This Is No Time For Regrets— Standing Up For Progressive Values Is What's Called For Today

America would have been so different had Bernie won the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary in 2016. I have no doubt he would have beaten Trump and… where do we even start? I try to not think about how much better things would have been if elections would have turned out differently. In 2011, we referred to Norman Solomon, then running for Congress, as a perfect Blue America candidate when we introduced him to our members in a live chat. That morning, I had spoken with him about the budget kabuki between Paul Ryan and Obama. Since what differentiates him from a pack of careerist professional liberals who want to run for the seat is his ability to come to problems with an independent mind and analyze them in terms of progressive values and solutions. “You can’t beat heartless Republicans with spineless Democrats,” he told me. “Paul Wellstone talked about boosting the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. I intend to strengthen the progressive wing of the Progressive Caucus... There’s no future but disaster if Democrats cave in to Republicans. And— as a progressive Democrat— I’m ready, willing and able to push back against the Obama administration every time the White House betrays progressive values.” That’s what a movement progressive sounds like. Between the crypto-criminals, the consultant class and the genocide coalition, there a lot of money floating around that keeps movement progressives few and in between when it comes to Congress. He didn’t win that election in 2012. But that didn’t slow down his activism in any way.

“A Trump presidency,” he wrote yesterday, will push progressives back on our heels, in a dire defensive position as we fight to protect rights and programs won during many previous decades. Regardless of who wins, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.” And he was dealing with presidential politics, not even the mess in Congress, where the ascendant New Dems are spending their energy and resources to crush progressives rather than fight Republicans.

He noted that even if we don’t yet know who will win, we do know some outcomes regardless who it is.For instance:

• President Biden’s successor will be a dangerous militarist.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supporters of boosting already-huge Pentagon budgets along with continuing U.S. warfare in many forms. Trump likes to pander to voters who don’t want endless wars, but his actual policies as president kept them going. Harris’s glimmers of senatorial interest in scaling back military largesse faded into standard bellicosity. Both candidates beat cold-war drums, with Trump focusing on China rather than Russia.

• If Trump wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will blame the Harris campaign for not moving rightward enough.

Progressive ideas, as usual, will be convenient scapegoats for the failures of Democratic Party elites.

• If Harris wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will immediately warn that she must steer clear of the left.

The establishment is ever alert to the danger that progressive populism could majorly reduce income inequality and subdue corporate power.

• If Trump wins, progressives will be on the defensive for at least four years— unable to accomplish anything of substance at the federal level and trying to mitigate the damage under an unhinged and fascistic president.

The disasters with a second Trump administration will include unleashed nativism and official bigotry. As one liberal commentator observed weeks before the election, “More than ever, Trump’s rhetoric is steeped in racism, xenophobia and dehumanization. He routinely calls immigrants ‘vermin’ and says they are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. He claims they are ‘stone-cold killers,’ ‘animals’ and ‘the worst people’ who will ‘cut your throat.’… He called migrants from Latin America, Congo and the Middle East ‘the most violent people on Earth.’… He’s even suggested that nonwhite immigrants have ‘bad genes’ that make them genetically inferior.”

…

• If Harris wins despite his best efforts, Benjamin Netanyahu will be disappointed that he was unable to sufficiently help get Trump elected.

“For anyone who doubts Trump will be even worse than Biden is on Gaza,” Mehdi Hasan tweeted a mid-October video clip of Trump saying that Netanyahu “is doing a good job, Biden is trying to hold him back... and probably should be doing the opposite. I'm glad that Bibi decided to do what he had to do.’”

• Whether Trump or Harris wins, the U.S. government will continue to support Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians under the guise of its “right to defend itself.”

If Trump wins, virtually all Republicans and many Democrats in Congress will support his unequivocal backing for whatever Israel does. If Harris wins, we can expect her policies toward Israel to be dreadful, while she’ll be subject to increasing pressure from much of her party’s base and some Democratic members of Congress for an end to arming Israel.

• In response to the climate emergency, Harris has foreshadowed that her policies would be predictably inadequate, while Trump has repeatedly denied that a climate crisis even exists.

The burden will be on activists to demand actions commensurate with the realities described in The 2024 State of the Climate Report: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”

• No matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is inaugurated on Jan. 20, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.

Like I said, losing a congressional primary over a decade ago, didn't slow Solomon down a but. Now, as Pramila Jayapal cedes the leadership of the Progressive Caucus to Austin movement progressive, Gregorio Casar, we'll be watching to see how far he pushes back against, not just the MAGA fascists but also against the “moderate,” corporate Democratic leadership in DC.

Yesterday, the Austin American-Statesman noted that Casar wasn’t deterred by GOP control of the House. In their endorsement, the editors noted that “Casar tackles his job like someone who understands that achieving success is possible only if he can get colleagues to buy in. He told the Editorial Board he would gladly support a Republican-led bill allowing legal pathways for immigrants who just want a better life in the U.S. Casar supports restoring abortion rights, expanding health care coverage, banning assault weapons and placing more federal curbs on climate-warming carbon emissions. These are ideas that Central Texas voters in District 35 can get behind. They would do well to re-elect Casar.”