by the Editorial Board
The first presidential debate was characterized by the ramblings of two geriatric men, trading insults and lies, each trying to sell themselves to the masses in order to legitimize US imperialism for another four years. The debate focused on the topics of the economy, foreign policy, immigration, abortion, and bourgeois democracy. Biden had an especially poor performance despite the fact that his campaign was the one that called for the debate, instigating a crisis in the Democrat Party and proving yet again that this election will be the most farcical in US history.
On numerous occasions, Biden trailed off and spoke incoherently and was unable to convincingly explain his policy proposals or counter Trump’s claims. Both candidates consistently lied and exaggerated what they did in office while also making false campaign promises; for example, Biden promised that he would “restore Roe v. Wade” were he re-elected—begging the question why he has not done so thus far—while Trump claimed, “during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever. And my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually.”
The candidates focused more on how the other is worse than what they themselves can offer the people, highlighting the degenerative, downward spiral of bourgeois democracy. A live commentator with the Washington Post, Rachel Siegel, stated: “curious if anyone felt like they got a straight, substantive answer, from either candidate, on a specific policy issue?”
In an attempt to do damage control, Biden’s campaign is pushing the argument that he had a cold and a rough start but finished strong—which is telling that the election is more about a confident performance than honesty. But even this claim of theirs is wrong—the end of the debate devolved into the two candidates attacking each other’s golf skills, while Biden’s closing remarks were no more coherent—or honest—than the rest of his performance, with a CNN transcript reading: “What I did, when, for example, he wants to get away with—and get rid of the ability of Medicare to—for the ability to—for the—us to be able to negotiate drug prices with big pharma companies.”
Biden’s terrible performance has launched his party into crisis, which is set to convene in August to formally nominate their candidate. While some imperialists and other members of the Party and affiliates are panicking about Biden’s chances of winning—with even the New York Times editorial board calling for his resignation—various monopoly media sources report there is a low likelihood that the Democrat Party will choose someone else. The handlers of the Democrat Party prefer the rightward shift, and whether it is Biden or someone else the political crisis will continue.
The crisis in the Democrat Party, and the political crisis in the US at large, is rooted in the broader economic crisis of imperialism. The trend of imperialism is the increased concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands and increased misery and poverty among a growing section of the world’s population. The Democrats campaign under the guise of supporting working and oppressed people; however, after decades of hypocrisy and utter obedience to the imperialist class, more people have become disillusioned with electoral politics altogether or have shifted to Trump in the hopes that his populism will offer something different. But neither Democrat nor Republican can do anything to reverse the decay of imperialism; instead, they sell lies and appeal to the masses that their opponent is worse than they are because they cannot get out of the crisis. The Democrats are losing their grip on their base of support as their promises keep falling through, and the same fate awaits the growing number of right-wing populist candidates when their voters realizes that demagoguery can’t pay bills.
The crisis of bourgeois democracy—which was the second most spoken-about topic during the debate—is rooted in this same trend. The concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands means less competition among the ruling class and less room for economic and political concessions, leaving the masses with nothing to gain from either candidate. Trump traffics in this discontent with the system while Biden appeals to those who have faith in the system, both on a foundation of backwards nationalism and class collaboration.
When asked about his recent criminal conviction, Trump said that Biden “could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office” and finished off by saying, “I did nothing wrong. We’d have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong.”
These trends show the US in decline. Both Biden and Trump referred to each other as “the worst president in the history of our country,” and Trump referred to the US as “an uncivilized country” and a “Third World nation.” Trump repeatedly claimed that the US is “no longer respected as a country”—a claim that the Democrats frequently make about the Trump presidency. US imperialism is overextended and decaying, and both parties emphasize this aspect when the other is in power. The masses feel the impact of this decline, and so politicians play hot potato with who is to blame in order to distract from the capitalist mode of production, individualizing the problem to a specific candidate or party.
These crises take the form of increasing appeals to nationalism as a means to foster collaboration between the exploited and exploiters, justify the superexploitation of migrants and US colonies and semi-colonies as well as the various wars the US profits from. The candidates try to out-compete each other for who is tougher on migration, both claiming that the US border patrol endorsed them. They both use the rhetoric of the dangerous migrant, stoking fears to place the blame of the political and economic crises on the migrants, which also serves to make their conditions more precarious and forces them into more exploitative conditions. Trump claimed that the migrants are taking American jobs and that Biden is bringing them in to get more votes while both Biden and Trump blamed migrants for the opioid epidemic. When asked what he will do to help addicted Americans struggling to get treatment, Biden responded with: “More fentanyl machines, were able to detect drugs, more numbers of agents, more numbers of all the people at the border.”
On the US-Israel genocide, again the candidates try to out-do each other in who is more supportive of Israel. Biden again repeated the lie that everyone including the Israeli government supports his ceasefire proposal and only Hamas is standing in the way and is the only one that wants to keep fighting, while Trump pointed out that Israel is the one that wants to keep fighting and that Israel should “finish the job.” He called Biden “a very bad Palestinian,” while Biden bragged that he “provided Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them” and that “we are the biggest producer of support for Israel than anyone in the world.”
The truth in the debate lies in their attacks on each other, and the fact that they accuse each other of the same things is telling: the worst president, the worst on foreign policy, the worst on immigration, economy, rights for the people, etc. They are fundamentally similar because they represent the same interests; their differences emerge from the economic differences of one imperialist versus another, of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
The only way out is through overturning this mode of production, and the election boycott is the only way to use the elections against imperialism. Things cannot get better for workers under a system that is based off of their exploitation and oppression. The election boycott is a rejection of the learned helplessness that is electoral politics, which perpetuates a slavish mentality of picking your own oppressor in the hopes that he will throw you a crumb. It serves to delegitimize the rule of the imperialist class and highlight that the working class is capable of organizing their own interests independently of ruling-class parties. The working class has the task of reconstituting its own party, the Communist Party, to represent its interests and lead the seizure of power to organize society on a basis that serves its interests. The downward spiral is a dead end.
Photo: Screenshot of the 2024 presidential debate.
