the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Yeah, I don't get it. There's a very reasonable argument to be made that picking Biden over Trump won't make that much of a difference in real terms. This honestly seems like one of the best times in recent history to directly address the legitimacy of the system, rather than pretend that it matters which demented old man gets to be president.
That's definitely the clearest and most effective strategy for advancing class consciousness.
If we drop our expectations lower though and we just consider that this person is the leader of the largest communist party in the US and, as such, his role is to engage in political analysis then the next step from that is to consider his political analysis of the situation - that Biden is significantly different to Trump, that Biden is both capable of stopping Trump and willing to do so, and that Biden is not doing what Trump did which he believes makes Trump bad/an existential threat etc.
I can't even put words to exactly how that leaves me - I'm not speechless or aghast or disappointed. If I was in a room with him, there would be nothing that I'd want to say to him or to hear from him because I genuinely believe that there's more value in shitposting on some little corner of the internet than there is in engaging with someone who is either so politically disconnected that he genuinely believes these things that he has said or who is very consciously attempting to deceive the masses by using convenient fiction in order to achieve a deeper political goal in the most cynical way possible. I nothing him, y'know?
Imo what that boils down to is either he thinks that people like me are completely stupid or he is genuinely this stupid. Either way 🤷
What’s really unforgivable is the total lack of any long-term strategy, which is the only thing that any third-party in American politics should be concerned about, let alone an ostensibly revolutionary party. They aren’t going to secure any actual political power through elections in the near-term, so the entire exercise should be about how to raise class consciousness and convince people that the very obviously dysfunctional system is in fact dysfunctional.
To endorse that system in any way just muddies the waters. It’s not the job of the CPUSA or any other socialist party to help the Democrats get elected, and doing so is not going to help advance socialism in any meaningful way. I could understand if there were actual politics happening, that they were leveraging their support to get policy concessions from the Democrats, but that isn’t happening and will likely never happen, so this is nothing but an own-goal.
Like you say, either he’s incompetent, or he has an incredible amount of contempt for people who he should want in his coalition.
Right?
Let's be really cynical or pragmatic, whatever you want to call it - say you're the head of the CPUSA. You feel that your primary task is to maintain your membership numbers and you don't want to cause a split or you want to appeal to the milquetoast left-ish "socialist" crowd or some shit. Fine. Game is game.
So what do you do? You announce that you aren't endorsing anyone. Or you tell people to vote with their conscience (because you know that everyone who still believes in bourgeois democracy is gonna vote Biden anyway).
Then you refocus on what matters. Done and done.
This is how I felt in the Bernie era when there were a lot of slapfights over whether or not to vote for him. I was just like - fuck it, it's not worth splitting a movement over. If you're gonna vote for him then you're going to do it regardless of what other people in your organisation say. And if you're not going to vote, what, is someone going to drag you to the polls so you can cast an invalid vote or something?
If you don't endorse Biden you aren't hitching your wagon to whatever the fuck atrocities his regime is going to be complicit in for the next four years. But if you do endorse Biden, what strategic goals does this achieve which non-endorsement would not?
This has the exact same energy as RSVPing to a wedding reception that you weren't even invited to.
I really don't think they're the largest communist party in the US in any way that counts. If you go to political actions across the country they simply are not present. is. Even FRSO and a couple of Trot parties have more real presence than them.