A Vote for Biden is a Vote for Trumpism

Liberals and a host of self-described socialists argue that, deficient as his party and his personal record may be, people must vote for Joe Biden in 2020 because Trump and the Republicans are that much more odious. Once again, working people are urged by these pitiable strategists to vote for the least worst corporate candidate. Rather than weighing the full impact of lesser evil voting, its advocates pretend the scheme has only an up and no down side. But as we will see, the costs of lesser evil voting far outweigh any presumed benefits.

Without a doubt, Trump’s policies and actions have been despicable – from his support for criminal aggression against Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Yemen and elsewhere; his racist attacks on immigrants and people of color; his tax cuts for the rich at the expense of programs for working people; his deadly mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis; his eagerness in the wake of the pandemic to bail out corporations and the rich while leaving working people and many small businesses to fend for themselves; his denial of science and deliberate inaction on climate change; and the overall tone of bigotry, anti-intellectualism, austerity, elitism, discord and hopelessness that he promotes.

But Biden’s record and current policy proscriptions are abominable in their own right. Some advocates of the lesser evil strategy readily admit as much. Like Trump and the Republicans, Biden and the Democrats have never met a U.S. foreign aggression they didn’t like. Far from opposing Trumps hostile stance towards Syria, Iran, Venezuela, China, Palestine, Yemen, etc., Biden and the Democrats criticize Trump from the right for not being aggressive enough. Biden and his party supported the 2008 bailout of Wall Street and the big banks while doing next to nothing for millions of working people facing foreclosure and the threat of losing their homes. With the multi-trillion dollar Covid-19 bailout, Biden and the Democrats helped shepherd through the biggest upward transfer of wealth in American history. Biden and his party oppose universal healthcare, job guarantees, a reduced workweek to address unemployment, a livable minimum wage and real action on climate change.

Eight years of neoliberal, Wall Street-centric policies under Obama laid the foundation for Trump. Economic conditions for working people and people of color worsened under the Obama administration.

The argument that Trump is uniquely evil and dangerous and that this justifies voting for a corporate Democrat in 2020 falls flat. Congress has tremendous power, independent of the presidency. If congressional Democrats and Republicans wanted to impede Trumps agenda, they’ve had ample opportunity to do so. Instead, both parties have voted to fund Trump’s agenda and have offered no legislative counter agenda of their own.

Congressional Democrats have voted to approve all of Trump’s signature priorities, from bloated war budgets and tax breaks for the rich, to funding the border wall and enhanced government surveillance capabilities. Given these facts, the assertion by lesser evil advocates that a Democratic president would be more responsive to pressure from the left rings hollow.

Nevertheless, lesser evil acolytes with magnifying glasses at the ready insist they can detect a modicum of benefit in Biden’s candidacy over Trump. This miniscule difference, they argue, justifies urging working people to vote for Biden over Trump. Were told that only “privileged” elites have the luxury of ignoring the vanishingly small difference between the two and refusing to back the “better” big business candidate. Some lesser evildoers dutifully admit that big changes don’t happen through elections; only by mobilizing millions to fight for their interests. But they don’t really believe it. They tell us, on the one hand, that elections aren’t what really matters, but on the other hand, right here, right now, we have to set that knowledge aside and vote for the least worst capitalist candidate as a pragmatic exigency.  

Externalities

There is a dangerous sleight of hand in this calculation. To conclude that voting for a rotten, corporate-controlled Democrat over a less likable corporate-controlled Republican is in some way a step forward requires that important negatives be left out of the calculation. Just as energy conglomerates, agrobusiness monopolies and other industrial polluters profit from externalizing the negative environmental effects of their operations, the lesser evil argument depends on externalizing the negative effects of urging support for a big business candidate. And in politics, as with industrial stewardship, the devil is in the “externalities”. When all the factors are properly accounted for, it’s clear the lesser evil strategy does more harm than good. To see this, we have to examine its oft ignored down sides. 

Rightward Shift

An electorate that consistently chooses between two undesirable options causes the available options to become less desirable over time. Barack Obama confirmed this when he said, "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican." Cornel West invited us to Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama. Obama may have presented a more affable front, but he anticipated Trump’s reactionary policies on climate, immigration, endless war and more. Before Obama, Bill Clinton and Al Gore founded the Democratic Leadership Council, the purpose of which was to lead the Democratic party more tightly into the embrace of Wall Street and big business. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been moving to the right for decades. If lesser evil voting was meant to counter this trend, it has failed miserably.

