With just over three weeks left until election day in the USA, concerns within the Democratic Party over the electoral prospects of the Harris campaign are coming to the forefront. The wave of enthusiasm that media pundits universally predicted would follow Biden’s replacement of Harris has not materialized. A headline in the New York Times on October 7 nervously asks, „How could the election be so close?“
Former President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event to support Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris at the University of Pittsburgh’s Fitzgerald Field House in Pittsburgh on Thursday, October 10, 2024. [AP Photo/Matt Freed]
Despite his promise to complete the coup attempt he started on January 6, a second Trump presidency is a very real possibility. Polls show a statistical dead heat, close enough for Trump to falsely claim that any pro-Harris margin is the result of votes cast by „illegal immigrants,“ and to launch his plan to steal the election if he loses the electoral college. Harris is lagging in the polls far behind where Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden stood three weeks before the elections in 2016 and 2020 in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states that Clinton lost and Biden won by a narrow margin. Democratic candidates say internal polls confirm these concerns, and Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin says Harris is „underwater“ in Michigan.
In this context, the Democratic Party sent former President Barack Obama to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he delivered his first public endorsement speech for the Harris campaign. Before the speech, Obama also spoke separately with Harris volunteers at a campaign office in East Liberty.
Obama began his endorsement speech: „This election is going to be close because many Americans are still struggling, striving to make life better for themselves, their families, and their children,“ he said. „We have been through a lot in recent years. A historic pandemic has created chaos for communities and businesses, caused price hikes, and strained family budgets. It feels like the aspirations of working people have taken a back seat to the priorities of the rich and powerful.“
The former president is certainly not among those struggling to get by. After handing over the keys to the White House to Trump, wishing him „good luck“ and calling the 2016 election „an intramural scrimmage,“ Obama fled to the Caribbean to jet ski with billionaire Richard Branson. He was paid $2 million in 2017 to deliver three speeches, and in 2018, he signed a $50 million deal to produce films for Netflix.
Nevertheless, Obama’s remarks express genuine concern in the ruling class over the growth of social discontent over the economic situation and anger over social inequality. In recent years, there has been a rise in powerful strikes and social struggles among industrial workers at the core of the productive process, including in the railways, auto industry, aerospace industry, UPS, and ports.
In fear that the potential power of the emerging movement will disrupt profits or undermine the party’s ability to wage imperialist wars abroad, the Democratic Party is unable to make any genuine appeal to „the aspirations of working people,“ as Obama mentioned.
He instead launched a condescending condemnation of working-class black men, suggesting that they are misogynistic for not voting for Harris in sufficient numbers:
„My understanding, based on reports I get from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kind of energy and participation in all parts of our neighborhoods and communities as we did when I ran for office. This seems to be more pronounced among the brothers.“
Obama addressed black men, saying, „You come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses“ – a veiled reference to complaints about economic conditions – „Some of it makes me think that, well, you just don’t like the idea of having a woman as president.“ Placing himself alongside working-class black youth confronting police violence, the former commander-in-chief said: „When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they [the black women] are the ones marching and protesting.“ He concluded his harangue by referring to Harris as „one who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that come from those experiences.“
There is something deeply antidemocratic and distasteful in this black multimillionaire and representative of American imperialism telling black workers that they owe their vote to Harris because they belong to the same race-based „community.“ Obama himself plays on racist tropes by insulting black men as „misogynists“ if they do not show up in November.
What Obama condescendingly calls „excuses“ are actually legitimate grievances over burning social needs felt across the entire working class. The top 10 percent of households own 67 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own only 2.5 percent. Over 20 million people have died from Covid-19 globally, and life expectancy is falling in the USA for the first time in the country’s history.
Regarding black men, only 27 percent of them have a college degree. One-fifth of African American men live below the federal poverty line, and one in 15 is currently incarcerated. The former prosecutor Harris has not even commented on Missouri’s execution of Marcellus Williams, an innocent African American man.
These conditions are the product of the Democratic Party’s decades-long abandonment of the social programs of the New Deal and Great Society, programs that first led to the shift among African Americans from Republicans to Democrats in the mid-20th century. Instead, the Democrats have adopted the kind of identity-based politics that produced Barack Obama’s right-wing imperialist career.
Trump and the Republican Party exploit the disillusionment of African Americans with the Democratic Party, a process that was evident in the 2016 election results.
Trump and vice presidential candidate JD Vance have demagogically attacked the mass layoffs recently enforced across the entire auto industry, including at Stellantis, where 2,400 workers were laid off last week at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant in a suburb of Detroit. Speaking days later at Detroit’s Eastern Market, Vance said: „I think Michigan auto workers will agree with me that we need to build our own cars, and that Americans can drive whatever the hell they want, because this is America, and we believe in freedom.“ Trump and Vance combine such nationalist demagoguery with fascist attacks on immigrants, whom Trump has accused of „stealing“ jobs from African Americans.
The Socialist Equality Party rejects Trump’s fascist demagoguery and the race-based warmongering of Obama, Harris, and the Democrats. The potential to win an audience for a revolutionary program is growing, and it is expressed in the increasing influence and authority of the ICFI internationally, and of the SEP in the USA in particular.