If anyone seriously believes the Democrats can be the instrument of change needed today in the United States, they are deluded and likely over the age of thirty. It is no longer acceptable to simply return to our transparently-antagonistic-and-fundamentally-capitalist political and economic status quo of the 2000s, and a midterm win for the Democrats is not enough (although I will certainly be voting for them if no superior option is presented.) The interests of capital are deeply embedded in both political parties, but this fealty has rendered the Republicans fascists (perhaps a different description may be ‘corporatists’) and the Democrats definitionally ineffective and unable to create any battlefield other than social issues and give the derisive, hateful, ultimately power-hungry American right a soft, predictable ‘opposition’ to turn into fodder for their incurious supporters. When politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Andrew Cuomo remain prominent Democrat power brokers despite their insider trading, appalling support of Israel, and generally scandalous reputation (respectively), while actively blocking even center-left politicians (in a global sense, not an American one) and courting the conservative vote in pathetic, half-assed campaigns that will necessarily not mobilize the working class, it is evident that there is no party in the United States that legitimately represents the interests of the majority of citizens and workers.
There is one party that deigns to pay lip service to the public and another that has managed to hoodwink and emotionally manipulate a significant portion of the American population via the power of media ownership and low-class white American insecurity; both are bankrolled in the hundreds of millions by the same people. The degree of capital’s influence and power over politicians has only ballooned dramatically in the last two decades and prompted the current tyrannical administration, but America – and its politicians – have created an Overton window so tragically pushed to the right over the past 40 years that the only idea that our ‘left-wing’ politicians have is to try to move to the right as well; indeed, since Clinton the economic approach of the Dems and GOP has been worryingly similar for anybody not already in the top 10% of our society. The question of America’s position in the world order is more critical than ever today, and as the former centerpiece of a variety of neoliberal organs meant to mediate and maintain the post-Cold War world order, leftists looking to transform America’s future have to reckon with both the destruction of the current world order and the implications of the arrival of another. A central issue in the US today is the fact that those with the most political influence and economic power are part of an international community of ultra-wealthy people whose fealty lies with their capital and not any particular country, and the American system is conducive to the preservation of unfaithful international wealth that can leave if things collapse at the price of every actual American, Trump supporters included. This is the great trick in American history: the slave-owning class of the Civil War managed to convince the white American public (and a shocking number of self-hating POC, which I find to be the greater feat) that they are one embarrassed, vengeful, entitled demographic and not on opposing sides of the class war. They have inculcated a fear of ‘other,’ a sense of fear and projection of political and ethical dysfunction onto their opponent, and a false sense of limited-populism; I suppose the only thing false about our limited populism is just how few people it’s limited to.
Of course the fascist party is the immediate problem, but without an organizing tool or political machine meant to resist their violent reform of American society we are nigh-upon-powerless. It would only take about 10 Republicans voting like humans and not Machiavellian machines with total power in reach to bring the administration to its knees and allow for a moment of transformation, but that will not happen on its own. It will also not happen through the continuation of our political status quo with the pathetic pliant Schumer as minority leader and a “Democratic Party:” we need something different, something not rooted in and governed by capital and subservient to the powers that be but instead animated by the furious public, something that can unite the rural worker and middle America with the efforts of progressive groups and the indignant-yet-incomprehensibly-still-comfortable middle class. This will require a political party willing to directly address the widening class divide and proliferation of hoards of private wealth at odds with the public good, to not spend all their time speaking about intersectionality but instead target labor issues and condemn the existing ruling class for their complicity; basically making good on the populist rhetoric and negative feelings of insecurity/inadequacy preyed upon by media machines to elect Donald Trump by actually transforming wealth distribution in the United States and dismantling the obscene configurations of capital found in communities and giving them a chance to own their own means of production.
Chuck Schumer represents a critical, unacceptable case of the modern Democrat. He has endowed himself with the title of “shomer yisroel,” “guardian of Israel,” which he takes quite seriously. That perhaps the most prominent Democrat in our government is effectively a Zionist puppet is an unmitigated disaster – just because the American “left” prefers to export our violence to far corners of the world does not mean it is defensible. Schumer’s influence is evident in Senate votes on Israeli arms deals; while 40 Democrats signed a letter “expressing alarm over starvation in Gaza,” only 26 ended up voting for Bernie Sanders’ resolution to halt the arms deal. (https://truthout.org/articles/24-senators-vote-for-sanders-resolution-to-stop-bombs-sale-to-israel/) This combination of righteous indignation in rhetoric and tragic falling-in-line afterwards is emblematic of the Democrats’ half-hearted commitment to improving the lives of everyday Americans and abject failure to meaningfully rattle the larger cage of American imperialism, military-industrial complex influence, and worrisomely-rapid wealth transfer. Unfortunately, due to a number of factors imposed over time, political revolution here is frighteningly difficult. The first-past-the-pole electoral vote distribution of the majority of U.S. states renders third parties to be at best a tool of one’s opponent, used to defray votes for one of the two major parties. This has led to unbelievable degradation of Congress and unearned comfort for politicians who have done nothing but embody the capitalistic interests that donate to their campaigns as “free speech.” Indeed, this impossibility to break in is what enables people like Schumer to remain influential for decades. The necessity for vast amounts of wealth to be competitive in elections makes fundraising machines like the Democrats or Republicans necessary, and I don’t think it is possible to get our elected officials to change the laws that grant them so much comfort and so little need for accountability on their own.
A shining example of hope for American leftism in recent times was Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, noted rapist and entitled nepo baby, using a platform that spoke to the middle and lower classes, that condemned brutal Israeli genocide, and appeared authentic, charismatic, and down-to-earth, even as a non-white non-Christian (which must be admitted as grievious disadvantages in most of America, albeit less so in NYC). However, while Mayor Mamdani’s inspirational campaign and initial efforts in office bring me hope, Cuomo and the Democrats’ insistence on battling him to the end – not endorsing him as a bright future, instead condemning him for living in a rent-controlled apartment for being too “wealthy” (all while having lived in a similar apartment despite coming from a political dynasty and basically inheriting his office – http://nytimes.com/2025/10/29/nyregion/cuomo-rent-stabilized-apartment.html,) is indicative of the Democrat establishment’s attitude, inherited from their billionaire donors whose positions are directly threatened by the exact political position that NEEDS to emerge in opposition to the current fascist government – they are a party willing to lose and set their own “values” ablaze in order to maintain the binary capitalist political system that only serves to marginalize and extract wealth from the American public in service of fewer and fewer ultra-wealthy people with minimal fealty to the United States. We as a public need better politicians if we want a chance to transform our intentionally-broken political system, although we do very little to deserve them in our uncritical consumption of billionaire-owned media and slavish addiction to convenience and spectacle.
I want to incite a new political movement, a grassroots campaign advocating for a radical rebuilding and re-evaluation of the economic and political structure of the United States. I sincerely think it’s possible to rebuild hope and faith in the future and our political representatives, but it will require revolution and sacrifice from a populace who have not sacrificed much and enjoy a degree of spectacle, distraction, and comfort that is unprecedented in world history and deleterious to revolution.
(next I might write a little comparison between the Weimar Republic, late Roman Republic, and the ongoing American collapse – there’s also a lot more to be said about this, but I am tired now)
B Writes 