Shame and Show: Patrick Martin, Joseph Kishore examine

Joseph Biden (Democratic Party) vice presidential choice of Kamala Harris

 

Joseph Biden (Democratic Party) vice presidential choice of Kamala Harris

F

og
Failure of choice:
Failure of even Pretense of Democracy
 

Kishore

“This says everything about the degraded state of American politics.

In the midst of monumental political, economic and social crises, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American people are to be offered the ‘choice’ between the fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California.

 Status Quo now and forever

Martin
The [Biden selection of Harris] decision was entirely predictable and widely expected in its reaffirmation of “the right-wing political orientation of the Democratic Party presidential ticket.

Biden has a 48-year political career in which he has been identified primarily with intensified police repression at home and the ferocious defense of the interests of American imperialism abroad.

The 77-year-old candidate is joined by a 55-year-old running mate with her own right-wing credentials: as a law-and-order prosecutor and attorney general in California, and, since coming to Washington in 2016, an advocate and defender of the military-intelligence apparatus.

Neither Harris nor Biden is associated with any popular social movement or linked to the advocacy of any significant social or political reform.

Biden and Harris have carried out their entire political careers under conditions where the Democratic Party has been moving steadily, and ever more rapidly, to the right. 

S

uperficiality, Ancestral Irrelevancy

Fraud, Show, Insult
Planned Incompetence and Broken Promises
Opportunism
Inevitable Weakness of Mind, Character, Service

Kishore
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of American politics.

The ‘historic’ character of the Harris nomination is premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a Democratic Party administration.

Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris ‘historic’” However, “despite the hosannas from the advocates of identity politics”; Harris’ ethnicity and gender provide no assurance of a character or commitment to ‘progressive’ politics.

Racialists conveniently forget their messiah, Barack Obama, who, in Martin’s words

“…proved to be a thoroughly reactionary defender of Wall Street and the CIA; bailed out big banks and the stock exchange; forced auto workers to take wage cuts, continued the wars of George W. Bush and added new ones, including Libya, Syria and Yemen.” 

Objectively speaking, there is little to distinguish Harris, with only four years in the US Senate, from other potential alternatives for the vice presidency. She is not notably more qualified than dozens of other senators, governors or representatives.

But in the eyes of the advocates of identity politics, in and out of the corporate media, Harris’s mediocrity and right-wing politics count for nothing compared to her skin color and gender.

“In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing ‘historic’ about Harris,” Kishore writes.

“In her unbounded opportunism and ruthless pursuit of her own career and economic interests,” Martin writes, Harris personifies both the social psychology and class basis of identity politics…, the politics of privileged layers of the upper-middle class—including but not limited to minorities— 

… that use race, gender and sexual orientation to conceal the fundamental class divisions in capitalist society; channel social opposition behind the Democratic Party; and carve out a greater share of the wealth of the top one percent for themselves. It is organically hostile to the interests of the working class and socialism.

“The selection of [Kamala] Harris,” Kishore says, “exposes the utterly reactionary character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of identity—anything but class. 

Democrats’ response to protests against police violence obscured class issues; promoted racial divisions, and propagated “the lie that the violence of the police is an expression of the oppression of ‘black America’ by ‘white America.’” 

T

he outcome of this racialist campaign is their vice-presidential candidacy selection “of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from their parents.”

Sources

Martin, Patrick. “Biden picks former law-and-order prosecutor Kamala Harris to be his Democratic running mate”  August 12, 2020 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/12/harr-a12.html

Kishore, Joseph. “The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics”  [Joseph Kishore is SEP candidate for US president] August 13, 2020 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/13/pers-a13.html

 

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