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THE WORST POLITICAL DECISION SINCE NIXON TAPED HIMSELF COMMITTING
CRIMES
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Les Leopold
April 1, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ How the Democrats handed Trump the election on a bitcoin-plated
platter—and most still don't think they did anything wrong. _
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks onstage during the first day of the
Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 19, 2024
in Chicago, Illinois, Win McNamee/Getty Images
Each day the Democrats are outraged about another outrage coming from
Trump and his enablers—stomping on immigrants, undermining the
courts, attacking Canada, claiming Ukraine started the war, violating
campus free speech, destroying the EPA, firing forest rangers—and on
and on and on.
But why the surprise? Did anyone doubt that Trump would act on his
anger and his resentment, and then follow through executing the
detailed plans laid out in Project 2025? Did anyone believe he would
turn the other cheek at those who tried to impeach him and send him to
jail? Surely every single elected Democrat knew that Trump’s
election would be a disaster for everything the party claimed to stand
for.
Nevertheless, the Democrats handed Trump the election on a
bitcoin-plated platter. They stuck with Biden—make that sucked up to
Biden—until it was too late to run primaries and find the strongest
Democratic candidate. (I’m not saying Kamala Harris
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weakest one, but four years earlier she flunked out before the first
presidential primary. Just saying.)
Why the hell did they do that?
I’m no political genius, but nearing Biden’s 81st birthday, in
November of 2023, I begged him n
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to run
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again. It was clear to me, based on polling, his lack of energy, and
my own intuition, that he had no business running again.
I was alone, but not entirely so. Obama’s campaign maestro, David
Axelrod was pounded
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for suggesting Biden wasn’t the best candidate. That so successfully
quelled any dissent that it wasn’t until six months later (July 2,
2024) that Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first sitting
Democratic congressman to ask Biden to withdraw
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Profiles in courage, the Democrats were not, including all the
governors lining up for 2028.
If I could see the trainwreck coming why couldn’t the Democrats?
I think I know why. They didn’t get upset about it because they were
blinded by power and wealth.
Biden represented power. You cross him and you lose access to that
power even while his grip on reality is diminishing. You become a
target for party loyalists, and risk losing credibility in the party
if you call for him to step down. You become an outsider. Even Sen.
Bernie Sanders [[link removed]]
(I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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didn’t want to lose their influence over Biden’s pro-worker agenda
as they continued to support his candidacy until the bitter end.
The Democrats today are imploding, and that’s exactly what they
deserve. They blew it.
The attraction to wealth is an even bigger problem. Far too many
Democrats are enamored by the rich and famous. They went to school
with them. They lean on them for campaign funds. They plan to join
them when they leave public office. The wizards on Wall Street and in
corporate America form the class they see themselves as part of, or in
the class they aspire to.
It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the Democratic Party has
become the representatives of the managerial class. Too many party
members with working-class roots tore them out long ago.
Many probably discounted their worries about Trump, thinking that the
rich and powerful would tame him. Because that’s where the
Democratic Party thinks real power lies. The financial class
wouldn’t let Trump wreck the economy, would it? Surely, the
corporate class wouldn’t back down on DEI programs or forgo their
access to inexpensive immigrant labor. The wealthiest Democratic law
firms aren’t going to cave, right? Wouldn’t the elites prevent
Trump’s excesses the way they did last time? Hmmm.
Along the way, most Democrats lost their anger. They lost their fight.
They lost their connection to the working people who have seen their
way of life crushed after 40 years of neoliberalism. Which is why many
modern Democrats found it easy to cavalierly go along with the worst
political decision since Nixon taped himself committing crimes during
the Watergate scandal. (Please see _Wall Street’s War on Workers_
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Democrats, and visa vera.)
Along the way, most Democrats lost their anger. They lost their fight.
They lost their connection to the working people who have seen their
way of life crushed after 40 years of neoliberalism.
Biden clearly did not have the capacity to run again. The Democrats
knew that even before he proved it to the world during his disastrous
June 2024 debate with Trump. But they didn’t care enough to oppose
his decision, publicly, where it would matter. He told his advisors
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during the 2020 race that he wouldn’t run for a second term, he
would be 82 years old by his second inauguration, but the party
refused to hold him to it when he changed his mind.
The Democrats today are imploding, and that’s exactly what they
deserve. They blew it. They can’t be reformed into a working-class
party, because that’s not who they are or what they want to be. From
my perspective, reforming them is an utter waste of time and energy,
an exercise in window dressing and spin. Instead, we need a new party,
an Independence Party that comes with the slogan: _The billionaires
have two parties, we need one of our own!_
STOP WITH THE SPOILER ARGUMENT
All I hear from friend and foe is that third parties are impossible in
America, that they only serve as spoilers and can never succeed.
Ralph Nader’s run, they tell me, elected Bush. We can argue about
whether that’s true, it might be, but there’s very little argument
against the idea that Biden’s run in 2024 elected Trump—for the
second time!
So, we start with identifiable targets. There is nothing to spoil if
we concentrate on running independent working-class candidates in
one-party Congressional districts of which there are many!
In 2022, five out of every six races
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more than 10 percentage points, according to FairVote.org. One out of
every 13 races went entirely uncontested! These districts are where
the battle should be joined. _The call for a new Independence Party is
a call for a vibrant second party, not a third!_
Dan Osborn, a former local labor leader, was surprisingly competitive
in the 2024 Senate race in Nebraska, running against an unopposed
Republican and far ahead of Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders always runs
as an independent as well, and he has now come out urging
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others to do the same.
The need for a new party could never be clearer. The time could never
be more urgent.
There’s a hunger out there for something new, but it will take
courage and guts to create it. That can only happen when key labor
unions decide to do what their membership has been telling them to do
for a generation – get away from the corporate Democrats!
Private sector unions, diminished as they may be, are still the seat
of worker power in the U.S. And they can galvanize the working class
around an agenda that enhances the well-being of all working people.
They are key to building a new political formation that protects us
all from Wall Street-driven job destruction.
The need for a new party could never be clearer. The time could never
be more urgent. The opportunity is there staring us in the face, if
only we have the nerve to grab it.
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Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute
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“_WALL STREET’S WAR ON WORKERS: HOW MASS LAYOFFS AND GREED ARE
DESTROYING THE WORKING CLASS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
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(2024). Read more of his work on his substack here
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* Election 2024; Democratic Party; Neoliberalism; Independent
Working Class Party;
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