Democrats are not a shield against Trump and the right

October 28, 2024 –
From Socialist Worker (UK)

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Kamala Harris illustrating article on US presidential election Democrats and Trump

US presidential candidate Kamala Harris is moving further rightwards (Pictue: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

The polls are close, but Donald Trump’s Republican Party is setting the agenda in the United States presidential election.

With voting only a week away, nowhere is this clearer than on the issue of immigration.

Trump has vowed to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in US history” and called for ban on any refugee travelling to the US.

He’s promised to throw “any student that protests out of the country” and to “deport pro-Hamas radicals”—code for pro-Palestine protesters.

And he’s pledged to “finish building the wall”—referring to the border wall between the US and Mexico.

Instead of confronting Trump’s vile racism, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is reflecting it.

At a town hall event last week, she criticised Trump for not doing enough to “fix the problem” of immigration.

She celebrated having “lower undocumented immigrants and illegal immigration than Trump when he left office”.

Harris criticised Trump for only building “about 2 percent” of a US-Mexico border wall.

When pushed by an interviewer about whether Trump’s wall was a vanity project, she responded, “I’m not afraid of good ideas where they occur.”

The Democrats’ strategy is to convince those on the left that Trump is a fascistic danger that only they can stop. With the left in the bag, the Democrats can then focus on winning forces on the right.

Harris’ answer to the question of what makes her different from Joe Biden shows where the strategy ends up.

She answered, “I plan on having a Republican in my cabinet—that will be one of the differences.”

The changing dynamics of the far right

But this is a cycle that ultimately benefits the right and it feeds on disillusionment and bitterness with the entire political system.

It’s a cyclical process that has been extended under Biden’s presidency. During its four years in office, it has done very little to alleviate the economic pain hitting workers and the poor. More than ever, they struggle with soaring housing costs, medical bills and food prices.

Just look at Harris’ biggest backers—they are billionaires and bankers. Signing up to the Democratic Party undercuts any possibility of genuinely fighting the right.

Nevertheless, figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first piled in behind Biden and now Harris.