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A Trump presidency 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.
While the name of the next president is unknown, some outcomes of the election can be foreseen. For instance:
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.
Progressive ideas, as usual, will be convenient scapegoats for the failures of Democratic Party elites.
The establishment is ever alert to the danger that progressive populism could majorly reduce income inequality and subdue corporate power.
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.”
In October, this year’s Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein campaigned in swing states and declared: “This is a very dire situation that will be continued under both Democrats and Republicans. So we say there is no lesser evil in this race.”
Really?
“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.’”
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.
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.”
A Trump presidency 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. With a Harris presidency, progressives will have some space to organize, with potential to actually move some U.S. government policies in a positive direction.
"We should not assume that there is no room to trim the Pentagon budget," said one expert. "Doing it correctly would not only make us safer, it would free up funds to address other urgent national priorities."
A group of corporate Democrats led by Rep. Jared Golden of Maine sent a letter Wednesday defending the out-of-control U.S. military budget and expressing concerns about looming attempts by House Republicans to cut it, even as several GOP lawmakers insisted the Pentagon would be safe from their coming austerity spree.
In their letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Golden, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and other members of the right-wing Blue Dog Coalition celebrated the bipartisan vote last month to add $45 billion to the latest military budget proposed by President Joe Biden, claiming the extra money is necessary for "the procurement of additional naval ships at a time in which China has developed the world's largest navy" and for "strengthening the defense industrial base."
But the lawmakers voiced alarm over the House GOP majority's expressed support for capping federal outlays across the board at Fiscal Year 2022 levels—a move that would, in theory, cut tens of billions off the military budget in addition to slashing spending on education, healthcare, and other key areas.
The 12 Democratic signatories of the new letter focused their attention solely on the supposed national security implications of a spending cap, declaring "such a drastic cut in defense spending would not only undo this bipartisan consensus in support of our national defense, but would also endanger our long-term national security by injecting substantial uncertainty into the long-term defense budgetary planning necessary to ensure timely investments in personnel, procurement, readiness, and research and development."
The White House, too, weighed in on the side of maintaining the current military budget this week, calling any push for cuts "senseless and out of line with our national security needs."
But analysts have argued in recent days that such reflexive defenses of U.S. military spending don't stand up to scrutiny.
Far from a "drastic cut," $75 billion is less than 10% of the current military budget, which stands at $858 billion—much of which is likely to wind up in the coffers of defense contractors.
Progressive lawmakers, led by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), argued last year that $100 billion could and should be cut from the Pentagon budget—which has long been rife with waste, abuse, and profitable giveaways to private industry—and redirected toward pressing needs, from healthcare to poverty reduction to climate programs.
Their proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act was voted down in July by an overwhelming bipartisan margin.
William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in a blog post Tuesday that "the idea that dictators worldwide are basing their decisions on whether the Pentagon budget is an enormous $750 billion or an obscenely enormous $850-plus billion is ludicrous."
Hartung acknowledged that the kinds of across-the-board cuts floated by House Republicans "are never the best way to reduce government spending" because "they mean cutting effective and wasteful programs in the same proportions instead of making smart choices about what works and what doesn't."
"By all means we should debate how the federal budget should be crafted at this chaotic political moment," Hartung added. "But we should not assume that there is no room to trim the Pentagon budget. Doing it correctly would not only make us safer, it would free up funds to address other urgent national priorities."
Images of passing the torch can be stirring.
President John Kennedy reached heights of inaugural oratory when he declared that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." Three decades later, when Bill Clinton won the presidency, a Newsweek headline proclaimed "THE TORCH PASSES." The article underneath glorified "a film clip that made its way into a widely seen campaign ad: a beaming, 16-year-old Bill Clinton on a sun-drenched White House lawn, shaking the hand of his and his generation's idol, John F. Kennedy."
Weeks later, when Time magazine named Clinton "Man of the Year," its cover story carried the headline "THE TORCH IS PASSED."
The Clinton presidency went on to carry the torch for corporate-friendly measures. The NAFTA trade pact destroyed many well-paying union jobs; "welfare reform" harmed poor women and their families; a landmark crime law fueled mass incarceration; Wall Street deregulation led to the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.
Now, the top of the Democratic Party is passing torches on Capitol Hill. When Nancy Pelosi announced two weeks ago that she will no longer lead House Democrats, she said: "The hour has come for a new generation to lead." But in what direction?
Pelosi quickly endorsed Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to replace her as leader. NBC News offered the common media frame: "Pelosi made history as the first female speaker of the House, while Jeffries, the current Democratic Caucus chairman, would become the first Black leader of a congressional caucus and highest-ranking Black lawmaker on Capitol Hill."
