Nov. 25 — The year 2020 has been exhausting.

At the beginning of this year, a U.S. war of aggression against Iran seemed imminent. President Donald Trump ordered the illegal, provocative and downright racist assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, responsible for beating back the threat of Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria, Iraq and throughout West Asia.

Then came the global pandemic, which killed almost 1.5 million people worldwide by late November. While some countries were able to take swift, organized, community-supported action to stop the spread — especially socialist countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba — those based on market-driven capitalism, with inadequate, privatized health care, were unable to meet the challenge. 

That was the U.S. most of all, with 12.7 million cases reported on Nov. 25 and 260,000 deaths, the worst in the world. Both numbers continue to soar with no end in sight. 

Millions of workers are reeling from the unnecessary, preventable deaths of loved ones, especially in the hardest-hit Black, Latinx and Indigenous communities.

Entwined with the pandemic, and looming even before COVID-19 was identified, was the latest global capitalist economic crisis, which has hit the world harder than any boom-and-bust cycle since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions were thrown out of work. 

Families are scraping by and joining miles-long lines for food assistance after the U.S. Congress and the White House failed to extend emergency benefits or further cash relief. At the end of 2020, more than 13 million unemployed workers will lose their jobless benefits. Almost 7 million households are threatened with eviction when emergency protections end on Dec. 31.

For those low-wage workers and health care workers lucky enough to keep their jobs — the so-called essential workers, also disproportionately oppressed and poor people, including undocumented migrants — every day is a struggle to stay safe from infection. 

A study by National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses’ union, found that Filipinx workers have been one-third of the nurses who have died, despite being only 4 percent of nurses in the U.S. That’s because they are disproportionately on the frontlines in emergency rooms and care centers, and have less access to necessary equipment and health care themselves.

Black Lives uprising

In May, Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in broad daylight. The city and the whole country erupted in a mass uprising against racist police violence. Led by Black youth, millions took to the streets against the killer cops and their political enablers from city halls and statehouses to Washington. The New York Times reported that as many as 26 million people in the U.S. participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.

The multinational uprising, which some have termed the largest protest movement in U.S. history, shook the racist foundations of the capitalist system. 

Lacking coordinated national leadership, this heroic movement was unable to sustain its early momentum as the capitalist state brought its forces to bear to suppress it. But valuable lessons were learned and the anger of the people has not gone away. 

Each new outrage, like the blatant grand jury manipulation to let off the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., brings people back into the streets.

And then there was the election. No, let’s call it what it really was: the selection, between two wealthy racist white men handpicked by the capitalist ruling class, by the billionaire oligarchs and landlords, to steer their ship of state. 

Having once more sabotaged Bernie Sanders and his campaign driven by idealistic young people just beginning to learn what socialism is (and isn’t), the Democratic Party bosses pushed Joe Biden onto the masses — Biden, a paragon of old-school Washington war mongering, systemic racism and mass incarceration, a trusted friend of Wall Street — as their only alternative to Donald Trump’s open appeals to white supremacy and fascism.

Despite the Democrats’ and Republicans’ best efforts, though, the Black Lives rebellion turned the November presidential election into a referendum on Trump’s racism. And Trump lost, by 6 million votes and counting.

Now, as we enter the last month of 2020, with Trump in office for eight more weeks, the threat of U.S. war on Iran looms again.

Get ready to fight

After all this — when the media announced on Nov. 7 that Trump had been defeated and Biden had won the necessary Electoral College votes to take office — the masses of workers and oppressed people let out a collective sigh of relief. In many places, people spontaneously came out into the streets to celebrate Trump’s defeat. 

This feeling is completely understandable. 

The tension ramped up again as Trump denied the results. To this day, Trump has refused to concede defeat. He and his backers in the ruling class, the capitalist state, and fascist gangs like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Wolverine Watchmen, have not stopped plotting to overturn his electoral defeat.

Until Trump is out of the White House, we must remain on guard and ready to mobilize against a coup attempt. If Trump’s four years in power have taught anything, it is that the “venerable institutions” in which the Democratic establishment and corporate media urge the people to put their trust will not protect us.

But even if Trump departs and Biden takes the oath of office peacefully on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021, the fight is not over. Far from it.

Just look at who Biden is lining up as his Cabinet appointees and other high positions in his administration. Most are carryovers from the Obama administration or other representatives of the right-wing Democratic leadership. 

Biden’s former chief of staff, Bruce Reed, an advocate of austerity and cuts to Social Security, is his likely pick for the Office of Management and Budget. Antony Blinken, a warmonger on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, is Biden’s choice for secretary of state. To head the Department of Homeland Security is Alejandro Mayorkas, an anti-communist Cuban American whose family fled the socialist revolution. And so on.

Biden is expected to nominate several women and people of color to positions that have been exclusively held by white men. Representation is important. Those who discount or ridicule it are not doing themselves any favors; it will not gain them an audience with the workers.

But if those being appointed to these positions are loyalists of the system that oppresses women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ2S people and all workers, then the value of that representation is limited.

Biden has also suggested that he may appoint “mainstream” Republicans, in the same spirit that his campaign solicited and trumpeted the support of war criminal George W. Bush and racist former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.

A return to 2016 won’t save us

The Democratic establishment epitomized by President-elect Joe Biden wants to turn the clock back to the “good old days” before Trump’s election in November 2016. 

Good days for them and their backers on Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, perhaps. For the workers and oppressed? Not so much.

What was the period of U.S. history before Trump turned up the flame of bigotry and repression? It was the period that gave rise to Trump and the resurgence of white supremacist, fascist movements.

It was the police murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; the birth of the phrase “Deporter In Chief”; the violent, coordinated crushing of the Occupy Wall Street movement; the declaration of Bolivarian Venezuela as a “special threat to U.S. national security.”

It was the pinnacle of mass incarceration of young Black and Brown men and women, built on policies that Sen. Joe Biden had an intimate part in crafting. It was Biden himself overseeing the construction of a regime in Ukraine based on the power of neo-fascist, white supremacist movements to serve U.S. military, political and corporate interests.

Anyone hoping for the incoming Democratic administration to enact a massive retooling of the country to be more equitable is in for a big disappointment. The will for a New Deal or a Green New Deal doesn’t exist within the capitalist class. 

The global decline of U.S. imperialist power and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as described 150 years ago by Karl Marx, undercut any liberal hopes. That’s why the best that the system can offer the workers is Biden and a return to pre-2016 misery. That’s why the return of Trump (or someone similar) in 2024 will hang over the next four years. 

Will Biden enact the national shutdown needed to bring the virus under control?

Will Biden rein in the police, much less defund them?

Will Biden fight for Medicare for All?

Will Biden stop wars and sanctions?

Will Biden stop the war on immigrants?

Will Biden defeat the white supremacist gangs threatening our communities?

Will Biden put workers before Wall Street?

Trump’s electoral defeat was a victory. It was a battle, and an important one. But the class war continues.

