Clinton and the turn to the right

Beverly Mann is concerned about pundits' (a term which must be used very loosely when referring to Friedman) exhortations that Hillary Clinton move to the right to capture Republicans disaffected by Trump. Paul Krugman is equally concerned.

They are missing the point. Clinton wants to move to the right; Friedman is trying (probably by accident) to provide intellectual and ideological cover.

Krugman spent the entire primary season trying to undermine Sanders' reforms, and now he exhorts Clinton to support them. Wait, what? If Clinton does support Sanders' reforms, it won't be because of Krugman. It will be because the Sanders wing of the party, voters and elected officials, uses its power to push for them.

Clinton is a 1960s Republican. She's pro-business, pro-"free" trade, pro-war, anti-labor, anti-union, anti-poor. She will protect the capitalists and the upper levels of the professional-managerial class, including women and people of color, but without concerted pressure from progressives, she will do nothing but the most egregious tokenism for anyone outside that group.

She will will not end the mass incarceration and police murder of black people; instead, she will give good jobs to a few BlackLivesMatter leaders and neutralize the organization. She will make sure that rich and middle-class women can get safe and legal abortions, but if a poor woman in Mississippi has to travel for 8 hours — twice — to find a clinic, well, that's just too bad. She might eliminate public college tuition — that's a giveaway to the tenured academic class — but she will do nothing to make sure those students have good jobs when they graduate. (And the real expense of college is not tuition, it's trying to eat and pay rent while studying.) She might raise the minimum wage, but only by a little and do nothing to prevent the raise from being expropriated by landlords and businesses. She will do nothing to interfere with health insurance profits from the PPACA, and do nothing to improve access to actual medical care currently unaffordable to the working poor. And, of course, she will continue to murder brown people in the Middle East, torture suspected "terrorists", and strengthen the surveillance state.

On the one hand, the collapse of the Republican party is an opportunity for Clinton. She can run on the scary Trump! platform, and say nothing substantive about her actual administration, and make no important commitments. If she's smart, and she is, and she has the stomach for it, which she might, she will do everything to make sure the progressive Sanders wing of the party is marginalized or outright purged.

But scary Trump! is also an opportunity for progressives. (Chaos is a ladder, right?) Progressives can hold their noses, vote for Clinton, but work like crazy to strengthen the progressive wing. Win congressional and senatorial races. Take control of state legislatures. Win governorships. The collapse of the Republican party makes these efforts much easier. Don't give in to the Republican-lite wing of the party, especially in local races. It is doable.

Negotiating with Clinton

Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, and the neoliberals are the enemy of both socialists and progressive capitalists. Unfortunately, her chief opponent is Donald Trump, who is — in addition to personally being a dangerous buffoon — is not only a neoliberal but is at least leaning towards fascism, and fascists are the enemy of everyone but themselves.

I'm sure that Clinton and her campaign staff threw the most glorious party when Trump was nominated. She can do anything she wants because, well, what's the alternative? Trump? Please. And Clinton wants neoliberalism. She's built her career around delivering neoliberalism to the capitalist class. And why shouldn't she? Shilling for the capitalists pays well, and with a little artful misdirection, gets votes. Clinton is a politician, and that's the job: get elected and get paid. (Sanders, who nearly won the nomination, is definitely not going to get paid, and wouldn't have even if he had won the nomination and subsequent election.)

But Clinton is not herself a capitalist. She doesn't have a personal, direct interest in neoliberalism. She has money, but not money. She is, fundamentally, an employee. We'll never move the Koch brothers away from neoliberalism, but we can move Clinton. We just have to give her a good story to tell.

Clinton would like to go to Wall Street and say, "I delivered. You're getting pretty much everything you want: neoliberalism, globalization, trade deals, global intellectual property monopolies, a fragmented and powerless working class, and all the money. All I had to give up was some stupid shit that didn't pay anyway. Pay me. Boards of directors. Speaking fees. Book deals. You know the drill. I want to wipe my ass with $100 bills."

Ideally, we'd like Clinton to go to Wall Street and say, "Fuck you. You and all your money can't win an election, so you and your money are useless to me. I'm not one of you, but I am President of the United States, and none of you will ever be President. I had to throw you under the bus to get elected, and it was totally worth it. My advice is to get to Lichtenstein right now; the people are assembling torches and pitchforks even as we speak."

Ah... a lovely fantasy, but it's not gonna happen.

We could, however, if we worked hard, force Clinton to go to Wall Street and say, "Let me be blunt: you guys are seriously fucking your own shit up, and I cleaned up your mess. I had to give up a lot of what you want, but you want too much. You still have power, you're still the ruling class, but seriously: if I had tried to give you everything you want, you'd've ended up with Trump, and you're just as scared of him as I am. So you owe, and you're going to pay me — boards of directors, etc. — not because I gave you everything you wanted, but because I gave you everything you needed, your lives, and perhaps more importantly, your power. You need me, I need you, and if you don't pay me, you're going to end up with another Sanders or Trump, or worse."

Even with the current material and political situation, we can do better than simply passively accepting neoliberalism because scary Trump! The capitalist ruling class is worried, and the political class is worried.

