Election 2020: Strikewave Editors React to the Chaos

by The Editors

This week, inconclusive results in key battleground states led former Vice President Joe Biden to call for calm and to count every vote, and led President Donald Trump to claim victory and allege widespread voter fraud and a stolen election.

Our editors each weigh in.

Max Belasco, California:

Now that it looks like Biden might squeeze out victory I don’t feel my stomach dropping anymore, but that’s still a small comfort given the losses labor racked up in California this year. Proposition 15, a ballot initiative that would have allowed the state to reclaim $12 billion in property taxes from corporations like Disney and Chevron -- companies who have not been paying their fair share for decades -- narrowly lost despite a full court press from the California labor movement. The passage of Proposition 22 has ensured the job status of rideshare drivers and sharing economy workers will be returned to a hellish contractor limbo. Dialysis clinic workers and patients couldn’t even catch a break with Proposition 23, which healthcare conglomerate DaVita poured $100 million into drowning so they don’t have to abide by basic safety standards at their clinics.

These just cover the propositions explicitly endorsed by labor. In addition to this, ostensibly progressive Californians also rejected ballot initiatives that would have allowed local municipalities to establish rent control and repeal the ban on affirmative action. Thankfully Proposition 17, which would restore the right to vote to formerly incarcerated Calfiornians, passed with a more than decisive margin.

Perhaps California’s century-long experiment with direct democracy does not make much sense when people are expected to vote on nearly a dozen fairly obscure and byzantine ballot initiatives every two years, often with background furnished by those who can afford to spend millions for California media market buys. That was how I was feeling on Election Night. Two days later my frustration has allayed. You can’t cede space or stop challenging the boss just because the conditions do not favor you - where does that get you? A wise friend of mine reminded me that “you get what you earn -- if you didn’t get what you wanted, just build more power.”

You might read that and think easier said than done, but that friend of mine spent the last several weeks in Arizona, with countless other UNITE HERE union siblings working tirelessly to canvass Arizona to defeat Donald Trump. If there’s a powerful story to pull from this election cycle, let it be the story of UNITE HERE Local 11, a union decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic that nevertheless poured everything they had into the herculean task of delivering Arizona for the Democrats. If we are spared another four years of Donald Trump it will be because of them. Let our tenacity as workers match theirs in the years to come.

Sean Collins, Upstate New York:

I am loath to contribute to the take economy but here it goes:

What on Earth are we even doing? Even if Biden does ultimately win - which isn’t totally improbable - his presidency will be a four year quagmire. Without Democratic control of the Senate, the Republican obstructionism will continue unabated. They have methodically stacked the courts in such a way that they could still steal this election. Establishment Democrats directed $200 million towards two of the most singularly uninspiring candidates imaginable in Kentucky and South Carolina - and for what, to lose by a combined 35% in those two states? A quarter of a million people have died as a result of Covid-19 and the Democrats are struggling to defeat those who presided over this misery. There is no relief in sight and the Democrats barely even talked about providing any. It’s hard to gin up any hope about the future when I am so blisteringly angry.

But let me give it a shot: Oregon voted to decriminalize the possession of heroin and cocaine. Florida voted to increase their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Winooski, VT voted to expand the franchise to noncitizens. Colorado passed one of the most expansive paid family leave programs in the country. California expanded the franchise to the formerly incarcerated. Various states legalized marijuana. Colorado beat back a proposition that would have banned “late-term” abortions. Portland voted to tax the wealthy to fund universal childcare. Across the country, socialists and DSA-backed candidates were elected.

One frustration I have long had with how the left discusses Presidential and congressional politics is our lack of honesty. We can’t contest them - not really. Not to scale, at least. We don’t have the bench for it. For too long, we’ve abandoned rural communities and completely neglected the South. We talk a lot about there being “no shortcuts” and yet we always try to find them. I get it, the myriad of problems we are confronting demand urgency. But we need to be deliberate, intentional, and take the time to build the coalition that can actually confront this. If we don’t, this will happen again (and again and again).

Last night, as the counts started to come in, I thought a lot about 2018 when Missouri voted to send Josh Hawley over Claire McCaskill to Washington. It also voted to block the implementation of a right-to-work law passed earlier that year. Many of our ideas and proposals, when put before voters, they win. It’s about god damn time we put forward people who genuinely share them and intend to actualize them.

Bryan Conlon, North Carolina:

Thank fuck it’s over, for good or ill. As awful as the results of the election are for working people, despite a few glimmers of hope, we now have an idea of the terrain we’ll be fighting on for the next couple of years. And fight is what we will have to do if the union movement is to survive in anything approaching its current form.

Annie Della Fera, Pennsylvania:

What’s my response?

I think it’s too soon to have a coherent one because the battleground states are still counting votes and we're still waiting to see how all of this shakes out, but I’ll share some of my initial thoughts.

Something we on the left have to grapple with is how depoliticized people in the U.S. are. Most people don’t engage in politics, or they engage on a purely superficial level through consumption: watching debates, wearing their favorite candidate’s swag, repeating empty talking points. Very few people in the U.S. understand how our government actually works; even fewer understand how policies get made into law.