Under Trump or Biden, the job of socialists and communists, of all class-conscious workers, is to organize and fight for the rights of the workers and oppressed. Let’s use this historic moment to help our class shed its illusions and build a militant movement against the whole rotten capitalist system, for a socialist future.

Last June 1, as reported by Struggle-La Lucha, President Donald Trump attempted to carry out a coup d’état when his administration ordered U.S. soldiers and National Guard troops to “dominate” Washington, D.C., during mass protests against the police murder of George Floyd.

Trump’s plan was to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 — first enacted to suppress slave rebellions — and dispatch the military to put down Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S.

The scheme collapsed when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper lost their nerve, fearing that rank-and-file soldiers, mostly from the working class and many from Black and Brown communities, would refuse to carry out these orders and join the protesters.

Instead, Trump deployed an illegal secret federal police force, including agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security and the Border Patrol, to Portland, Ore., Seattle and other cities for a smaller-scale attack on protesters. In September, Trump’s stormtroopers carried out the cold-blooded execution of anti-fascist Michael Reinoehl near Portland, Ore.

But Trump and his closest supporters have never given up their desire to use the military to secure their hold on power and crush workers and oppressed communities. Rumblings of possible troop deployments began before the Nov. 3 election. And since Trump has refused to acknowledge his defeat, and continues to try and overturn the vote, the rumblings have grown louder.

Just a week after Election Day, Trump abruptly replaced several high-ranking officials in the Defense Department, the civilian body that oversees the Pentagon, and the National Security Council with ultraright loyalists. Esper, who had balked at the June 1 coup attempt, was replaced as secretary of defense by Chris Miller, previously the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who had only served in that post since August.

Others moved into high posts include both civilians and former military personnel known for public displays of racism and anti-Muslim bigotry, and advocates of war with Iran.

Support for resistance

Since the beginning of the Black Lives uprising this summer, the organization About Face: Veterans Against War (formerly known as Iraq Veterans Against the War) has urged National Guard soldiers to resist deployment to suppress the protests. A letter signed by 700 veterans called on these troops to “Stand Down for Black Lives.”

The group reiterated its appeal in the runup to Election Day: “This election is critical and as vets we know troops are often put in questionable positions and told they have no choice. You have options and we’re here to help.”  About Face publicized ways for National Guard members to report “ethical, legal or safety concerns” and request support.

The National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force also announced it would provide support. “MLTF … shares the concerns of many in the public and the legal community, that U.S. servicemembers may be given illegal orders or face real conflicts with their moral, political or religious beliefs in the context of the 2020 Presidential election and its aftermath. In particular, we are concerned that National Guard members and other military personnel may be used in voter suppression or repression of progressive demonstrations.

“The Task Force is troubled about the lack of effective legal alternatives for servicemembers dealing with possible illegal orders and believes it is essential that members of the military are fully informed about their rights under the law. … For this reason, the Task Force has set up a system for free, confidential telephone consultations with attorneys to discuss possible illegal orders and related issues.”

And a popular appeal to U.S. soldiers was issued by Detroit’s Moratorium Now! Coalition, “Attention! Refuse to Follow Trump’s Illegal Orders to Overturn the Election.” The call is endorsed by the Peoples Power Assembly, the Peoples Alliance-Bay Area, Women in Struggle/Mujeres en Lucha, the Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement and Youth Against War and Racism, among others.

‘You do have a choice’

The call states: “At some point, Trump may declare the 2020 election to be ‘null and void.’ He would then order you, U.S. servicemembers, into cities and towns across the country, to suppress the millions of people who pour into the streets to protest his illegal coup d’état. Are you ready to shoot down civilians, just to keep Trump illegally in power despite the election outcome?

“Union locals and labor councils across the country are already preparing for a national general strike if Trump refuses to recognize the people’s decision and overturns the election. Are you ready to bayonet workers standing up for our democratic rights?

“Some 42 percent of U.S. soldiers are people of color. Are you willing to kill for this racist bigot as he tries to hold his grip of power and unleashes bloody revenge on any who oppose him?”

The call goes on to point out the hypocrisy of Trump and his allies when they attempt to use the troops to circumvent the capitalists’ own highest law, the U.S. Constitution, with which the boss class tries to justify its role as global arbiter of “democracy”:

“You do have a choice. We know that you have been told over and over again that you must follow orders. Trump may be for now the commander-in-chief, but you swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not Donald Trump. Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice dictates that you must follow only lawful orders.

“You know that if Trump seizes power by using the military against the people, that would break the law. And ‘just following orders’ would be no excuse.

“If that day comes and Trump orders you to attack the people, stand down! Tell your commanders that you will not enable Trump to overturn the will of the people. Join with the people in the streets and help uphold all our democratic rights!”

A coup d’etat could never happen in the “democratic” United States, right? So how did LBJ — Lyndon B. Johnson — become president?

President John F. Kennedy was brutally assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Two days later his accused assassin — Lee Harvey Oswald — was allowed to be killed in the Dallas police department basement.

Perhaps the most important witness in U.S. history, Oswald was silenced forever by the sleazy strip club operator Jack Ruby.

A blue ribbon commission to investigate JFK’s murder was appointed by Johnson and headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. The other panel members included the segregationist senator, Richard Russell, and future Republican president, Gerald Ford.

Its most active member was former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy. The commission’s job wasn’t to find the truth but rather to conduct a cover-up.

The resulting Warren Report claimed Oswald was the lone assassin but it couldn’t come up with a motive. Oswald has since been labeled a “lone nut,” as if that answered any questions.

As soon as Oswald was murdered on live TV, people around the world thought that John Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. This was also true in the U.S., where the capitalist media universally supported the “lone gunman” theory.

The late Milton Neidenberg described the skepticism of his co-workers immediately after the assassination. Neidenberg, a socialist labor organizer who died in 2018, was employed at Bethlehem Steel’s Lackawanna works just outside Buffalo, N.Y. 

None of the steelworkers who also were hunters believed that Oswald could have killed Kennedy with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that the Warren Commission claimed was the murder weapon. 

According to a 2017 poll, 76 percent of Black adults and 61 percent of all adults in the U.S. believe there was a conspiracy involved. 

The Warren Report fairy tale

Was it even possible for Oswald to have fired the three shots that the Warren Report claimed he did? A paraffin test applied to Oswald’s face after he was arrested came back negative, which could have ruled him out from firing a rifle.

The Warren Report stated that Oswald fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where he worked. Yet many eyewitnesses reported shots fired from “the grassy knoll” instead. Bystanders and police ran up this knoll, west of the book depository, immediately after Kennedy was shot.

Kennedy was shot from behind according to the Warren Report. Doctors at Parkland Hospital described Kennedy’s throat wound as an entrance wound, indicating a shot from the front.

The famous home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder clearly shows Kennedy being propelled back and to the left. This is consistent with a shot fired from the front, not from the book depository. So does the testimony of witnesses who saw a bullet hole in the windshield of Kennedy’s limousine.

The Zapruder film gave a few seconds for three shots to have been fired. Using the bolt action rifle that was supposedly used, it has been virtually impossible for skilled sharpshooters to repeat the alleged feat.

Television reporter Robert MacNeil and other witnesses heard two shots fired very close together, probably too close to have been fired from the same rifle. 

One shot missed Kennedy completely and hit a curb, causing a small cut on James Tague’s cheek from concrete fragments. Another shot supposedly struck Kennedy’s head.

That left the “magic bullet,” alleged to have hit President Kennedy and then struck Texas Gov. John Connally’s chest, wrist and thigh. Connally, who survived, always denied he was hit by the same bullet.  

Oswald was also accused of killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. Two witnesses, Acquilla Clemons and Frank Wright, saw two shooters.

Police claim that no notes or a tape recording were made from their interrogations of Oswald. When they paraded him briefly before reporters, Oswald denied that he had killed anyone and declared he was just a “patsy.”

Pentagon coup d’etat 

The easiest explanation for these conflicting facts is that at least two shooters were involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Two shooters means there was a conspiracy.

But whose conspiracy was it?

Kennedy was lured to Dallas, which was then a center of the ultraright. JFK’s picture was featured on “wanted for treason” posters that were distributed there.

The usual protections that guard a U.S. president were stripped from Kennedy. There wasn’t even a Secret Service agent riding on the back of Kennedy’s limousine when the president was shot. Half of Kennedy’s cabinet were halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

Then there was the autopsy conducted at the Bethesda Naval Hospital (now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center).

Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Michael Chesser, who studied the x-rays of Kennedy, called them fraudulent. 

Only the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs had the power to do this, with the assistance of the Dallas power structure. The clean-up work of eliminating witnesses, like Oswald, could be contracted out to organized crime and counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles.

Oswald was very likely an informant for either the FBI, CIA or both. “Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence,” said former U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker. 

Oswald’s earlier “defection” to the Soviet Union was phony. His attempt to set up a “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” in New Orleans was like that of a provocateur. These actions were aimed to make Oswald look like a leftist and possible Soviet agent.

Thirteen months before Kennedy was shot down, the Cuban missile crisis terrified the world. The Joint Chiefs wanted to invade Cuba.

A nuclear war with the Soviet Union could have been the result. President Kennedy didn’t want to take a gamble and agreed to end the crisis instead. 

Dallas gave generals like Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay another chance. LeMay despised Kennedy. He later ran as the fascist George Wallace’s running mate in the 1968 presidential election.

The Soviet Union was then facing a U.S. arsenal of 3,400 nuclear bombs and 185 nuclear missiles. The Pentagon wanted to use them to “wipe out communism” forever. 

But this second half of the coup didn’t gel. Much of the ruling class didn’t trust their fallout shelters. Oswald’s survival for 48 hours also dampened things.

LBJ’s consolation prize for the Pentagon was a big escalation of the U.S. war against Vietnam, which had already been going on under both Eisenhower and Kennedy. Within two years after JFK’s murder, U.S forces in Vietnam increased 11 times to reach 184,000 GIs. 

Trump’s coup against the election

Fifty-seven years after Kennedy was murdered, Trump is trying to stage another coup. The White House is attempting to overturn the election which he lost by over six million votes. To do so he has to throw out the votes of millions of Black, Indigenous and Latinx voters.

Trump is counting on five members of the U.S. Supreme Court to do the job. He appointed three of them: “Justices” Amy Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are just as reactionary.

Twenty years ago, five members of the court stopped the counting of ballots in Florida. They put George W. Bush in the White House despite Bush losing the election by over 500,000 votes.

Trump will order the Pentagon brass to enforce a Supreme Court decision overturning the election. The attempted coup on June 1 — when Trump wanted to use troops to crush the Black Lives Matter movement — was a trial run.

It was the 22 million people who were marching in the streets that stopped the Trump coup. That includes thousands in Dallas. Trump got only a third of the votes in Dallas county. 

Many of the stratum within the ruling class that wanted to get rid of the Kennedys — smaller and newer billionaires — are backing Trump today. While most of the media are attacking Trump, virtually all the Republicans who have done so are either former elected officials or retiring ones.  

Trump may also try to start a new war as an excuse to stay in the White House. In an ominous move, B52 bombers have been flown from North Dakota to Western Asia.

Trump has already convinced millions of his followers that the election was stolen. The vast majority of white cops are Trump supporters, too.

Two days before the Electoral College is to meet, Trump forces are calling for a mass march in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12. Fascist groups like the Proud Boys will mobilize for it.  

Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, may be clowns. But they are also extremely dangerous.

Only the power of the people can sweep all the Trumps into the sewer.

Most of the media are laughing at Rudy Giuliani. The racist clown deserves it.

He’s been exposed as a greedy pig who wants to charge Trump’s reelection campaign $20,000 per day for his dubious legal services.    

Giuliani’s Nov. 7 Philadelphia news conference — sandwiched between a porno bookstore and a crematorium — became a national joke. His loopy claims of voter fraud in an election that Trump lost by six million votes are being ridiculed. 

None of this makes Giuliani any less dangerous. He’s attempting to have the votes of Black, Latinx and Indigenous peoples in Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other cities thrown out. 

Make no mistake about it: Trump is attempting to overturn the election with Giuliani as his thug-in-charge.

Trump called Monica Palmer — who’s on the Wayne County, Mich., Board of Canvassers — and pressed her to reject the hundreds of thousands of votes cast in Detroit and surrounding communities. 

Trump also summoned Republican members of Michigan’s Legislature to the White House on Nov. 20. The plot is to have them nominate pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College despite Trump losing the state by 153,000 votes.

This is reminiscent of Trump’s June 1st coup attempt. That’s when he marched from the White House with the Pentagon brass. Tear gas and stun grenades were used to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Park.

Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act — which was passed in 1807 to suppress revolts of enslaved Africans — to crush the Black Lives Matter movement. The millions of people on the streets stopped Trump from declaring martial law.

Another coup attempt is happening right now. The people must stop it.

Two media creations

Both Giuliani and Trump were made national figures by the capitalist media. NBC gave Trump his own TV show.

This wasn’t just a matter of publicity. Trump used the $427 million he collected from NBC to cover his real estate and casino losses.

The same newspapers and magazines that are now mocking Giuliani were for years his biggest cheerleaders. They ignored his racist campaign to defeat David Dinkins, who was the only Black mayor New York City has ever had.

Declaring Giuliani to be “mayor of the world,” Time magazine named him “person of the year” in 2001. The New York Times endorsed Giuliani when he ran for reelection in 1997.

Giuliani bragged that he drove 640,000 poor people off welfare programs in New York City. 

Giuliani said it would be “a good thing” if poor people “left the city.” According to him, pushing poor people out of town was “not an unspoken part of our strategy; it is our strategy.” 

Giuliani gave a green light to police terror. Two of his volunteer bodyguards in his 1993 mayoral campaign — police detectives Patrick Bosnan and James Crowe — killed Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega on Jan. 12, 1995. The two cousins were shot 28 times. Most of the bullets were in their backs.

