Weekly Editorial
“Americans are hoping the courts will spare them an electoral reckoning with Trump,” the bourgeois-liberal monopoly Guardian writes. What they mean, of course, is the Democrats are hoping to avoid running an increasingly unpopular Biden against Trump and losing. This comes in response to the maneuvers of the Colorado Supreme court to use Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments to block Trump from the ballot in that state—in particular the amendment blocking someone who has committed “insurrection” from holding office. The Colorado ruling passed by a 4-3 vote to block Trump, leaving the decision up to only one judge. The ruling will now go to the US Supreme Court. The most farcical of farce elections makes its entrance.
Both ruling class parties cite defense of “democracy” to falsely justify their own scandalous actions, whether it is storming the capital in a riot on January 6th, or using the courts to block the only real threat to a second Biden term. One thing is clear: bourgeois democracy is utterly ruined. It takes a spectacle to prop up a farce; without the sensationalism, without the appearance of professional wrestling, the number of non-voters and the conscious political opposition through the boycotting of elections only increases. In this kind of drama, the final seasons always have the worst writers and actors.
In the meantime, Democrat and Republican presidents alike have followed a steady right-wing trajectory. Biden was successful in presenting himself the lesser of two-evils only against the personage of Trump, while being openly to the right of Obama, and now has deported more people than Trump, dumped more arms into genocidal projects, and done nothing to reverse the restrictions on abortion access. Trump, for his part will not be outdone and seeks to outpace Biden’s breakneck speed in terms of who can be more openly reactionary. In each election, both parties represent a spiral to the right and in each election we are asked to pick the one mere inches from the furthest right in US history.
It is not likely that the US Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado ruling, stacked as it is with Trump appointees, on top of the fact that the Colorado ruling is itself an unprecedented political maneuver and can be seen as such. An identical legal argument to the one used in Colorado was recently rejected by the North Carolina election board in spite of a majority Democrat composition. Further, the amendment in question is selectively applied to the most blatant extent. A dedicated Confederate financier and military officer became the Secretary of the Senate from 1893 to 1900. An ex-Confederate soldier was seen fit to hold office in the Senate—and for Colorado itself!—from 1913 to 1921. These men definitely “committed insurrection.”
Barring Trump from the ballot is an act of desperation from the Democratic Party who cannot run popular candidates for fear that they will be too far left and instead settles on their most reactionary options like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Inversely, Trump cast himself as an anti-establishment candidate and won, but has since shown that he is only the further realization of the establishment in its most vitriolic form. The ruling class has agreed with near unanimity that US imperialism is best served with a right-wing president and they only disagree on the rhetoric. Neither Trump nor Biden had anything but miserable approval ratings while in office; the masses of people grow sicker from the political disease inflicted upon them.
Nonetheless, contradictions among the imperialist ruling class do exist and will blow up eventually. The ability for the ruling class to rule as it once did is historically challenged by low voter turn out, by mass protests, by labor struggles, and mainly by the resistance of the nations oppressed by US imperialism and the popular support for these struggles in the US itself. The crisis of imperialism spells political crisis, and this is the machine operating behind the props of the electoral farce.
So what happens if the Republican forerunner is blocked from the ballot in any state? It stands to reason that more states would utilize the constitutional amendment cited by Colorado and follow suit. Republicans would continue to cry foul and Trump would mobilize the mass movement which adores him, one made up of the most socially backward elements in the US. Riots would follow and among the rioters fascist organizations will make good use of the conditions. The left will respond as it always does, with disorganized anti-fascism, amounting to a continued failure to produce national militarized mass organizations which can lead in the street level conflicts, and thus leaving the only organizational forms in the pockets of the Democratic party, who will squander and squelch the righteous fury of the people into electoral dead ends.
No matter the results of this saga in the farce, the spectacle it produces will feed interest to the elections, and again the pathetic turnout will be used to continue legitimizing the rule of our exploiters and oppressors.
The working class cannot afford to go in for any more bourgeois democracy, for the very fact that it has rotten beyond having any use; it is septic. The working class can and must fight for proletarian democracy, which can exist only against and above bourgeois democracy as the product of socialism. It is the armed struggle—and not the ballot—which will accomplish this, and to support the necessity of revolution, the only rational and honest political position is to refuse to endorse the right-wing spiral of reactionization and to rally all who are still living to boycott the 2024 electoral farce.