Trump and Sanders did much better than expected. Trump broke the Republican party, and at best the Republicans will form the core of a fascist party that could get enough support to stage a coup, perhaps even a successful coup. The Democratic party only just barely staved off the Sanders threat, and they shouldn't be confident they can easily defeat the progressives in 2020 or 2024. To survive, the Democratic party absolutely must purge the Sanders progressives, and keep them from forming a viable second party.

If we simply say, "Clinton, because scary Trump!" Clinton will know she can get away with purging the progressives. She knows she can get away with the TPP, only a token increase in the minimum wage, abandoning free college tuition (maybe lower the interest rate on student loans a point), busting unions, promoting monopolies, because hey! neoliberalism is better than fascism, right?

Politics is generally, and very obviously in this election, a chicken game. The only way to win a chicken game is to throw the wheel out of the car and say, "Either you swerve, or we both crash." If Clinton believes that progressives will swerve, if they'll vote for her in 2016 and 2020, and vote for another neoliberal Democrat in 2024 because scary Hitler! and scary Stalin!, she won't budge. But she is a politician, and she won't lose on principle.* If she believes she has to deliver a progressive agenda or lose to Donald Fucking Trump (how humiliating would that be?), then she'll deliver.

*Trump will lose on principle, because then he or his more strong-willed successor gets to use the classic fascist "stabbed in the back" narrative. Trump and his supporters don't want to win an election, they want a real no-bullshit dictator. Actually winning the election would be a disaster.

I don't have much hope, though. There will always be a scary Trump! and progressives fall for that con every time. The one thing that progressives seem completely unable to do is fight for what they want when the going gets tough. Y'all will yak yak yak and vote for Sanders when it's easy, but he loses one little nomination, and y'all just give up and go home.

The electorate as negotiators

The invention of the democratic republic requires the development of the institution of the political party, which mediates between the ruling class and the voters. One way to mediate is by political philosophy or ideology, but that's not the only way; the point of political parties is to explore all the different ways of mediation, and find the ones that are successful. The process is complex: there are struggles within the ruling class (and sometimes struggles between classes for rule) and struggles within the electorate, and all the different forces are partially reconciled in the political parties.

The electorate can more-or-less "passively" accept its role: the political parties position themselves in relation to the ruling class and the electorate, and each person picks the option they like best or dislike the least. If we take this view of the role of the voters in a republic, then Hillary Clinton is the best choice for everyone who has not yet been completely screwed over by neoliberalism, and Donald Trump is the best choice for those who have been completely screwed over by neoliberalism: they're screwed anyway, and Trump might at least shake things up and create opportunities. (Trump is the best choice for racist assholes regardless of class, but that's a side issue.)

I don't like this view of the electorate, which shouldn't come as much of a shock. I have two alternative views. As a revolutionary communist, elections are just one of the many arenas of struggle to develop revolutionary momentum. Presently, revolutionary momentum is at best miniscule, and at worst backwards, so the upcoming election does not offer much to be gained or lost in this regard.

As a progressive reformer (and I can be both, why not?) I urge a somewhat more active role for the electorate. The voters are negotiating: they are actively trying to change the character and nature of the parties and the nominees. In order to negotiate, a participant absolutely must convince their opponent that they can walk away from the table. If the car salesman knows that I absolutely must have a car by the end of the day, I'm guaranteed to get screwed. She knows I can't walk away; she need only make sure it's not impossible for me to sign.

As negotiators, we absolutely cannot say that we must vote for Clinton because Trump. Instead, we must convince Clinton and the Democratic party that if we don't get enough of what we want, we will walk away from the table, Trump or no Trump. When we say Clinton because Trump, we are saying to the car salesman that we must have a car by the end of the day. We are begging Clinton to screw us over once she's president.

Of course, as negotiators, Clinton and the Democratic party, to serve their capitalist masters, must argue that we must vote for Clinton because Trump, to convince us that we must have a car by the end of the day, and thus concede as little as possible to the electorate. Hillary Clinton would love to go to Wall Street and say, "I delivered your agenda."

Scary, no? But that's how negotiation works. It's a pure strategy chicken game. And if you credibly promise to swerve, you will lose every time.

So I don't give a shit whether Jill Stein is or is not an anti-vaxxer. Jill Stein is not going to become president, and the Green party is not going to be a major player; if they were, I would actually participate in the party and remove the stupid from the platform.

The point is that I will vote (because not voting is dumb), but I'm going to credibly promise to not vote for Clinton if she doesn't promise to enact a progressive agenda, not just a less regressive agenda than Trump. And if Trump does become president because Clinton doesn't come through, well, presidents don't have absolute power, and there are ways to limit and resist Trump's power (cough Bill Clinton cough).

Progressives should want Wall Street to say support Clinton because Trump, that even though Clinton had to seriously compromise the neoliberal capitalist agenda, Trump would have been even worse.

So when you tell me to vote Clinton because Trump, or that I'm "wasting" my vote if I don't vote for either Clinton or Trump, you're telling me that you'll let Clinton promote whatever neoliberal horrors she chooses, because she knows your vote does not depend on her policies.

If we can't have a revolution, let's at least negotiate, not bend over.