There is now a trope in the near left about not criticizing Joe Biden, ever. Or never in public. This is my response, directed at fellow members of DSA:
I am hoping that someone on this list, beyond me, is reading John Nichols’ new book FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. It will be excerpt din the NATION and I will be writing about it, with Mari Jo Buhle. His central point: from 1944 on, when Henry Wallace was dumped from the ticket, the Center has not only been winning but has been dragging down the grand social vision of encompassing the working class, minorities, the poor, etc etc, fully in the party, and not just as useful voters.
Today’s column by Charles Blow pretty much makes the point by asking the question we ALL NEED TO ASK:
Does BIden really think he has been endorsed by the NAACP, or that he marched in civil rights marches, or that he was jailed for trying to see Nelson Mandela?
What are the assumptions, conscious or unconscious, behind the remarks that even he calls “cavalier” (he might have said stupid or implicitly racist)?
The neoliberalism that John N describes takes shape in the Democrats for Nixon movement (Meany was a quiet supporter), Committee on the Present Danger (Kirkland was a prominent member) and then the DLC that captured the party and got rid of the hated “New Politics” reformism. That is Biden’s background, even if he was more the hardnosed party loyalist at all times, the Democrats who disowned the antiwar movements again and again.
Is it possible to win merely because Trump is unbearable and because progressives can be found, are supported (by DSA most prominiently), etc? Some of this depends on his choice of VP and if he chooses Amy K, he will have sent the signal so familiar to us: better defeated than compromise with the near-Left.
What do we gain by becoming silent about overwhelming problems? What signal are WE sending?
Paul Buhle (still holding high the banners of EVD, Bob La Follette and Henry Wallace, warts and all)