Amadou Diallo was killed on Feb. 4, 1999, by New York cops firing 41 shots at the unarmed African immigrant. Patrick Dorismond was also unarmed when he was killed on March 16, 2000, for saying no to drugs. The Haitian father of two children spurned an undercover cop who profiled him and tried to sell him drugs.

Giuliani’s cops attacked Dorismond’s funeral. Among the 27 people arrested in Brooklyn’s Haitian Community was an 80-year-old man.

Both Trump and Giuliani have a special hatred for Haitian people. So does the world capitalist class, which never forgave the Haitian people for overthrowing their slave masters. 

When Giuliani was the No.3 man in Reagan’s Justice Department, he had Haitian immigrants jailed at the Krome concentration camp near Miami.

The New York 8+ defeated Giuliani

As a U.S. district attorney, Giuliani organized the 1984 attempted frame-up of the New York 8+. Five hundred cops and federal agents staged terror raids in New York City’s Black communities to round up the defendants.

Coltrane Chimurenga, Viola Plummer, Ruth Carter, Omowale Clay, Yvette Kelley, Jose Rios, Robert Taylor and Roger Wareham faced fantastic charges of conspiring to rob banks and Brinks’ trucks, and to stage jailbreaks. Even their political activity was claimed by the government to be a violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

This frame-up was part of the Reagan administration’s drive to crush all liberation movements. Eight grand juries were held in an attempt to get around rules that spouses can’t be forced to testify against each other. Giuliani hoped to force spouses to give lying testimony on the other defendants instead.

But this tactic blew up in Giuliani’s face. People went to jail instead of becoming lying snitches. It’s to recognize these courageous grand jury resisters that this case is called the New York 8 “plus.”

The power of the people will defeat Giuliani and Trump!

November is Native American Heritage Month. It should not be lost on anyone that 97 percent of the Navajo Nation in Nevada voted against Donald Trump. That fact should be recognized as we get closer to the National Day of Mourning (the so-called Thanksgiving holiday) and pay homage to the Indigenous people’s struggle.

There is little doubt that the more than 77 million people who voted against Trump, for the most part, saw their vote as a referendum against racism and all the forms of reactionary bigotry that Trump had unleashed during his presidency. It was a repudiation of the far-right and fascist groups that Trump had stoked, from the killings of immigrants in El Paso, Texas, to support of the tiki torch Nazi sympathizers in Charlottesville, Va.

What’s more remarkable is that this took place under one of the most anti-democratic forms of bourgeois democracy in the world — a system based on the Electoral College, which was created to supersede the popular vote and give power to the slavocracy in the Southern U.S. states, and which remains in place today.

Millions of people cannot vote at all. This includes people jailed and languishing in the U.S. mass incarceration system; people who previously served time in prison; over 12 million undocumented immigrant workers; many seniors and Black and Brown people who were disenfranchised and unable to vote because of threats and physical barriers; and youth between 16 and 18. (In socialist Cuba, all youth are eligible to vote when they turn 16.)

In addition, you can add the billions of working and poor people around the world whose lives are impacted daily by brutal U.S. sanctions, whose children die of malnutrition because of imperialist economic theft or directly from Pentagon drones and bombs, who should have some kind of say over who heads the most criminal imperialist empire. 

Shouldn’t the world’s youth be heard on how to solve the climate crisis and the burning of the planet, instead of the U.S. billionaires and bankers who head a global system of exploitation? 

To sum it up, as told by one worker to another:

“When I was a union rep, the company appointed an especially abusive manager. She discriminated on job assignments and told workers they couldn’t speak Spanish on the job. We filed a lot of grievances, had some slowdowns, and she got fired. The whole shop celebrated. 

“No one thought we wouldn’t be exploited anymore, that there would be no more layoffs and cutbacks and abuse, that the new boss would be on our side. And maybe some higher-ups didn’t like her either, because they thought she was hurting productivity. But it was a victory that gave the workers more confidence to fight. It strengthened the union. It’s kind of like that.”

As Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin explained, elections are a kind of barometer of the mood of the people, even though they incline in a conservative direction in the service of the class that rules. After all, the capitalist state, including its elections, belongs to the billionaire ruling class.  

Is the battle with Trump over?

It would be wise for the working class to “keep our powder dry.”  

On Nov. 9, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and several other high-ranking Pentagon officials. Esper had clashed with Trump over the use of military troops in dealing with protests.  His replacement, Christopher C. Miller, is a former Army Green Beret who served as the top counterterrorism policy official in the National Security Council in the Trump White House.

Then, on Nov. 11, the Pentagon confirmed that retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor will become the senior advisor to Acting Secretary of Defense Miller. Macgregor once called for the use of lethal force against undocumented immigrants and is credited with a litany of racist comments. 

In addition, on Nov. 14, Trump supporters have called for a rally at Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza called the “Million MAGA March.” It’s sponsored by Stop the Steal — one of the pro-Trump groups trying to overturn the election results. The white supremacist Proud Boys have announced their intention to mobilize for this rally.

There is no need to go over all of the different scenarios that could attempt to reverse the election or create chaos in the period between now and Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021. Our readers are all too aware. What is most important is that we remain vigilant.

November-December surprise?

The question remains: Will those interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie, such as the fracking and oil industries, which have grown desperate as a result of capitalist overproduction and subsequent contraction (that is, a glut in oil and gas), attempt to launch a military attack or provocation against Iran? 

The possibility of a “November-December surprise” is real. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who bragged of a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” plans to impose a “flood” of new sanctions against Iran in the coming weeks.

There is a small but vocal sector of the movement that is oblivious to Trump’s pro-war and imperialist actions, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that he is, in some way, shape or form, an anti-interventionist.  

It would be important to remind them that during Trump’s administration, the U.S. military dropped “the Mother of All Bombs” (the closest you can come to a nuclear bomb) on Afghanistan; illegally assassinated Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s beloved and respected leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, along with Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi Muhandis, in what can only be seen as an attempt to provoke war with Iran; unilaterally declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel; escalated support for the brutal Saudi war on Yemen; attempted to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and the rightful government of Venezuela; participated in the Bolivian coup against President Evo Morales; deepened the blockade against Cuba; and more. 

This does not include the devastating impact of draconian sanctions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left children starving and multiplied the death rate in targeted countries.  Sanctions are indeed war!

What’s more disconcerting is the inability of some in the movement to understand that class forces drive policies as much or more than individual leaders. We have no doubt that while policies may change here or there — and that “here and there” may be very important — that Biden will be just as deeply invested in the anti-China campaign launched by Trump, regardless of its form, as it is U.S. imperialist interests that in the end determine what his administration will do.

Just because a neoliberal form of capitalism is a criminal system does not mean that a fascist-leaning regime is against war — both are ultimately driven by the needs of imperialism to expand or die.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that we as the working class can and should act in our own interests through mass action, whether in the form of an uprising, general strikes, or massive protest and resistance, to challenge imperialism.

Which way forward for the working class?

At the moment, it may appear to be more likely that the Trump movement will sputter out or be forced to recede, as the dominant capitalist interests seem more intent on proceeding with a Biden presidency. But it is important to keep our eyes and ears open, as this period remains unstable for the capitalist system.

