What we learned last night from Super Tuesday was the “Neoliberal Voltron” of the Democratic establishment has now fully assembled, and the election is most likely going to be 2 old senile perverts yelling at each other: the result this broken, idiotic system deserves. The rest of us, however, do not deserve this. Klobuchar, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, a veritable rogue’s gallery of loser dipshits threw their amorphous weight behind America’s creepy uncle. Bloomberg just announced his exit this morning after spending $11.3 million per delegate, endorsing Golden Joe to continue rambling on stage.
“I’m not mad, I’m actually laughing,” we might be tempted to say. It’s okay. We got owned, and I’m not afraid to say it. If the night had gone the other way with a Sanders blowout, we’d be gloating just as loudly. Sanders zealots are rightfully humbled. The first step to not being a whiny pissbaby about it is realizing the truth: that the centrist sociopaths are still firmly in control. The West Wing has not been cancelled in their minds, it plays on a loop. They’re not going down easily, and the party superstructure has a powerful immune system. Trying to be the electoral version of coronavirus to take out the boomers perhaps isn’t working as well as we thought. We must mutate.
The Democratic Party knows what class solidarity means: to protect the sweet pale underbelly of their corporate class. Democratic primary voters are so beaten down and depleted by the onslaught of the last 4 years that they backed the “safe” choice: a man who’s been at the wheel of massive social destruction. The Iraq War, welfare reform, Anita Hill, the bankruptcy “Fuck You Poors” bill, tax cuts for the rich, kneecapping single payer for a Republican healthcare plan, and one of the largest expansions of a carceral system in history. They chose him by a modest delegate margin because of that dang Cheeto Drumpf making our empire look stupid.
This is what the Democratic Party does: it takes your energy and desire for change and tosses it into an abyssal void and tells you to fuck off and take your medicine, you hogs. The sheer disdain for human dignity is staggering. Maybe some good feelings now and then, but hey, you’re still getting bankrupted after that operation, bitch. “Fuck you, pay us. We’ll manage the decay. Here, have a Netflix show with a diverse cast of plucky drone pilots,” they sneer through perfect teeth.
Its combined economic lust and superficial progressivism preys on a public barely holding on. It’s an organization of professional class traitors. The sniveling cowards dropping out and backing the poorly embalmed Joe Biden are eyeballing paydays, Cabinet posts, speaking fees, more rungs on the ladder to MSNBC shows, book deals, and brands of performative Trump #Resistance. The diverse working class coalition backing Sanders will not be tolerated. This rebellion is getting put down, in their eyes, like a sickly rabid dog.
We are all hostages and the gun is now being wielded by an elderly glob of folksy chaos not sure if he should kill us or fire the gun in the air in victory. For all their claims of leftists being unruly and demanding Bernie or Bust, the shoe has always been on other foot for us. We’ve always had to hold our noses to vote for their shitheads, and honestly, it felt pretty good forcing them to do the same. Knees aren’t bending yet, and they may remain locked at attention to the corporate state machine chugging along.
Continually and rightfully push civil rights victories rings hollow when the Democratic base is catapulting a decrepit white male corpse who literally pushed segregated busing, anti-abortion, and wrote the crime bill that pumped steroids into the worst carceral state in the world. Obama Vibes are just too tasty, and having a candidate who had a literal connection to the first black president, a national name with a ridiculous manufactured Onion persona, must be enticing as a safe bet. Older black voters made what they saw as a tactical choice, breaking with their younger counterparts; Latino voters had other ideas. Like older white voters, they’re both a demographic who aren’t saddled with student loan debt and are ageing into Medicare at a historic rate. Biden’s history of racism and being a general creep around women was overshadowed by the heavenly glow of Barack Obama; whose historic civil rights advancement takes precedence over his corporate imperial management and squishy centrism. His legacy is unvetted. (They’ll also be avoiding the worst effects of climate change because tick tock.) Sanders hasn’t made significant inroads into this group after 5 years of effort, which is embarrassing and speaks to both his inability to connect with voters in his own age group (LOL), but also the accurate, uncomfortable criticism of Obama’s and Clinton’s DNC is unfairly seen as shade on the black electorate as a whole.
The desire to return to a misremembered “good period” under Obama (that never existed) is second only to beating Trump. That was the period of the political marketing of a “dignified leader” who in action was anything but. What’s not there is removing the conditions that created Trump or rectifying decades-long injustices and the ending empire bankrupting us all. Biden offers little except nostalgia, which is the top currency in the vortex of American decline. That’s key to remember: this is a party dedicated to empty gestures and lean-in capitalism. Moral victories are often the best the Democratic Party can offer, and will continue as long as they keep us strained to the breaking point to line their pockets. The good thing is the greater socialist movement provides more than that, always has, and one bad night for a candidate many of its followers support does not diminish that in the slightest. We have a world, not an election, to win.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.