(Below is a revised version of my initial post from a few days ago, sharpening the focus on Harris, the Democratic Party, and the issue of war)
A Democratic Party loyalist here in Oxford told me recently he was at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago and the “joy” and “unity” among delegates was palpable. Even when Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, accepting her party’s nomination, talked war the smiles and applause were nearly universal.
Yes, Harris stood strong for the military-industrial complex, pledging support for NATO and its brutal war in Ukraine. “I helped mobilize a global response—over 50 countries—to defend against Putin’s aggression,” she boasted. As for Israel, Harris said, “I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.”
Furthermore, Harris said she is going to make sure “America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century. And that we strengthen—not abdicate—our global leadership.”
Is the Democratic Party the party of war? Despite Republican Richard Nixon’s role in continuing the Vietnam War after his election as president in 1968, let’s not forget it was Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who got that war started. Today Joe Biden will go down in history as perhaps finally ending the 20-year war in Afghanistan but then turning around and funding the U.S.-pushed war in Ukraine, funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and threatening war with China simply because China poses a challenge to the United States’ economic dominance of the world.
In her speech to the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris firmly established she’ll be no less a warmonger than Joe Biden.
“As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she told the fawning crowd in Chicago.
Actually her comments were among the few that even addressed war during the convention. This is despite the fact that the U.S.-and-NATO-funded war in Ukraine escalates daily with U.S.-armed Ukrainian soldiers now in Russia while Russian soldiers make steady gains in eastern Ukraine. Israel’s wholesale murdering of Gaza civilians has been made possible by the U.S. providing Israel with nearly 70 percent of all its arms imports—including an estimated $12.5 billion in weapons since October 2023.
In fact, Palestinian Americans were denied an opportunity to speak on the DNC stage in Chicago, and news coverage of pro-Palestinians protests outside the convention hall was minimal at best.
Even Republican Donald Trump and his running made J.D. Vance have indicated they’re sick and tired of the U.S funding the war in Ukraine, a needless war that the U.S. helped create by playing a key role in the overthrow of an elected, Russia-leaning government in Ukraine in 2014 and willful dismissal of rightful Russian desires not to have a hostile NATO partner on its borders.
However, Trump is as devoted to Israel’s warmongering as Biden-Harris, and if elected he’ll likely continue to feed the bloated military-industrial complex, with its funding now at an estimated $1.5 trillion.
Harris is enjoying a boost in polls since the convention, and the Trump team still hasn’t figured out quite how to deal with her. Trump is his own worse enemy. After rallying blue-collar workers and even many union members with his choice of Vance as a running mate and the party’s willingness to hear Teamsters President Sean O’Brien speak at the GOP Convention in July, the former president joined multi-billionaire Elon Musk on the X social media platform and praised the Tesla CEO for firing striking workers.
“I mean, look at what you do,” Trump said in absolute admiration, “You walk in, you just say, `You want to quit?’ They go on strike … and you say, `That’s okay, you’re all gone.’”
In 2022, Musk fired unionized workers at Tesla’s San Francisco headquarters and workers at its Buffalo, New York, factory who were organizing a union.
The United Auto Workers got so incensed about those comments that the union filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk for making illegal threats against striking workers who are protected by federal law from such intimidation. O’Brien called Trump’s comments to Musk “economic terrorism.”
Working class people, abandoned by the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton corporatized it in the 1990s and largely ignored by the Republican Party for a century or more, have nowhere really to turn. They’ll fight the wars that the politicians wage, and those same politicians could car less about the economic duress in their lives.
Worker class people—a term, by the way, that neither party likes very much--hope against hope each election. Unions dutifully endorse a Democratic Party that stopped listening decades ago. Third Party candidates like war opponent Jill Stein of the Green Party offer a breath of fresh air, but they can't get media attention and the major parties (particularly the Democratic Party) do everything possible to skuttle their campaigns.
Apologies for sounding pessimistic, but it seems the saber-rattling and warmongering are going to among the winners in the November election.
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