President Biden has been in office for a month now. Back in the old days, you were supposed to give presidents a hundred days in office before you began analyzing them, but these are not normal times. Biden’s only real job was to beat Donald Trump, which he did, and I thank him for that; but I said when I committed to voting for him back in May, 2020 (after casting my primary vote for the only remaining opponent on the ballot, Bernie Sanders) that I’d be among those pushing for him to move to the left.
So I’m pushing now. His move to the right is not acceptable. He’s written off the $15 dollar minimum wage, his environmental plans seem weak, and now he’s dumping student loan forgiveness – and not honestly, either. As noted in the link, he’s making a bogus argument, one intended to garner support from among the same segment of working class voters who support Trump, by attacking them effete east coast elitists.
I realize that only about 10% of Democratic voters in this last election were progressives; most of his votes came from blue dog democrats, and black voters, with whom he has always had pretty good support. Would he have won without progressive support? It seems unlikely, but I suppose the DNC can make up an argument that progressives are really not needed (except on voting day).
We progressives need to keep working at the local and state levels to get more progressives into office. In most cases, that means fighting against the Democratic Party in the primaries – which is actually the easiest place to beat them. Party Democrats are very cavalier about primary voting – how many do you know who actually vote in the Republican primary because they are so sure that Republicans will win and the want to vote for the least conservative candidate? I know a lot (and I don’t think much of their strategy), and that means a concerted progressive effort in the primaries has a chance of succeeding. So let’s primary them, and get progressives on all the down ballot local and county slots that Party Democrats don’t even bother to fill in a lot of cases. Every race we run in can improve our representation in the party – and there is still no viable alternative to the Democratic party. The Green Party is a joke in this country, even more than the Libertarian Party, impossible as that may seem. We can either look twenty years into the future and start building a new, practical progressive party, or take over the nearest major existing and entrenched party. A takeover is easier, no matter how ironclad the blue dogs think their hold on power is.
A Diary of Interesting Times 