Alastair Leith on Historic.ly

[Alastair Leith]

“without giving an inch on policy” — many have claimed that was one of her main problems. she was associate with the mistakes of Bidenomics, the Biden Austerity part according to those of us on the MMT/progressive side (see Https://www.crisesnotes.com/one-election-takeaway-voters-hate-temporary-safety-nets/) and the Bernie Sanders inheritance of the Green New Deal for those on the right (self-identifying as “centrists” in neoliberal USA) who claim Biden ruled like a “leftist” without any kind of left landslide majority to justify it. sadly the GND was rebadged as Build Back Better by some in the NGO world and that pulled the progressive teeth from the agenda. the end result was IRA which was the biggest raft of Climate Change mitigation and adaptation spending in US history (and massively overdue). Due to Democrats in Congress being what they are, it became the mixed bag of tax credits for corporations looking to deploy renewables, transmission lines, batteries, build EVs in USA, an over-generous honeypot for overhyped H₂-economy startups and release of federal lands for more fracking oil and fossil gas to get the FF-captured Democratic Congressmen/women on board.

Biden proudly states we spent so much more money in Blue states than Red states, but the IRA spending on infrastructure takes years if not decades to translate into better jobs, cheaper power prices, more affordable cost of living, and there’s many things that impact cost of living besides infrastructure so there is no guaranty it ever pays political dividends for Democrats whatever Biden likes to say about the long game and his eternal optimism. Their are powerful neoliberal forces at work in USA and it has always been thus, if Biden or anyone in DNC wants to legitimately claim they are for the regular folks not the elites, they need to rinse their minds of the 🐄🐂💩 of neoclassical economic myths and actively disavow the disease of neoliberalism that has captured US politics since the Reaganomics era on both sides of the aisle. Bill Clinton’s evil genius was to the shift the Democratic Party platform (irreversibly it would seem, since there’s been nothing as progressive as the Glass-Stegall’s Act put forward since Clinton repealed it) to his predecessor Bush’s positions on economics, in a not so smart move that forced Republicans into the long-waiting arms of the far right evangelicals and rentiers like the Koch Brothers (see doco The Family).

admittedly the Biden’s intransigence on not vacating the white House (which he promised to do when he ran the first time as a once only candidate due to his age) gave Harris no time to run a campaign that could have distanced herself from Biden Administration in any way, so she basically had to stand by his decisions. she claimed i;one interview “i wouldn’t have changed a thing” played terribly to the Jill Stein voters who outpolled some Democratic candidates in a couple of states, and played terribly to low-wage swing voters who weren’t benefiting from the stock market recovery the way rentiers and elites have.

so eschewing the progressive movement against US Middle East policy (disgusted by US involvement — including the funding, strategic oversight and active air support — in the Gaza Genocide and 50 years of Israeli history of ethnic cleansing inside their national borders) and eschewing the billionaire tech-bro class and the large ranks of their Trump political disciples (a historic coalition across racial and class boundaries it has to be said given Trumps toxicity on race and privilege) left a very emancipated “centre” from which Harris was to empower her “historical coalition”. so big was the fail that she lost 11 million votes that Biden won in 2020. I’m not sure if you consider biden’s win a “historic coalition” but either way Harris did nothing in terms of a new coalition of policy ideas that advanced upon or pivoted away from Biden. Brilliant or not.

with the benefit of hindsight, the two tier economic performance in USA in the covid recovery period meant Harris was never going to win in my opinion. i didn’t realise prior to the election just how bad the polling was saying it was going to be a close run election for POTUS and Congress. Noting they said same about Hilary Clinton election. When economic conditions for wage earners is as bad as it was (largely due to the Covid recovery, while better than many countries, was happening at the Finance end of the economy and it remained to be seen that it would flow through to wage earners who had the triple whammy of 50%+ inflation on basic cost of living goods and services, interest rate hikes from idiotic Fed on their debt, the removal of the covid year safety net introduced by Biden Administration (wisely introduced, unwisely rushed way) and lower employment security than ever before.