The millions of workers who voted for Biden also have a right to know about and intervene in whatever behind-the-scenes deals and compromises are being forged with the right wing in this period of transition. It is important to call for full transparency so that there are no illusions about the kind of battle that has to be prepared. 

We should consider mobilizations on Jan. 20 and keep the idea of a workers’ general strike alive in the event of any crisis that would threaten to leave Trump in office and further embolden the white supremacist far right. 

On Nov. 12, the U.S. Labor Department tweeted: “Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims: Initial claims were 709,000 for the week ending 11/7 (- 48,000). Insured unemployment was 6,786,000 for the week ending 10/31 (- 436,000).” 

A more accurate picture is to look at the “employment to population ratio.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of October only 57.4 percent of the population of working age had a job.

Regardless of who prevails, it will be important to continue to demand a “People’s Mandate,” including an end to police terror against Black and Brown people, community control of the police, jobs or income for the unemployed, safe working conditions, free quality health care for all, no evictions or utility shutoffs, shutting down ICE and freeing detained migrants, etc.  

As Struggle-La Lucha’s Gary Wilson explained: “The defeat of Trump, however, does not defeat racism or the ideology of white supremacy. The police have not been abolished. A battle was won, but the war continues.”

The next stage of the struggle needs to be a broader and wider fight against capitalism. The capitalist crisis will continue regardless of who is in the White House. The important thing is for the working class to emerge as an independent entity, able to fight against capitalism and put socialism on the agenda.

Nov. 12 — An upheaval is underway. The vote against Donald Trump, while expected by many, was more significant than any had predicted. Despite multifarious efforts to suppress the Black and Latinx vote, Joe Biden’s unprecedented 7-million-plus lead in the popular vote clearly came from the Black, Latinx, Indigenous and Asian communities.

The workers will expect results. It was, after all, a vote for health care, to end the pandemic, and for jobs and housing.

Trump voters were not mostly working-class people. The biggest number of Trump voters are managers and supervisors, and the millions who make up the police-state apparatus and the prison-industrial complex. The biggest number have an income of over $100,000 a year, according to reports. Yeah, there are a lot of them, but that doesn’t make them working class.

The vote against Trump was not a revolution, but it accelerated the government crisis that is unfolding. Not since the Civil War and Reconstruction has there been any uncertainty as to how the government would proceed. 

Behind this political crisis is the economic crisis, aggravated by a killer pandemic. The capitalist crisis is the 900-pound monster in the room that few are talking about. 

There is a general capitalist crisis on a world level, and the rumbles of instability are widely felt. 

The pandemic did not create the crisis, but it has accelerated the Depression-level conditions.

Karl Marx explains that capitalist production is divided into two departments: producing the means of production, and producing the products that are consumed. Both these sectors have been hit by a crisis of overproduction, often referred to as “overcapacity” by bourgeois economists.

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on the status of the global economy: “Global growth will turn sharply negative in 2020 … In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression. …  We now project that over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year. The bleak outlook applies to advanced and developing economies alike. This crisis knows no boundaries.” 

The idea that the U.S. was somehow exempt from global political, economic and social problems was always untrue, but now it is clearly absurd. The U.S. economy is completely integrated in the world economy. U.S. imperialism has intractable international problems that cannot be solved through sheer military might, which itself has been scaled back due to the economic crisis. 

Not only are workers disillusioned with the system, but even the capitalists have lost faith in capitalism. With the decline of manufacturing, Wall Street has resorted to speculative markets in place of once great industries — high-stakes gambling that is volatile and experiencing unprecedented swings up and down. 

That’s the background to the U.S. presidential elections. Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election and his declaration of victory despite losing the popular vote exposes an open fissure in the ruling class.

Not Trump’s first coup attempt

What’s unfolding is a crisis in the ruling class over how to maintain their rule, how to respond to the crisis, how to stop U.S. imperialism’s decline.

Trump’s stand is not just the megalomaniac talk of an individual. He must have support in the ruling class. This has been developing for a while. This is not Trump’s first coup attempt. On June 1, Trump called out the military. 

The afternoon of June 1 saw the unprecedented sight of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley in battle fatigues, with Attorney General William Barr, on the White House grounds in advance of Trump’s speech in the Rose Garden. They appeared to be reviewing the troops which were lined up facing the protesters in Lafayette Park across the street.

Suddenly, the whole nation witnessed the aggressive and violent action by 5,000 National Guard troops and federal agents, decked out in full body armor, to move the protesters out of the way just before the president came out to speak about dominating the streets. Trump said, “As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” across the country.

Shortly after that, Trump led Barr, Milley, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and others over to a church, where he famously held up a Bible. 

The military occupation of major cities across the U.S. didn’t happen and the coup attempt was halted. The military commanders blinked and then pulled back their support. For one thing, a top general noted, the troops couldn’t be relied on — a great many come from the Black and Brown communities they were supposed to suppress.

Trump is now making a second coup attempt, in a different way. One of his first steps was to purge the Pentagon, putting his closest supporters into top positions.

The current crisis reveals the great instability of U.S. capitalism. Some might say that it is in a pre-revolutionary stage, though not every revolutionary situation leads to a revolution.

Symptoms of revolutionary situation

Russian Marxist V.I. Lenin asked rhetorically: “What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms.” 

Abridged, the three are:

1. When it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, a split in the ruling classes. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to rule in the old way;
2. When the suffering of the oppressed classes has grown more acute than usual;
3. When there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who are drawn in by the circumstances of the crisis and by the upper classes themselves into independent historical action.

Marxism is a method for looking at developments and making sense of them, to see the trends. Seeing a revolutionary situation is not a prediction, but more like a doctor’s prognosis after examining the patient, an assessment of the current condition and possible outcome.

A capitalist economic crisis leads to social and political crises. In the process of any revolutionary change, the first small, quantitative changes can lead to sudden, qualitative leaps forward in people’s thinking. Events are already having an impact on consciousness, and even more dramatic events are in store for the future. 

A revolutionary upheaval at this time may manifest itself as a struggle for real democracy and social equality for workers and oppressed peoples.

Even before the polls closed on Election Day, Nov. 3, anti-racist activists, and workers’ and community organizations across the U.S. were preparing to take the streets to push forward a people’s mandate, including an end to police crimes, community control of the police, jobs or income and health care for all, no evictions or utility shutoffs, stop racist attacks on immigrants, and an end to U.S. wars and sanctions, no matter which capitalist politician was elected president.

Donald Trump’s repeated threats to defy the vote if he lost gave a special urgency to the protests. As expected, Trump declared himself the victor on election night even before the votes had been counted. 

People came out the following day, Wednesday, Nov. 4, at the call of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) and other left organizations in more than a dozen cities. Marches to demand “Count All the Votes,” organized by liberal groups, also drew large numbers that day.

Another wave of actions was planned for Saturday, Nov. 7. In many places they turned into mass celebrations as news broke that Trump had lost the election, as his opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, passed the threshold to secure the presidency in the Electoral College. It was already clear that Biden had won the popular vote — by 5 million votes and growing as of Nov. 11.