This is a result of the U.S. ruling class intentionally kneecapping the left and the labor movement. Decades of austerity has atomized us, removed us from our communities, left us in debt and in extreme precarity. Nowhere is this more obvious than in rural U.S. communities, where we see amazon warehouses moving into disinvested communities and churning through workers they see as replaceable.

So how should the left respond to this? It won’t be easy, but the left must stop neglecting rural America. I often hear disdain for the liberals who call the middle of the country “flyover country”, but the left has similarly not invested in the rural organizers already building new working class institutions in their communities and fighting back against capital. That needs to change, or we won't have a shot at winning.

Cecilia Gingerich, Pennsylvania:

I’m located at the center of a state at the center of this election. The issues currently before us—including the pandemic, assault on civil liberties and workers' rights, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and looming economic and ecological collapse—all stretch forward and behind the election. Yet its impact on them cannot be ignored, not only due to the current administration’s positions and policies, but also because of the discourse—and at times actions—the administration has fostered and validated among its supporters.

Still, I’ve struggled to engage. It can be overwhelming to even contemplate the current state of affairs and the uncertainty we face, let alone choose which ways to personally contribute to the opposition when there are so many possibilities. Participating in election organizing and voting are only a couple of those ways. There is still so much more that can, and must, be done.

On the eve of the election I reread a favorite poem by Bertolt Brecht that I often find myself turning to when struggling with the Optimism of the Will necessary for imagining and fighting for a better future. I’ve repeated lines of it to myself throughout the past few days, including the final section, which begins:

You, who shall resurface following the flood

In which we have perished,

Contemplate —

When you speak of our weaknesses,

Also the dark time

That you have escaped.

That there may be a time following this time in which others are not faced with the challenges we face is both a reminder and motivation I am thankful for in this moment. As ever, the work continues tomorrow.

C.M. Lewis, Pennsylvania:

Well, fuck.

It looks like Joe Biden will win, and the best case scenario is he presides over a sinking ship for four years. Labor law reform is off the table unless Democrats somehow manage to take back the Senate in 2022, and people like Dianne Feinstein finally retire. (Please, California Democrats, spend the next two years making this happen.)

There are paths to actually get a majority in 2022, to be clear. They could use executive orders to aggressively expand labor rights (especially in the federal sector), make creative use of recess appointments, and tar and feather Senate Republicans for obstructionism in a way Obama was never willing to do. But past experience suggests the Democrats will proceed as usual playing croquet against a political opposition suited up for football, and go down in flames because of it. It’s a cheery thought.

There are a lot of things specifically about Pennsylvania that match what I identified for The Baffler (the total neglect of rural counties by the Democrats and Biden), but there’s one thing I want to zero in on: the early exit polls that show that 40% of union voters voted for Donald Trump. I’m going to assume for a moment (and it’s a big assumption) that this is close to accurate.

Kevin Reuning and I talked about this in great detail: union members are more Republican than we think, even if their political views are more progressive on key issues. The problem is that -- and honestly, I’m just going to be blunt -- labor unions do not get that election season conversations (or texts) do not change deeply ingrained political identifications and beliefs. You can’t change people’s beliefs by having a quick conversation to get them to vote for Joe Biden, and in an atmosphere of intense partisan polarization, people are far less movable when it comes to candidate choice.

You don’t have one conversation with a worker to form a union, and you sure as hell don’t have one short conversation with a voter to change their political worldview. The only way to change that 40% is to take seriously that politics are not tied to election cycles, and that we need to engage in serious political education, training, and engagement to actually move that needle.

2016 was a wakeup call labor ignored. 2020 is one we can’t.

Brendan O’Connor, New York:

On Thursday morning, few potential outcomes of the 2020 presidential election have been eliminated. While the hoped-for Democratic landslide failed to materialize, Joe Biden looks likely to win the Electoral College (if not by much). Given how close the race remains, the possibility that Donald Trump may yet eke out a victory—which he has already declared—cannot be discounted.

All of that is fairly surface-level and obvious, but digging too deep into exit polls at this point for insight into demographic shifts and evidence of realignment seems to me to be premature verging on reckless. Suffice it to say that Democrats were not able to deliver the unequivocal repudiation of Trump's presidency the party establishment had promised. Who could have seen this coming!

Regardless of how the legal challenges being launched across the country in the coming days and weeks resolve, the next administration will be one defined by either inability and unwillingness to meet the interests of workers, oppressed people, and the left—or some combination of the two. A vision of this could be seen in liberal California, where tech companies spent some $200 million to pass Proposition 22, overturning legislation that would have allowed gig workers to organize into unions. Uber and Lyft shares subsequently skyrocketed. Meanwhile, voters in Florida passed a $15 minimum wage—though it won't be fully implemented until 2026.

