With the victory of progressive Abdul El-Sayed over representative Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary, prepare yourself to hear enormous quantities of bullshit about the Democratic party now being “taken over” by the “left” or by “democratic socialists”.
Or as the reliably establishment New York Times put it: “Can an insurgent candidate, with unabashedly liberal positions, win a general election in a moderate state?”
Oh, p-l-e-a-s-e.
Michigan Democrats didn’t choose El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly liberal”. Or because he’s a democratic socialist (in fact, he’s not).
They chose him because he’s a fighter – at a time when America needs fighters willing to stand up to the worst tyrant who has ever occupied the Oval Office.
Corporate Democrats – such as Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed them campaign money. They won’t criticize the billionaire class. They refuse to talk about how big money has corrupted America.
Yet it’s big corporations and the billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s authoritarianism.
They’ve sucked up to Trump for corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence and war contracts.
They’ve given Trump hundreds of millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his Super Pac.
Jamie Dimon and his cronies on Wall Street; Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the Ellisons – all have sold their integrity for huge profits.
They’ve created media empires that won’t criticize Trump, financial empires that feed Trump’s crypto, energy empires that feed off Trump’s war, and legal empires that allow Trump to ride roughshod over the rule of law.
Which is why the US desperately needs people in Congress who will fight against Trump and his sycophants.
The Democratic party isn’t being taken over by “the left” or by democratic socialists. There’s no civil war between progressives and moderates. We aren’t witnessing an ideological battle between the “left” and the “center”.
We’re seeing the US wake up to the tyranny that’s engulfed us, and to a crisis of affordability that’s causing most Americans to struggle financially while fueling the biggest stock market rally in history.
Trump’s tyranny and America’s affordability crisis are related.
When corporate America and Wall Street are unleashed – when the president of the United States has made an implicit deal with the moneyed interests to back him and his authoritarian regime in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, monopolization and pay-to-play corruption – of course prices soar and wages stagnate.
Tyranny is the handmaiden of the moneyed interests.
The Democratic party’s mega-donor class may be horrified by the rising tide of progressive populism overtaking more than a few primaries this cycle. After all, it spent tens of million of dollars on Stevens – making the Michigan primary one of the most expensive in US history.
Too bad. It’s time that the Democratic party’s mega-donor class recognizes that its real choice is between democracy and tyranny, between an economy that works for all or one that works for a small sliver at the top.
If the mega-donor class chooses the latter, it may be acting in its narrow self-interest, but it will also be acting against the future of this nation.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK
