▲ Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, candidate for US vice president, has boosted the Democratic campaign led by Kamala Harris against the neo-fascist project of Republican Donald Trump. The image, over the weekend in Nevada.Afp Photo
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the electoral contests They always use the same formulation of how terrible things will be if the others win, mixed with promises of redemption of what has been lost. The vast majority, according to surveys, do not believe either of them, and only focus on who is the lesser evil, or whether they like someone or not, and very occasionally allow themselves to have illusions.
But this year there is something different and although everyone says that every time there is an election here – they are always historical– this time it is true. Never before has the United States considered a neo-fascist project as a real and very possible electoral option.
In fact, that is not such an alien option for a country that was built by slave labor, on occupied and conquered indigenous lands, and the exploitation of immigrants from around the world to this day, all controlled by the systematic promotion of racism and hatred. of the others along with the daily alert to the enemies foreigners.
Human rights and civil liberties – both individual and collective – have been won through constant popular struggles throughout the history of this country, which continue to this day. And the defeat of the greatest right-wing threat ever faced here now depends on that same democratising struggle.
And for the first time in months, there is hope that the neo-fascist offensive can be derailed with the decision of President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race in an emergency and be replaced by his vice president, Kamala Harris, and his second-in-command, Governor Tim Walz – a seemingly extraordinarily decent man among an indecent and generally corrupt political class – as the Democratic candidates. That has for now reinvigorated the Democratic campaign that was rapidly heading towards defeat. It is not necessarily an option. progressivebut it is, in practice, anti-fascist, and for now that is the most important thing.
While Trump and his strategists invite the electorate to a return to A great Americathe billionaire swindler businessman and his second in command, JD Vance, a former private equity executive, have managed to disguise themselves as defenders of the working classes and convince them that their dreams Americans were stolen by immigrants and radical leftists.
That American dream The United States was shattered and the lives of the urban and rural working classes were shattered by more than four decades of bipartisan neoliberalism from the Reagan years to Obama, and its results of extreme economic inequality unprecedented since before the Great Depression and consequences for the vast majority of the population. This is what is behind this political conjuncture. It is from there that suddenly the right-wing populist message carried Trump to victory in 2016 and also where the progressive social-democratic message of Senator Bernie Sanders threatened the Democratic leadership that same year.
Biden was the first president to break with the neoliberal consensus, largely because his victory against Trump depended on the progressive forces that have fought against the one percent and free market/free trade policies. Harris and Walz will now have to decide how much they dare to promote an anti-neoliberal, and perhaps even progressive, agenda as an alternative to the neofascist one. The future of what remains of this democracy will largely depend on it. They know it. They have 85 days to do it.
The rest of the world will only be able to be an international observer of an election with enormous consequences and implications for everyone else.
And meanwhile: who is the number one band in the United States in 2024? According to the magazine Rolling Stonenone other than Credence Clearwater Revival, the classic 60s rock band whose hits included songs about life at the bottom in an imperial United States. Perhaps it is another sign of hope.
Credence Fortunate Son. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWijx_AgPiA