We are in a dangerously precarious situation in the United States at the moment. With the Presidential election five months away, the Democratic Party is struggling internally over Biden’s candidacy, and Trump has restated his desire to contest any election he deems “fraudulent”. We face a choice between a fascist and a man too frail to even debate him. It is tempting in this desperate situation to try to close ranks around the least bad option—a bumbling and genocidal Joe Biden. 

The liberal media will incessantly push the narrative that it is our duty to vote out fascism, but leftists must resist these simplistic and emotive appeals. Their narratives obscure the political and social dynamics that have given rise to a fascist movement in the United States. They also deflect from their own role in strengthening Trump’s candidacy.

There are many reasons for the development of fascism in the United States, structural, historical and circumstantial. The inherent conservatism of the constitution and the ‘checks and balances’ of the branches of government enable rapid shifts to the right whilst slowing advances by the Left. So, for decades we see a lack of meaningful progress on issues that have very high public support, like gun control, student debt or healthcare costs. Meanwhile, in the less than four years since Trump established the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, there have been significant rollbacks of rights to abortion and affirmative action. The recent Supreme Court decision granting Trump broad immunity from prosecution as president continues this legalised path toward fascism. 

These rapid shifts to the right are very demoralising for the liberal establishment, because it undermines their ideas about the virtues of liberal democracy and the ‘sanctity’ of its institutions. In the liberal imagination, the right to abortion, or even the right to vote, were conferred by a benevolent government. The reality that mass Left social movements won these rights, as concessions to their greater demands, is ignored. 

Popular struggle, not legal cases

This history of struggle is very relevant for us today because it offers a path toward genuine resistance to the Trump project. When Trump was elected in 2016, there was a significant surge of grassroots resistance. Demonstrations that had typically attracted 100 people swelled to thousands, and historic marches to Washington became the norm. 

Instead of encouraging these protest movements, the liberal media and the Democratic Party establishment tried to divert this energy into the Trump-Russia collusion case. Within a year, mobilisation had faded, and everyone was watching the constant coverage, trying to find a smoking gun of Russian interference. 

This diversion of popular energy into the dead end of legal cases against Trump (Russia collusion, impeachment twice, and hush money payments) has been an important shield for him. The cases play right into his ‘outsider’ narrative and claims of victimisation while they distract from the need to militantly resist the Republican political agenda. 

Challenge to build a Left

The Democratic Party establishment undermined the Sanders campaign’s Left agenda at every turn, although Sanders was always projected to do very well against Trump.

Since Trump first emerged as a candidate, the liberal media has inadvertently enabled and strengthened his campaign. Eight years ago, his candidacy was initially treated as a joke, and his unedited speeches and press conferences were gleefully broadcast almost 24/7. There was little or no fact-checking or serious investigation of the campaign’s claims. This amounted to almost $2 billion in free media coverage. 

In their minds, he could never win, and he would destroy the Republican party. They failed to see the appeal of an ‘outsider candidate’, who had effectively tapped into the well-organised former Tea Party and evangelical movements. The liberal media has occasionally reflected on their inadvertent support for the Trump campaign, but they ultimately continue to pursue the higher ratings that constant and unethical coverage of Trump provides.

To effectively challenge the Trump campaign means not only fact-checking. It also means supporting an alternative political project that will mobilise the millions of people who believe in a more just and equitable world. The political structure of the United States makes building Left projects difficult; it is much more common for Democrats to use Left imagery and rhetoric than fight for Left policies. The most salient example is the Obama’s ‘Hope and Change’ campaign’s faux Left turn, which famously bailed out the banks instead of those facing foreclosure. 

The Obama years were followed by a shift to the right, with Hilary Clinton and then Biden both acting in opposition to strong challenges from Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party establishment undermined the Sanders campaign’s Left agenda at every turn, although Sanders was always projected to do very well against Trump. He was able to mobilise among disaffected voters, mainly young people. The geriatric Biden presidency highlights the generational divide in US politics, where young people are very consistently to the Left of both parties on every issue. 

The subsequent emergence of ‘the squad’ of young Congressional representatives has expanded this internal struggle in the Democratic party. The Democratic congressional leadership has tried to contain this energy and divert it toward further support for Biden, despite the clear evidence that mobilisation of young and disaffected voters is key to defeating Trump. 

The senile empire

Joe Biden’s support for the Gaza genocide may be the issue that costs him this election. There was a campaign in Michigan, among mostly Arab-Americans, to write “undecided” on their ballots instead of voting for Biden in the Democratic primary.

Although US citizens are famously ignorant of geopolitical issues, people have certainly taken note of the embarrassing exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, and the Palestinian genocide in Gaza. Joe Biden’s support for the Gaza genocide may be the issue that costs him this election. There was a campaign in Michigan, among mostly Arab-Americans, to write “undecided” on their ballots instead of voting for Biden in the Democratic primary. This could be crucial, and there has been a sharp shift in his rhetoric since the primary elections there in April. His failure to deny arms to Israel may have already doomed his campaign. 

Biden’s stance on Gaza is consistent with the imperialist project of the Democrats that seeks to manage global conflicts in the interests of global capitalism. But as the situation in Gaza has shown, Biden is a huge liability, and the move to supplant him may be related to his inability to manage the crisis in Gaza. 

The trend of waning US influence globally will continue in the future as China, Russia, and other states are becoming increasingly defiant. The prospect of another Trump presidency has only accelerated this trend as his ‘America First’ rhetoric becomes more mainstream. The upheavals and destruction from this shift in economic and political power are very difficult to predict, and the “senile empire”, to use Samir Amin’s phrase, will be very dangerous. 

Voting system undemocratic

The Electoral College in the United States also plays an important role in the demobilisation of voters and social movements. This is an electoral system in which each state has a fixed number of electors who sit with the electors from the other states in an assembly called the Electoral College. This assembly chooses the president. Most states give all their elector positions to the party which has the most votes in the state. Most states are either Republican or Democrat by big majorities. 

This creates a dynamic where six ‘swing states’ will decide the election. While there is obsessive coverage of the presidential election by the media, and it is one of the few popular political conversation topics, the vast majority of votes are not decisive. 

The Electoral College was devised partly to give slave-holding states more political power, and it remains largely intact since 1787. It functions today as a way to limit the democratic power of the electorate and give power to more conservative areas of the country. If the more democratic popular vote was used to determine Presidential elections, the 2000 and 2016 votes would have been won by Al Gore and Hillary Clinton respectively. Trump lost the popular vote in 2020 by 7 million votes (almost 5%). 

To popular resistance

The deep structural issues and powerful forces acting together to push the United States farther and farther to the right cannot be challenged except by popular resistance from every sector of society. The last Trump campaign gave us a sense of what this might look like, but also how an alliance with the Democratic and media establishment will only strengthen him. The chaotic and confusing in-fighting in the Democratic party right now is a result of their inability to understand or challenge Trump’s fascist project. 

The narrative that a vote for Biden is an anti-fascist vote masks these failures and limits genuine anti-fascist action. For those in swing states, it may feel better to vote Democrat, but the reality is that the roots of this current crisis run deep and it cannot be voted away in a single election. There are millions of people who are effectively sitting on the sidelines. Leftists must organise among them for a better future, independent of the two parties responsible for the current crisis. 

Lewis Barnes is a husband, father and community organiser based in Boston, Massachusetts.