. It’s as if said operatives and pundits were looking at this catastrophe through a purely Republican lens.

Among the worst offenders is James Carville, who worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign more than three decades ago. Carville told CNN’s Christian Amanpour that “the country wanted change [and] the Vice President decided not to provide it.” It went downhill from there as Carville continued:

I’ll give Harris credit she didn’t use any ion the woke language but this is like but this is like trying to wash clothes that’s got smoke all over them—you can’t get the stench out. . . . You could ask Senator Manchin, Senator Casey, Senator Brown Senator Tester if they don’t think that defund the police had an adverse effect on attitudes towards the Democratic Party. My god, it was so stupid nobody wanted to bring it up three years later. But the residue of it just stuck with us. . . . It’s going to take more than one cycle to get this stench off of the Democratic Party, and it’s a stench of the highest order, let me tell you.

There is so much wrong with this take that I’m not even sure where to start, but it ranges from misrepresenting what actually happened to the worst kind of false equivalence.

Sen. Bernie Sanders blamed the Democratic Party for not doing more to reach out to white working class voters. That’s his schtick and he’s sticking to it despite all evidence to the contrary. Here is a not-exhaustive list of initiatives the Harris campaign (and Democrats) supported:

• Paid sick leave

• Paid family & medical leave

• Universal childcare

• Universal pre-K

• Tax increases on corporations & the rich

• The expanded Child Tax Credit

• Student debt relief

The Republican Party opposes all of these and, as Robert Reich said on Twitter this week, that “doesn’t sound like the party of the working class to me.”

Both Carville and Sanders would probably have enjoyed Harris’ campaign if they paid attention to it. The campaign I watched literally used the slogans “turn the page” and “we’re not going back.” Harris talked about the economy and its impact on the middle class—as well as what her administration was going to do for the middle class—more than anything else. She also happens to be part of the administration that helped dragged this country out of the economic disasters caused by Donald Trump and oversaw unparalleled job and wage growth for the middle class.

Harris built her platform around making life easier for working people by offering help for first-time home buyers and expanding Medicare to include long-term home health care for seniors.

After the world came out of a once-in-a-century pandemic, which Donald Trump made worse through his malicious incompetence, goods got very expensive as demand soared. This led to a global trend whereby incumbent governments were voted out, whether they had anything to do with the fallout from Covid or not.

“A survey by the Associated Press found high prices were the number one concern for about half of all Trump voters,” NPR reported this week. “They punished Harris and other Democrats, just as inflation-weary citizens have toppled governments around the globe — from Italy and Argentina to Pakistan and the U.K.”

It happened everywhere. People like Carville and Sanders know this. We know that Harris’ race and gender were disqualifying factors for far too many American voters. So instead of doing my uncle’s work for him and blaming each other, Democrats should be unified and focus on dealing with the fight right in front of us. The worst-case scenario is upon us and It’s going to take everything we’ve got to prevent as much backsliding as possible.

Kamala Harris deserves our gratitude. Donald and the fascism he’s unleashing upon us deserve to be resisted with everything we’ve got.