Handing the Ball to the Opposing Team

Faith in the lesser evil strategy flows from the misguided belief that our current political and economic system is basically sound and only needs a few small corrections. But if you accept that inequality, poverty, unemployment, racism, war, pollution and climate catastrophe are all baked into the system, then it’s a different story. 

 

These problems are inexorably intertwined with our current system which puts private profit ahead of human needs. The name for that system is capitalism. It so happens that war, racism, poverty, inequality and environmental destruction are all very profitable under capitalism. So, these intractable problems cannot truly be addressed until we build a new system that values human needs more than private profits. 

A few people at the top benefit from the current economic setup and both the Democratic and Republican parties serve that small elite. Both parties are owned and controlled by America’s wealthy oligarchs. Both are a crucial part of the mechanism that maintains the unjust status quo. Therefore, the two parties are, from the perspective of average Americans, tools of our class enemy. In order to effect fundamental change, the capitalist system must be replaced by something new, rooted in genuine economic and political democracy. For that to be possible, the supports propping the system up – including its two corporate parties – must be destroyed. 

But lesser evilism actually strengthens the Democrats and Republicans. It breathes new life into them, giving them added legitimacy. This is the inevitable consequence of painting the two major parties as the only “practical” choice. Urging a vote for one of the corporate parties makes as much sense as a quarterback deliberately handing the football to a member of the other team.

Miseducation and Misdirection

Lesser evilism squanders resources and miseducates those whose historic task it will be to dismantle capitalism and usher in a more just system. For capitalism to be replaced, the majority of working people must understand its flaws; must understand whom it benefits and whom it exploits; must understand which individuals and institutions side with the exploiters and which side with the exploited; and must be willing to upset the applecart in order to give birth to a sane alternative. Anything that hinders this process of understanding benefits the status quo. Anything that furthers the advance in consciousness of where we are and where we have to go is a threat to the powers that be. 

Lesser evilism is in the former category: it hinders the advance of working-class consciousness.

Albert Einstein argued that “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” In the same way, you can’t simultaneously prepare for a working-class challenge to the capitalist parties and their system – building an alternative, working class vehicle to challenge the 1% for power – and at the same time tell working people that it’s vital (or even useful) to support one of the two capitalist parties right now. One can’t credibly argue that building a party based on labor to challenge the two Wall Street parties is essential, and then argue (for the umpteenth time) that we’re at a unique moment in history when voting for the Democrat over the Republican is vitally important.

It’s suicide to adhere to the lesser evil doctrine when saving the world depends on working people challenging the capitalists and their pet parties for power. According to the lesser evil clock, now is never the right time. According to lesser evildoers, building an alternate party beholden to the working class is great in theory, but only in the indefinite future.

Working class: “We need to change our government from top to bottom!”

Lesser evildoers: “You bet! How’s never? Is never good for you?”

Energy, resources, column inches and political capital spent sheepherding for Democrats is energy and resources that are removed from and unavailable to the real fight. Social movements that make demands on the current rulers are important. The more powerful those movements, the more concessions can be wrested from the tight fists of our corporate overlords. But at some point, we have to move beyond making demands of our exploiters and challenge their right to rule and exploit at all. We cannot prepare for that fight by following a path that obfuscates the terrain, hides the goal and misrepresents who our allies and enemies are. 

No Half Measures

A genuine break with the Democrats and Republicans means rejecting all capitalist parties, including any new ones that might spring up. A real alternative would be a working-class party, based on a revived and reenergized labor movement. Populist formations like the Green Party, which reject corporate funding but which are not rooted in the working class, are not adequate vehicles for leading this monumental fight. (For more on this, see When Two Plus One Does not Equal Three.)

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Arguably, more progress toward a just and equitable society would be made if working people were to massively boycott both the Democrats and Republicans in 2020 rather than pin any hope on a Pyrrhic victory of the loathsome Biden over the even more loathsome Trump. Were such a massive rejection of the two big business parties to occur, the working majority would at least be demonstrating a willingness to break with their class oppressors, clearing the way for the real work of building an independent vehicle to fight for political power.