From New York to Los Angeles, in neighborhoods like Harlem, Jamaica, Queens and South Central, cheers erupted as the news spread. People banged pots and pans in celebration and relief. In Chicago and Brooklyn, people poured in the streets and danced. Many chanted, “Trump, you’re fired!” — echoing the racist, misogynist billionaire’s reality TV catchphrase. 

It was clear that the mass jubilation was prompted by Trump’s electoral defeat — not enthusiasm for Biden.

Now, as Trump and his backers continue to maneuver to reverse the vote, these actions lay an important groundwork to galvanize people for more protests in the two-and-a-half months before the Jan. 20 inauguration in Washington, D.C.  

‘Chop down the whole tree’

In Baltimore on Nov. 4, more than 60 people marched from the Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center to the Inner Harbor for a rally at McKeldin Square. The Peoples Power Assembly called for people to “Occupy the Streets if the Election is Stolen — Protest for a People’s Mandate.” One participant described the march as “small but mighty” — drawing enthusiastic support from community members and drivers as it passed.

“No more bad apples! Chop down the whole tree!” they chanted.

“The fight’s not over, even after the election results are known,” declared PPA’s Sharon Black at the rally. “There are still forces of reaction in this country that are buoyed by the capitalist system, which still has the same problems — poverty, racism, war. All of these things still exist. We have to keep the fight up. 

“I expect Trump to be pushed back. It may not be a painless pushing back,” she cautioned. “We have to be out in the streets, very strong and united and together. That’s the force that will push these reactionaries back into the dustbin of history where they belong.”

“Biden is no hero,” Black explained, “but this election turned into a referendum on racism. We have to keep the Black Lives Matter movement going. We have to fight for a stimulus for workers, not for billionaires and bankers.”

Andre Powell of the Socialist Unity Party added: “I was very delighted this morning to read that, for the first time, two openly Black gay men have been elected to Congress. We’ve come a long way. But we still have to get a national anti-discrimination law that prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ2S people. It not only has to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, but it absolutely must prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.”

Watch a video of the Baltimore march here.

In Minneapolis, where this summer’s Black Lives Matter uprising against police killings began with the murder of George Floyd, a thousand people took the streets on the evening of Nov. 4, organized by 30 groups in response to the NAARPR call. 

As the peaceful marchers prepared to exit the I-94 highway, they were surrounded by police, who arrested 646 of them, including children who were separated from their parents. The outrageous mass arrest showed a harsh light on the empty promises of Minneapolis elected officials who had promised to disband the police after George Floyd’s death.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time in five years — since the murder of Jamar Clark — that the cops have harassed families and community members on such a mass scale. But despite the intimidation by police, protesters stayed calm and organized. … Meanwhile, the MN political establishment allowed police to detain protesters trapped on the highway for more than five hours,” says a statement from the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar, one of the organizing groups.

“In addition to stopping Trump from stealing the elections and the NAARPR demands, we now demand that all charges against protesters be dropped, that the cars impounded be released without fees, that the still ‘disappeared’ arrestees be released. We continue to fight for and demand community control of police so that police can no longer infringe on our First Amendment rights as they did today.”

‘Not a one-day thing’

In Atlanta, where the fight for justice for police victim Rayshard Brooks continues, 35 people came out for a Nov. 4 action at the CNN Center called by an ad-hoc coalition. 

At the rally, Lizz Toledo of the Atlanta Peoples Power Assembly said: “We need to keep it up. This is not a one-day thing. Between now and Jan. 20, and even after Jan. 20, we have to keep fighting for the people’s mandate.”

In New York, street actions began even before Election Day. On Nov. 2, Black Solidarity Day, the December 12th Movement led a Black Power march through Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Over 100 people marched, chanting “Whose streets? Our streets! Whose Bed-Stuy? Our Bed-Stuy!” They took over half of Fulton Street and outmaneuvered police vans to continue the march. 

Then, on Nov. 4, the newly formed New York Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression rallied and distributed leaflets calling for a people’s mandate at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Speakers represented the New York Community Action Project, BAYAN USA, the International League of People’s Struggle, New York Boricua Resistance, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper.

Members of the Socialist Unity Party in Los Angeles joined a Nov. 4 rally organized by Centro CSO at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights. A banner proclaimed “Fight Trump” and  “Stop killing Black and Brown people.” 

Centro CSO member Luis Sifuentes declared: “We need to recognize that we live in a time where women in detention centers are forcibly sterilized, where children have died under ICE custody, where children have disappeared by the thousands, where families are separated at the border, where refugees are falling ill from COVID-19 and dying. It’s outrageous!

Sifuentes concluded, “This isn’t the time to slow down. This is the time to stand up and fight back!” FightBack! News reported.

‘Battles are won in the streets’

On Nov. 7, Unión del Barrio and other groups held a 30-car protest caravan through Los Angeles declaring “¡Trump fuera! — Trump must go!” Organizers emphasized that both of the big business parties and their presidential candidates are enemies of oppressed and working-class people.

Speaking for the Socialist Unity Party, Rebecca Jackson-Moesser said: “Almost 150 years ago, Lucy Parsons prophetically told us, never be deceived that the rich will allow us to vote away their wealth. Real battles always have been and always will be won in the streets. 

“For oppressed people, it’s only through organized, unified, international solidarity that we can resist the colonial framework that dominates every aspect of our lives. … Joe Biden is Donald Trump in sheep’s clothing,” she said.

“Now more than ever, all progressive forces must unite and keep our focus on the liberation of Black and Brown people, smashing white supremacy and permanently dismantling capitalism. … We all have a duty and responsibility to mass liberation, to give the next generation an earth they can inhabit and to eradicate the billionaire parasites who are bleeding our world dry.”

Watch a video of the Los Angeles caravan here. 

Socialist Unity Party activists also joined the Black People’s March on the White House in Washington, D.C., Nov. 7, organized by the Black Is Back Coalition. People rallied at Malcolm X Park, where banners and signs proclaimed: “Black Power Matters! Down with colonialism! Black community control of the police!” 

Post-election protests for a people’s mandate were also held in Chicago; Dallas; Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Fla.; Milwaukee; New Orleans; Portland, Ore.; Salt Lake City; San Diego; and many other cities.

Reprinted from “The Capital News,” in London, Nov. 8, 2020.

On November 3 presidential elections were held in the USA. The results have not been confirmed yet. But the vote has already become possibly the most controversial in the history of the country. We asked the famous political activist from New York, Greg Butterfield, to comment on the course of this scandalous campaign.

The U.S. electoral system itself is archaic. Even the participants in the electoral process spoke about it. Isn’t it time for reform?

Absolutely! The Electoral College is a relic of slavery, and should have been abolished along with that horrific institution. But the capitalist ruling class of the United States has found it a helpful tool to prevent any genuine representative of the interests of the workers and oppressed from taking the presidency. Both the Republicans and Democrats are loyal to this system and have benefited from it.