Still, it's not all bad news. In Oregon, Portland DSA won universal pre-school in Multnomah County, funded by an income tax on wealthier residents. In Boulder, Colorado, voters supported a ballot initiative (apparently written by the city's DSA chapter) guaranteeing tenants legal representation in eviction proceedings, paid for by a tax on landlords. Oregon decriminalized small amounts of cocaine and heroin and Washington, D.C., decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms. Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana use. In New York and elsewhere, socialists were elected to state legislatures, no doubt setting their local capitalists on edge.

It's hard to offer anything more than the basest left-wing platitudes about what happens next: socialists and other labor activists must take this moment of crisis as an opportunity, recognizing where there is room to maneuver and where retreats must be made. We must continue to build up our capacity to struggle and find solidarity across and between different struggles. These things are true irrespective of who occupies the White House, even if the politics of the ruling administration are not irrelevant.

In any case, the labor left will find itself on unsteady and hostile terrain. Trump's deadly contempt for the working class has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more scrambling to make rent and buy groceries. Union leaders have been working hard to sell an idea of Biden as a labor hero, but that is a charade. Unfortunately, if the GOP retains control of the Senate (as looks likely), the charade will continue, since Mitch McConnell, who whalloped the centrist Amy McGrath, wouldn't allow anything resembling pro-worker legislation to come close to a vote.

However uncertain the ground is, stumbling along with the Democratic party is no longer an option. Labor and the left need to find a way to stand on their own sooner rather than later, releasing themselves from the burden of believing that the party establishment is anything other than a hindrance.

Douglas Williams, Maryland:

This election has been about a bunch of nothing of anything that matters to working-class families and communities.

On one side, you had a Republican campaign that focused on everything from downplaying a pandemic that destroyed the lives and livelihoods of the poor and people of color to the existential threat of not being able to be a unreconstructed racist at your job without consequence. Their campaign told people that responding to unrepentant state murder with a few broken windows was tantamount to an overthrow of the government and the American Way of Life™, and their surrogates cheered on a teenage fascist who gunned down protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On the other side, you had a Democratic campaign that was the electoral version of Seinfeld. Driving through Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago, I saw more billboards detailing the reasons that Republicans were voting for Joe Biden than I saw from actual Democrats. Related to that, much was made of the efforts at reaching out to “anti-Trump Republicans” through think-tank grift squads like The Lincoln Project and how they would sway the election in Biden’s favor. They failed. But we did get the Rehabilitated Reactionary Hour at the Democratic National Convention and Biden disavowing any kind of left-wing policy through his oft-repeated claim that he “beat the socialist” in the Democratic primaries. All of this, of course, is before we get to his running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), whose career has stood foursquare in opposition to the folks fighting for justice and equality in our streets since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

So where does that leave the working class in the United States?

Joe Biden is going to be the 46th president of the United States. He will likely be accompanied by a Republican Senate and a reduced Democratic majority in the House. This is likely the death knell for any kind of judicial or legislative remedy for labor and workers barring a miracle in the two Senate runoffs in Georgia next month.

Given that the remedies from Washington, D.C. will be minimal if not nonexistent, the onus for change is once again on us. And it has to happen in places far, far away from the vaunted marble halls of our nation’s capital. This change will be won in the streets of our hometowns and the much cozier confines of our city and county governments. We will ride forth to the state capitals full of politicians who win our votes and discard our voices. We will let them know that their job security depends on us, and we will push forth an agenda that ameliorates our suffering.

But it will not be easy. There will be a lot of liberal pressure on us to simply hold our fire, or direct our energies solely at Republicans. There will be those who issue their Twitter directives from their favorite brunch spots telling us to just give ol’ Joe and Kamala a chance to do things their way. They will accuse us of being too loud, too pure, too willing to give the Republicans their attack lines for 2022. Because, to them, that is all it is about: their team jersey, their time of possession, their ability to sniff the ring that the powers that be will never let them try on.

After all, they will say, “you don’t want Trump back in power, do you?”

Tell them to go to hell.

Tell them that, despite what the Declaration of Independence says, the rights we have in this society were not endowed by our Creator. The rights that we have were not won by votes. Our freedom was paid for in blood by people in places like Flint, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio; Selma, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi. The rights that we enjoy were won by people like the Big Six…and my grandmother.

I have thought about her often in this moment of revolt and rebellion, as we try to make a new world from the embers of the old. I sometimes wake up in tears from a dream that could be about something as simple as an old conversation that we had once, because I know she would have enjoyed this moment immensely. Hell, she might have been out there herself right now, even at 85 years old.

But if there is anything that Dorothy Marie Boone-Anderson taught me and my father from an early age, it is that the fight continues until everyone is free. Let no one stand in the way of you doing what is right, and remember that this is not about you as an individual. Humble yourself enough to understand that this is about our collective struggle as Black people, as workers, as humans deserving of the dignity that God has made part of your charge, and the charge of others you might not even know.

Let us move forward from this moment with my grandmother’s lessons burning holes in our souls. Let us remember that social movements are nothing more than a collection of imperfect people trying to make a more perfect world. And let us show the world that the flame of justice cannot be extinguished.

This is our world. This is our liberation. And, damnit, this is our time.

AdminNovember 6, 2020