Opinion | Tommy Johnson
After a lot of posturing about how the American people chose him as their presidential candidate and flatly stating he would not leave the race, President Joe Biden dropped out and endorsed current Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
The political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy arising from the global economic crisis of imperialism, has activated an internal contradiction of the Democratic Party: both Biden’s refusal to step down and then the about-face of surrendering late express this contradiction. While Biden’s age has been the main focal point of the controversy, underneath this anxiety is the real fear that the Democrats have no one who can beat Donald Trump, including Joe Biden. They can read the writing on the wall that they lack mass appeal in the face of Trump’s ultra-reactionary populism.
The Democrats with Harris seek to “have their cake and eat it too.” They want to maintain and increase their competition to see who can be more reactionary than Trump—that is to say, they want to continue Biden’s ultra-reactionary rule without the personage of old Joe, lending the appearance of rejuvenation to the old campaign. This makes Harris the logical choice.
The political decision to choose Harris as the presidential running mate in 2020 to begin with was quite devious. The 2020 elections took place within the context of nation-wide mass uprisings against the police, manly on the basis of the contradiction between Black people and the repressive state. Biden’s selection of Harris sought to simultaneously appeal to the base identity politics of having a Black woman vice president, and at the same time one that has referred to herself as the “top cop,” a two-tier attack on the masses to quell their justified rebellion. Harris has a long and sordid history in the repression of the masses, having served as the District Attorney of San Francisco and the Attorney General of California. In both capacities her role was to serve the ruling class in repressing the poorest masses, with a kind of oppression that disproportionately affects Black people.
Beginning her career in Oakland demonstrates that there are two paths for Black people. Oakland is the land of the original Panthers, where the racially conscious and courageous young men and women armed themselves for community self-defense against the police; on the other hand there is Harris, and those like her, who began serving the police by joining the most repressive sections of it, fighting to convict and imprison those the corrupt and racist police arrest. A large part of her political success was in taking centrist positions in order to secure the support of the police unions. Police unions are the single biggest barrier to reform. Even compared to other prosecutors Harris was reactionary. Each person must make a choice on where they stand. Malcolm X himself could not even come up with harsh enough words for the type of Black candidate Harris is.
By choosing California’s “top cop” Biden could trick the masses by appealing to their sense of racial justice and at the same time court the police and get support from the major police unions, his promise to them was to end the uprisings and get the masses off their backs. It was enough to get him into office, but not enough to keep the support of Black voters.
Harris, although younger than Biden, and although she is a Black woman, shares Biden’s perspectives on all major points, and should be just as despised by the people. She will fare against Trump just as her current boss would have. No matter what, the elections are going to be close, and as a result will inevitably be contested by the losing side as the political crisis deepens and the electoral farce plays out in scenes of repugnant political theater.
This is all precisely because Harris represents the interests of the same ruling class as Biden and Trump. They represent law and order (read: legal oppression, brutality and murder against the poor), they stand for large monopoly capitalists and even larger finance capitalists, and they all seek to continue Biden’s genocidal role in Palestine. Harris is a safe bet for the imperialist ruling class, specifically the section of them who cling to the Democrats. She is the only candidate who can easily access the millions raised for the Biden/Harris campaign and the only option with a sliver of legitimacy as a candidate backed by any votes at all. At this stage, the Democratic Party delegates will select their candidate and voters will have no say in it.
Harris has already come out in full reactionary posture, citing her role as a cop against the old felon Trump, the old dumb bourgeois dictum of cops and robbers meant to prop up the old order. The monopoly media has begun to come out behind with opinions being run in the Washington Post and elsewhere that basically present her as democracy’s last and greatest hope. In response to the massive cash flows coming into Trump’s campaign and the fact that they were diminishing with Biden’s, Harris broke the record of big money being spent on the purchase of candidates with donations reaching $81 million in a single day. “The Democratic money machine is back in business” gloats NBC. It is not just the big capitalists who fork over money to Harris—the agents of imperialism among the masses beg for small contributions from the very same folks who can no longer afford rent after 4 years of Trump and 4 years of Biden/Harris.