You can count on much of the mass media to shower the 52-year-old Jeffries with accolades, largely supplied by fellow Democrats. But, overall, a closer look reveals a problematic record.
Early on, before becoming a New York state legislator, Jeffries worked for years as a corporate lawyer. In Congress--while he has taken a few progressive positions like cosponsoring Medicare for All and voting to cut 10 percent of the military budget--his emphasis has been in sync with the party establishment.
"I'm a Black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now," Jeffries toldThe Atlantic in August 2021. But during the same interview, Jeffries added: "There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism." (Ironically, Jeffries was echoing the "fierce urgency of now" phrase from Martin Luther King Jr., who was a democratic socialist.)
Jeffries likes to jab leftward. In 2016, he called Bernie Sanders a "gun-loving socialist with zero foreign-policy experience." A 2018 profile in The Economist--titled "High Hopes for Hakeem Jeffries" - concluded that he "is nearly as moderate as a safe-seat Democrat gets." The article pointed out: "Though he supports the principle of universal healthcare coverage, he speaks of 'the importance of market forces and getting things done in a responsible fashion.' Quoting Ronald Reagan approvingly, he suggests this means promoting a flourishing private sector outside the 'legitimate functions' of government."
Congressman Jeffries takes umbrage at negative press portrayals to such an extent that his office tries to quash critical assessments. When I wrote in a HuffPostpiece in January 2019 that "Jeffries has been more attentive to serving corporate power than the interests of voters in his Brooklyn district," the response was swift and angry. Jeffries's communications director and senior advisor at the time, Michael Hardaway, fired off emails to HuffPost, claiming that my characterization was "factually inaccurate and easily disproven." Despite the escalating fulminations, the HuffPost editor explained that he saw "no reason to correct or update the piece."
Jeffries has not been a sponsor of the Green New Deal (which Pelosi famously denigrated in 2019: "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?"). He also has not cosponsored the Green New Deal for Cities Act.
During the latest election cycle, Jeffries joined forces with one of the most corporate and vitriolic anti-progressive Democrats in the House, Josh Gottheimer, to form Team Blue PAC. Its priority - to protect the party's incumbents against Squad-like primary challengers - was summed up last winter in a Rolling Stone headline over an article about Jeffries's initiative: "Top House Democrat Unveils Plan to Beat Back Progressive Rebellion."
Last year, The American Prospect reported, Jeffries was conspicuously absent from efforts to support public housing in his home city. "When all [other] New York City House Democrats sent a letter to Pelosi urging her to protect all $80 billion for public housing in the BBB [Build Back Better bill], Jeffries was the only member not to sign that missive, especially surprising given that New York Dems are known to act as a bloc."
Jeffries is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the magazine noted, but that affiliation should not be taken at face value: "Jeffries is a mute member of the CPC, the largest caucus in the party, but has recently chosen to ally himself with its more conservative factions. And while the party's moderate wing has moved left on everything from foreign policy to social welfare, Jeffries has not moved with it."
In fact, Hakeem Jeffries is thoroughly corporate, As The Interceptreported four years ago, after he won a close race against Rep. Barbara Lee to become chair of the House Democratic Caucus, "Jeffries is heavily backed by big money and corporate PACs. Less than 2 percent of his fundraising comes from small donors, who contribute less than $200, according to Federal Election Commission records."
While in his fourth term, "Jeffries was the leading congressional recipient of hedge fund money in 2020," The American Prospectreported last year. "He banked $1.1 million from the financial sector, real estate interests, and insurance industry in the 2019-2020 cycle. Everyone from JPMorgan Chase to Goldman Sachs to Blackstone contributed. Zimmer Partners, a hedge fund, is one of Jeffries's top donors in 2021. From the outset, he has governed with those interests at heart. While Democrats were reconsidering their coziness with Wall Street, he broke ranks to vote with the financial services world, including on a high-profile measure literally written by Citigroup lobbyists in 2013 that killed the Dodd-Frank 'swaps push-out' rule, allowing banks to engage in risky trades backed by a potential taxpayer-funded bailout."
Thirty years younger than the outgoing speaker, Jeffries is a fitting symbol of media eagerness to herald generational change for Democrats in Congress. But investigative journalist Alexander Sammon has provided an apt sum-up: "Barely in his fifties, Jeffries is young numerically, but aligned with an older mode of Democratic politics, and has repeatedly distanced himself from the younger crop of Democrats that is almost categorically more progressive (and more popular). He's made a reputation for himself as the party's future by becoming a foremost representative of its past."
When a torch passes, we might be glad to "meet the new boss." But we should discard illusions. That way, hopefully, we don't get fooled again.