Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
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.
The DSA recently interviewed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). And then the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) criticized AOC from the left. Note for the curious: the WSWS is a small Trotskyist news site. As we’ll see, the WSWS offered less an informed critique than a string of informal fallacies.
But that comes later. For now, let’s take a look at AOC and her politics. What can we learn from the DSA interview and WSWS response?
After winning the Nevada caucuses – his third win in a row – it looked like Bernie Sanders was well on his way to securing the 2020 Democratic nomination. He built a winning coalition. He did really well in the early states among voters of color – especially Latinx voters. And he polled really well in the Super Tuesday states.
In short, everything looked great for Bernie.
But it didn’t happen for him, as everyone knows. After a big win in South Carolina, Joe Biden nudged Sanders out of the lead on Super Tuesday and defeated him handily in the later states.
What happened, and what lessons should the electoral left learn?
Some exciting news: Today I’ve released a new eBook! It’s called Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon: Elizabeth Warren and the Progressive Movement. And so, click the link to purchase on Kindle for a very accessible and affordable 99 cents.
Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon covers the Elizabeth Warren 2020 campaign and what it means for leftists. In short, I think the Warren campaign revealed differences on the left many of us hadn’t previously noticed. As leftists, it’s our job to put together a broad coalition of workers and tenants. The Warren campaign, by contrast, focused on highly educated progressives. And leftists have a complex relationship with that group that we should think about.
Having both the Warren and Sanders campaigns revealed some big differences on the left. We can and should learn from all this. In this eBook, I build on some of my past posts on Warren.
To read: Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon.
The Trump Administration will come to an end this week, and not a moment too soon. Trump began his presidency with a surprise win over Hillary Clinton. He ended it with a foolish invasion of the U.S. Capitol. The win was more about the weakness of the Democratic Party than any electoral strength of Trumpism. As soon as the Democrats discarded Clinton, they had little trouble beating him.
But let’s take stock of what we might learn from the 4 years of the Trump Administration.
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