Should Harris supporters blame the Left for their candidate’s defeat?
No, they should blame the two-party system.
To my liberal friend who campaigned for Kamala Harris,
I know you’re probably looking for explanations for your candidate’s resounding defeat. You may be itching to blame it on those of us who, despite dreading another Trump term, did not vote for Harris, much less campaigned for her. But let me suggest you take your thoughts in a different direction.
First, look at the numbers very closely. Harris was defeated in all the “Blue Wall” states, and she was no closer in other swing states like North Carolina or Georgia. It is likely Trump will end up sweeping all seven swing states. Furthermore, her performance was way below projections, across the board, even in deep-blue states and districts like New York City. Popular vote numbers are particularly striking: at 67 Million votes so far, she received at least 10 Million fewer votes than the 81 Million for Biden in 2020.
We always agreed that a second Trump presidency was nightmarish to contemplate. Yet these ghastly results should lead you to question putting your energies behind a candidate that did not bother to promise solutions to any of the main problems Americans are going through, and thus left the field open for Trump to score a triumphant comeback.
So no, it’s not time to blame third-party spoilers, principled leftists, the Muslim community, or anyone who did not have the stomach to support a genocide-enabler. It is time, instead, to pause and reflect, so that next time you direct your efforts toward building a political alternative to the dead-end, two-party system.
Thousands of young activists just like you, people concerned about civil rights, women’s rights, and the environment, phone-banked, donated, and canvassed for Kamala Harris’s campaign. Many did so holding their noses, lamenting her terrible policy record, her platform, and her unequivocal support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, you and others thought, it would still be better than Trump.
This time it’s not just me saying it — millions of people in the U.S. arrived at the same conclusion yesterday: Harris might have promised to protect the right to abortion, she may talk less abrasively, and be more respectful to journalists, but she’s still a monster. Like the rest of the Democratic Party, her priority is the capitalist class, and the continuation of U.S. imperialism.
When you think about it, this outcome was quite predictable. Harris and the Democratic Party did not try to win over people or expand their base among working-class families, young activists, and students. They only sought to secure the support of big donors and Republicans like Liz Cheney. This is the only way to understand why they did not put forward a more progressive platform; why Harris repeated time and again that she stands behind Israel; why she refused to propose even minimal changes to our deeply dysfunctional health care system.
On other issues, like immigration or criminal justice, she tried to outdo Trump, presenting herself as the toughest on border control. She did not dispute Trump’s portrayal of undocumented immigrants as criminals. Instead, she pledged to crack down on them. You heard her tough-on-crime rhetoric, her backing away from LGBTQ+ issues. You brushed all this aside. The goal was to win those independent, probably more conservative, voters in the coveted swing states. Yet it was a tall sacrifice to make: she hoped to win by boosting anti-immigrant sentiment and defending the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
The fact is, by pushing for Trump’s defeat no matter what; by lifting up a candidate who only offered more imperialism, suffering, and oppression; by investing your energies into Harris, you only helped cement, once again, a two-party game that works wonders for billionaires. And once again, we lost an opportunity to reject both parties of capital, and put forward working-class politics of solidarity and anti-imperialism.
My comrades and I are convinced that the only way out of this political quagmire is to take up the fight for class independence now. This means, first and foremost, refusing to lend any support to capitalist parties, no matter what they promise, and no matter who they’re running against. It means working-class solidarity not only within the U.S. but with the oppressed all over the world.
It can’t be overstated: we can lend no support to a person or party actively supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It also means fighting for democratic rights, the right to vote, reproductive rights, the right to live as any gender, and more. We fight side by side with everyone defending these rights, but we especially work to build working-class coalitions because those are the ones that hold the promise of social change for us — not bourgeois politicians and their ballots.
A lot of time, money, and emotions have been spent on a failing Trump-lite campaign to defeat the real Trump. More convulsive times are coming. It’s time to take the lesson and prepare our own organizational and political tools to fight for ourselves and for our working-class siblings around the world.