Opinion | AD Nachalo
Bourgeois elections—and this is a fact increasingly observed by monopoly media—have lost all semblance of respect for their audience of potential voters, giving up on questions of policy and degenerating fully into a combination of personality and extremely expensive performances. It is not due to a lack of policy, but that the policies of both candidates are far too similar to lend the veneer of “choice” to the elections as it once did.
Kamala Harris’s pivot from condemning her rival Donald Trump’s attacks on Joe Biden’s age to attacking Trump on the exact same basis only highlights the fact that she is fully prepared to use Trumpist methods and rhetoric even if she was opposed to it earlier this year. This is no less evident in her vice presidency under Biden, who continued and enhanced some of Trump’s most reactionary policies.
As Harris and Trump remain as they have—with almost even numbers, Harris with a narrow lead overall and Trump with a creeping lead in swing states—both have invested heavily in the farce. Trump has gone back to the old rhetorical tricks that helped put him in office in 2016 by making veiled threats to lock up his political opponents. Harris has opted to woo audiences by enlisting the services of celebrities and musicians. At a recent Trump townhall in Pennsylvania, after two attendees had medical emergencies, Trump called off the Q&A and cued on music, proceeding to dance onstage for the next 40 minutes until the end of the rally. This is the 2024 election: who can put on the bigger show with the least substance and most dramatics.
What is promised in every close election in recent years is that the losing candidate will contest the results and insinuate that there was wrongdoing. They cannot even believe the sermons of the church of democracy which they spend billions convincing us to attend, because they know as well as we do that the whole thing is a fraudulent ruse, akin more to a big-tent revival than a political process. The degree in which they shriek and stamp their feet will only be understood in the coming months, between election day and inauguration.
What is the most likely difference in 2024 from 2020? Harris is not likely to have as many votes as Biden did in 2020 and Trump lacks the level of energy from the reactionaries on the street that he had in 2020, making a repeat of the reactionary January 6th riots less than likely. Nonetheless, one party will cry foul and the other, when in office, will increase power around the executive and restrict democratic rights among the people in the most miserable ways, while the economic crisis deepens and the imperialists pull themselves out by pushing working people even further into the mud.
The net positive of the 2024 presidential race is that almost no one still believes in it, even those who vote lament that this is the best “options” their rulers could come up with. People are more and more coming to the realization that to dream of a better society means finding ways to put an end to the nightmare of this one.
Photo: Trump dances at his townhall for 40 minutes after two attendees in the crowd have medical emergencies. Screenshot from CNN video.
