Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Elections (Page 1 of 15)

These are posts on elections from the blog Base and Superstructure. Topics include international elections, American elections, and local Iowa elections. There’s a particular focus on describing and explaining leftist electoral results.

Purity Politics and the 2024 Election

March 18, 2024 / / 0 Comments

A photo of Joe Biden with a confused look on his face. Intended as a representation of a discussion of purity politics and the 2024 election.

As leftists, many of us spent 2020 engaged in handwringing over whether we should vote for Joe Biden. I evaluated the arguments and concluded there wasn’t much of a case for doing so. Biden wasn’t interested in winning our votes, and I wasn’t interested in giving one to him.

Why?

Biden built an electoral coalition around moderates, centrists, and the suburbs. He won the votes of those who found Trump and his impact on U.S. politics distasteful. But his voters didn’t necessarily have major policy objections. Furthermore, progressives never showed much interest in genuinely holding Biden accountable or pushing him to the left.

But what about 2024? Should we vote for Biden? Under what conditions?

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tribunes of the people

Tribunes of the People

April 10, 2023 /

The DSA is full of divides and false dichotomies. So let’s try to intervene against some of that. Some in the DSA world divide the org’s electoral strategy into two possible routes. The first one amounts to collaboration with – and capitulation to – the Democratic Party and its interests.  And the second is a Bolshevik inspired strategy called ‘Tribunes of the People.’ In that latter strategy, a core of united DSA elected officials stick to the party line and agitate the working class into a political force.

Various DSA caucuses, usually obscure and sectarian ones, promote this division. But in light of actions from The Squad and majority factions within the DSA, we’ve seen it erupt in larger DSA blocs and spaces. Such as the recent public event put on by several DSA caucuses.

I share many of the critiques of the DSA ‘majority’ faction’s electoral strategy. That strategy amounts to a shortcut to build on-paper membership in the short term without building a sustainable organization that can win power in the medium or long term.

But I’m hardly more impressed by the Tribunes of the People strategy. Let’s talk about that.

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2022 Election Reaction: GOP Blew It

November 10, 2022 /

2022 McCarthy election reaction

With the 2022 election a couple of days behind us, it’s time to take a look. And the look runs parallel to last time: the GOP blew it.

They more or less had a House and a Senate majority in the bag. And while they probably (barely) managed the former, they’ve probably missed the latter again. In most parts of the country, they performed worse than the polls suggested and far worse than they could have done with better candidates and messaging.

I won’t say much else about national elections in the rest of this post. But read on for ballot initiatives and the state of things in Iowa!

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