Biden is on track to win the 270 electoral votes needed to become president. But the outcome is still in some doubt because Trump has the advantages of his office and the antiquated U.S. electoral system. Trump stacked the Supreme Court, an unelected body appointed for life, with his ideological allies. Three of the current Supreme Court justices helped George W. Bush steal the presidential election in 2000. The Electoral College system is open to manipulation as well.

Many people around the world and even here at home don’t understand the Electoral College, and that is a good thing for the rich and powerful. The Electoral College was originally created to protect the interests of slave owners in the Southern U.S. Today it serves a similar purpose for upholding the interests of Big Capital and white supremacy. Smaller, whiter states with fewer workers have much more power in the Electoral College, while states with huge concentrations of workers of all nationalities have much less.

The very fact that there is any question today about who won the election shows how ridiculous this system is. In the popular vote, Biden has over 4 million more votes than Trump. Yet the outcome rests on a few hundred thousand votes in a handful of states.

Why is a country with such an imperfect electoral system considered a model of democracy that dictates the “rules of the game” to other countries during elections?

U.S. democracy is and always has been a fiction used to justify U.S. economic and military domination of other countries. It’s a story used to fool the public at home into supporting brutal U.S. wars, sanctions and economic exploitation. And the local ruling classes of other countries that loyally serve the U.S. try to use this same fiction to their advantage.

For example, the fascist coup last year against President Evo Morales in Bolivia tried to cover itself in the halo of U.S.-style democracy. Fortunately the Bolivian people gave the world a powerful lesson in real people’s democracy with their recent repudiation of the coup.

Ursula Gacek, head of the OSCE Presidential Election Observation Mission to the United States, has already stated that the current elections were conducted without serious violations. At the same time, OSCE representatives did not have access to polling stations in 18 states at all. Is it possible to compare the electoral attention of international organizations regarding elections in different countries?

The OSCE was originally supposed to send 500 monitors to the U.S. The number was cut to just 30 because the Trump administration did not extend the standard invitation for observers, and also due to concerns about the wild spread of the pandemic in the U.S.

Of course it is ludicrous for the U.S. to insist on large numbers of election observers in other countries when its own officials don’t welcome them here. Not that we would expect the OSCE, tied to the European imperialists, to make any serious criticism of their U.S. ally.

I would like to point out that a much more serious call for international election observers was made by the December 12th Movement, a Black liberation group with observer status to the United Nations. This group called on the UN Secretary General to bring in international election observers from the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to monitor the threats of voter suppression. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, the UN declined to take a stand.

There were reports that security measures due to coronavirus infection were so strict that some observers in Michigan were not allowed into the polling center. If such a situation had occurred, for example, in Russia, all international organizations would have already reported election fraud.

There are two sides of this question. Yes, the number of observers was limited (for both parties) in Michigan and other locations out of pandemic concerns. But the Republican observers in Detroit, for example, were attempting to disrupt the vote-counting by flooding the building, shouting at the poll workers, refusing to wear masks, etc. These tactics of the Trump supporters will seem very familiar to those who have studied the disruptive actions of the Ukrainian Maidan movement and other “color revolutions” with a fascist tinge.

And it is equally true that the U.S. would hypocritically condemn the election of any country on its hit list that took similar measures, and that would be true whether a Democrat or Republican, a Trump or a Biden, was in the White House.

Let’s continue the analogy, in San Francisco Joe Biden received 86% of votes, in the capital District of Columbia — 92.6% of the vote. At the same time, if Putin or Lukashenko gain 70-80% of votes, it is considered a sign of fraudulent counting. Are there no double standards here?

There is a glaring double standard. U.S. imperialism frequently lies about elections in other countries to cast doubt on those it regards as its rivals and enemies, and to gain an advantage on the world stage.

At the same time, it’s important to realize that there was a truly massive repudiation of Trump in the major U.S. cities, where the great masses of the multinational working class are concentrated. Washington, D.C., is a majority Black city that has been horribly abused by the Trump administration — so this vote is not surprising.

This may be a rhetorical question, but why is Alexey Navalny silent about violations in the U.S.? Why is Transparency International calling for a recount in Georgia, but not in America?

Navalny, Transparency International and their ilk exist to serve the interests of imperialism. If these folks were legitimate, they would have joined the call by people’s organizations in the U.S. to send international election observers to protect the rights of Black and other working-class people facing voter suppression and fascist threats. But that is not their role — they exist to help the U.S., British and European ruling classes protect their interests abroad, regardless of who is sitting in the White House.

We have gotten used to the fact that from the point of view of the political mainstream, violations and interference in the electoral process is a characteristic for “Russia, China, Iran, Belarus” and other countries with allegedly unstable democratic traditions. But from now on, has everything changed?

I hope that people around the world will come out of this experience with a better understanding of just how undemocratic U.S. elections really are. The hypocrisy of the United States in declaring itself the universal arbiter of democracy for the world is on display for everyone to see.

On the one hand, Donald Trump and his supporters have spent months trying to suppress the vote. This is because they knew many people were fearful and ready to repudiate him, his negligence in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and his open calls for racist violence.

So Trump lied, casting doubt on mail ballots without proof. He went so far as to appoint an ally, Louis DeJoy, to sabotage the internal workings of the Postal Service. He tried to intimidate voters, especially Black people and other oppressed nationality minorities, by urging his racist white supporters to “monitor” the polls, including armed fascist gangs.

After the election, Trump immediately declared himself the winner before the votes were counted. Today, his friends continue to threaten poll workers in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona where votes are still being tabulated. In the courts he has tried to stop the counting of legitimate votes.

On the other hand, we know that the Democratic Party brought this upon itself. Earlier this year, the Democratic leaders once again sabotaged the campaign of Bernie Sanders, who put forward a social-democratic program that could have appealed to a much larger number of workers, including some who were caught up in Trump’s web. The Democratic leaders instead nominated Joe Biden, a right-winger with no credibility as an opponent of economic exploitation, racist violence or war. This put them at a big disadvantage.

It’s clear that people came out to vote against Trump, not because they believe that Biden or the Democrats will fix the country’s deep problems. That’s why the Democrats didn’t get the sweeping gains they were hoping for in the Senate and other contests. Interestingly, it was those “outsider” Democrats running on a social-democratic program, like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who were most successful.

For those of us who are dedicated to organizing an independent movement in the interests of the working people, it’s clear that the struggle for jobs, healthcare, housing, against war and racial injustice, must continue whether Trump or Biden is in the White House.

Have you heard of credible cases of voter fraud in this or previous elections in the United States? Have there been prosecutions in the United States against those who rigged the elections?

There have been no major, credible cases of voter fraud in modern times. The electoral system is very tightly controlled and the choices offered by the two capitalist parties are very narrow and safely within the system.

The real problem has been voter suppression. This manifested very publicly in the 2000 elections in Florida, when right-wing Cuban exiles were mobilized by the Bush campaign to threaten Black voters and senior citizens to prevent them from voting. Since then voter suppression by white supremacists has become a more common problem in some Southern and Midwestern states.

