Elections 2020: Socialist Action and SWP

There's something fishy in Mackler-land.

On November 3rd--election eve--Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action's (SA) failed presidential candidate, hosted a Youtube roundtable to discuss the returns as they came in. The comrade-panelists were Lisa Lunenburg (from Minneapolis); Barry Weisleder (Toronto); Marty Goodman (New York); Nicholas Brannon; Gary B (Oregon); John Pottinger (Chicago); and Ann Montague (VP Candidate). That's six white males and two white females, which is likely representative of SA's demographics.

Since November 3rd--26 days ago as of this writing--there has been nothing posted on the SA website. Crickets! What's going on? I suggest four possibilities.

1. Comrade Jeff is just too tired after his arduous campaigning. After all, sitting in an easy chair in front of a webcam for a few hours/week is just exhausting. He needs a rest.
2. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming on, comrades need some time to prepare for the holidays.
3. There is another split brewing in SA...and indeed, perhaps the organization will cease to exist.
4. Or (my preference), Mr. Mackler is being deposed as National Secretary because of old age and gross incompetence. After all, if there were ever a more humiliating presidential campaign I've never heard of it.

Anyway, we'll likely find out within the next week or two.

The video is two hours long, and I did not listen to all of it. I probably invested 45 minutes or so this afternoon (11/28) , and I made sure I sampled each of the speakers. I do not have a transcript, any "quotes" here are from memory and likely not strictly accurate. I'm not listening to it again--it really is very boring. Since it went online it has received 135 views, at least three of which were from me. The most commonly used word was "uh", followed closely by "um."

Mr. Mackler opened by touting the success of his campaign, claiming even to have gotten a vote from Idaho! Of course he dismissed both Trump and Biden as being bourgeois candidates neither of whom represents the working class. But he claimed to defend the right to a fair election, somehow blaming only Republicans for any unfairness. In retrospect, it appears that if there was any cheating it came overwhelmingly from Democrats.

He repeated the ridiculous assertion that "between 15 million and 26 million people" showed up for the George Floyd protests. Not even his fellow panelists lent their support to that statement.

Mr. Mackler doesn't believe in bourgeois elections, for when and if he ever wins one then all future elections will be abolished. The People will have spoken once and for all time. So his concern that the election be fair is pure hypocrisy.

Many speakers (maybe even all of them) went through the litany of who SA supposedly supports: Black, Latino, Native Americans, GLTBQAI, Trans, etc. In other words, all the BIPOCs, as current lingo will have it, despite the fact that nobody in SA shares that identity. This, of course, is precisely the same audience desired by AOC and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and also the Green Party under Howie Hawkins' banner. 

Is it any surprise that the program of Socialist Action is exactly the same as that of Democratic Party progressives? Of course it is--straight down the line: Green New Deal, Medicare for All, End Systemic Racism, Tax the Rich, $15 minimum wage, No New Wars, Down With Israel, etc. The only difference between SA's program and the Democratic Party Left's program is that Mackler claims he doesn't like Democrats. But I don't believe him--because he campaigned for the Democratic Party program the entire time.

So they oughta be happy that 75,000,000 people voted for the Dems, which more than makes up for the piddling 135 who watched snippets of Mr. Mackler's video. After all, why vote for Boring Jeff when you can vote for the real thing, i.e., Stupid Joe Biden.

Because Jeff Mackler, AOC, Kamala Harris, Bob Avakian and the whole disreputable gang do not stand for the Working Class. They instead represent an unholy alliance between the top 10% (academia, the media, Hollywood, "experts", climate gurus, etc.) and the Lumpen Proletariat (teachers' union hacks, civil servants, NGOs, social workers, grad students, folks up to their eyeballs in student loan debt).

The real champion of the Working Class in this election was none other than Donald J. Trump. Needless to say, the ruling elite has worked overtime to steal the election from him. And even though I am personally petty bourgeois from my split ends down to my toenail fungus, at least I'm smart enough to know where the class line is.

I don't vote for Democrats--not even those that gussy themselves up as "revolutionaries."

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) understands at least some of this. An article by Terry Evans (probably written around Nov. 13th) puts it this way:

The Democrats, middle-class left and some “Never Trump” Republicans complain Trump’s refusal to concede is a threat to democracy. Groups like ShutDownDC threaten to do whatever it takes “to force Trump from office.”

Their threats are dangerous for the working class. There is enough time to resolve the election result and hear the legal challenges before Inauguration Day in January. Working-class parties like the Socialist Workers Party are more than familiar with Democrats and Republicans rigging ballot rights.

The real target of the liberals and middle-class radicals is the working class. They are astounded their pollsters got the election so wrong. They say the 71 million people who voted for Trump means that working people are becoming more right wing and racist.

This isn’t true. Millions of workers are looking for ways to fight against the capitalist crisis today. Hundreds of thousands joined protests against police brutality in cities, towns and rural areas across the country in early summer.

Fine, as far as it goes. But they then go wrong in two ways:

1. They believe Trump is a false prophet--that he's just faking it as a friend of the working man. I think they're stuck in a time warp and don't really understand how class politics works today.
2. Like SA, despite their solidarity with Trump voters, they still subscribe to the Democratic platform: things like Health Care for All and Amnesty for All Undocumented Immigrants, i.e., appeals to the Lumpen Proletariat. Though, to give them credit, they don't sign on to the climate change nonsense, nor are they rabidly antisemitic.

To my knowledge, the above quoted article by Mr. Evans is the only journalistic piece the SWP has published about the election. Weirdly, it makes no mention of the Kennedy/Jarrett campaign, on which they expended considerable effort. Is that to be tossed down the memory hole so quickly? Seems like a lot of work for nothing.

Further, they worked hard to get on the ballot in at least a few states. As I pointed out here, it's weird that they didn't mention that at all in their final election push. And now they really should say how many votes they got--for if they're on the ballot those votes were all machine tabulated and should be readily available.

Why have they deep-sixed the petition drives to get on the ballot? I can think of several possible reasons.

1. It's just an oversight. In which case getting on the ballot just wasn't that important in the first place. Why then did they bother?
2. Their vote totals are humiliating. But surely it can't be worse than Mr. Mackler's 135 views. I understand that people who vote for minor parties at the bottom of the ballot often don't know who they're voting for--it's just a joke or a protest, or perhaps a mistake. But some of those votes are real, and they should be championed.
3. The Party, despite their efforts, didn't actually succeed in getting on the ballot anywhere. Now that would really be humiliating!

Anyway, here is the election outcome in a nutshell:

• the Working Class lost.
• the highly educated elite (aka, the swamp) won.
• The SWP was not effective.
• The most pathetic loser of all time is Jeff Mackler, who needs to get out of politics.

Further Reading:

• Who Should Trotskyists Vote For in 2020?
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again