It should be remembered that Black people in much of the U.S. only gained the right to vote after the 1965 Civil Rights Act went into effect. That law did away with a huge array of racist laws and state-approved intimidation tactics especially designed to keep African Americans from voting. The Civil Rights Act was not granted by the ruling class as some act of goodwill — it was forced upon them by the powerful Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and involving millions of Black and white workers.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Civil Rights Act. Now many states, not only in the South, have enacted laws that put hurdles in the way of Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and Indigenous voters, and poor people of all colors.

There is a lot of controversy about voting by mail. As far as we know, the authorities still can’t find 200 thousand missing ballots somewhere. Is it a normal situation? Also ballots delivered later may be either counted or invalid, is that normal?

What we know is that there has been deliberate sabotage by Trump’s appointee to head the Postal Service to slow down the delivery of mail ballots, especially in the so-called “swing states” where the Electoral College votes are at stake.

One of the archaic aspects of the U.S. electoral system is that each of the 50 states has its own rules and regulations about mail ballots and absentee ballots. In some states the ballots only count if they are received by election day. In others, they only have to be postmarked by election day to be valid.

Many people were aware of Trump’s attempts to sabotage voting by mail. So most people either sent in their mail ballots well ahead of time, or waited to vote in person for fear that their mail ballots would not be counted.

Again, I want to emphasize that this controversy only exists because of the undemocratic Electoral College system. Even 200,000 missing ballots, if that is true, would not have a significant impact on the popular vote.

Judicial Watch published a study conducted in September 2020 which showed that in 353 U.S. districts 1.8 million more voters are registered than eligible voters of voting age. According to Judicial Watch, eight states have registration levels above 100 percent: Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont. Are these registrations for tampering purposes?

We should understand that Judicial Watch is a partisan organization loyal to the Republicans, not an objective source. So the figures they offer must be taken skeptically. This group has taken legal actions in various states to purge “inactive” voters, which is a code word for working-class voters — often minorities — who have not voted in recent elections but might wish to vote in this presidential election.

The chaotic character of the U.S. voting system, with each state having its own regulations and being responsible for maintaining voter registration lists, makes it easier for groups like Judicial Watch with a right-wing agenda to spin conspiracy theories. But there is no evidence of vote tampering.

Also, note that of the states they claim to have such inflated numbers of voters, only one — Michigan — would have had any significance for the presidential election’s Electoral College vote.

According to media reports, long dead people voted early. Does this call into question the election procedure itself?

There is a tremendous amount of disinformation coming out of the Trump camp, and sadly much of it is being reported credibly by media abroad. But there is no proof that there is any widespread fraud using the names of dead people.

One widely reported case was that of William Bradley in Detroit, Michigan. This story spread on the internet and became a battle cry for the far right in Michigan and beyond. But in fact, when it was investigated, it was discovered that there was no wrongdoing. Bradley had never been removed from the voting rolls after his death. His son, who has the same name and address, received two ballots by mail. He discarded one and sent in the other — not realizing he had mistakenly submitted the ballot meant for his father.

The American people deserve praises for voting against US President Donald Trump in the recently concluded presidential elections and preventing another four years of Trumpian fascism, militarism, racism, misogyny and bigotry. While the electoral contest was tight, it saw the defeat of a sitting president. Any attempt by Trump to question and overturn the results through legal maneuver will surely be met with greater resistance.

The elections was carried out amid widespread criticism of the Trump government’s disregard and response to the Covid-19 pandemic which has resulted in large numbers of deaths and infections among the American people. He implemented economic policies that promoted tax cuts and further concentration of wealth in the hands of monopoly capitalists and causing millions of working-class Americans to suffer widespread joblessness, low wages, lack of access to public services, indebtedness, homelessness and other social ills.

Under Trump, US imperialist militarism and aggression intensified. He continued to employ and expand economic sanctions against countries asserting independence. He expanded the US “war on terror” to push US military aggression. He ordered armed strikes in Iraq. He supported resurgence in production of nuclear weapons. He aggressively pushed for sales of US weapons to oppressive regimes. He walked back on US commitments against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles and contact-detonated mines, as well as to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

US President-elect Joe Biden rode on the crest of a gigantic wave of democratic mass movement which has engulfed the entire country. The Black Lives Matter movement since the start of May is the latest display of mass opposition following the show of mass resistance by American workers, immigrants, women, youth and other sectors of American society. Over the past few months, hundreds of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest racism, police brutality and attacks against civil rights, as well as to amplify the clamor for jobs, higher wages, work safety, subsidies for health and education, housing, proper public health response to the pandemic and other urgent demands.

The American working class and people must continue to organize and mobilize in their numbers to make the Biden government act swiftly to respond to these urgent demands. Conditions are ever favorable for proletarian revolutionaries to strengthen their ranks and expand the scope of their leadership.

Biden will now head the US imperialist state amid worsening crisis of the global capitalist system. Over the past two decades, the US has been reasserting its global hegemony through military might to protect and expand its economic interests to the detriment of workers and people and sovereign countries around the world. For more than ten years now, the US government has deployed its troops and its armada of aircraft carriers in the Middle East, Europe and Asia and has waged wars of aggression and intervention. It continues to build up military presence in the Asia-Pacific as it counters the build-up of China’s military and economic strength.

In the Philippines, the US military continues to maintain facilities and troops across the country, and extend military funding, training and support to the AFP and the Duterte government. US military support to the Duterte regime goes to expanded and intensified drug war sham and counterinsurgency operations that have resulted in thousands of killings, widespread abuses of human rights, incessant murder of activists, unlawful arrests, torture and imprisonment of critics and opposition forces.

With the ascendancy of Biden, the Filipino people and their friends in the US must strengthen the call for an end to military support to the Duterte fascist terrorist regime. They must double their efforts to convince the American people that continuing US military support for the Duterte regime equals support for his tyranny, his bloody reign of murder and state terrorism against the Filipino people.

They must demand an end to the Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines under which US military troops are deployed in the country in the name of “counter-terrorism” but which actually provide support to the AFP in its campaign of suppression against the Filipino people. At the same time, the Filipino people must demand complete abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and other military treaties which perpetuate unequal military relations between the US and the Philippines.

As the global capitalist crisis and imperialist conflicts intensify, the Filipino people must continue to carry forward their struggle for genuine national freedom and seek an end to US neocolonial rule in the country.

Source: Philippine Revolution Web Central

Donald Trump made racism the core of his campaign from the very beginning. He whipped up his campaign rallies with calls against Black Lives Matter protests, for expanding the racist police. He added a racist and sexist attack on Kamala Harris, a Black and Asian woman.  

He ran openly for white supremacy and lost. Actually, it was a pretty impressive loss in U.S. electoral terms.

Defeating a sitting U.S. president is extraordinarily hard and rarely done. By that standard, the Trump loss was stunning. According to current estimates, Biden will receive something like 51.3 percent of the total popular vote: 3 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a higher total than any candidate challenging an incumbent president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt got 57 percent against Herbert Hoover in 1932. 

That’s more than Ronald Reagan got (50.7 percent) in his 1980 win over Jimmy Carter, which is frequently called a major right-wing shift in U.S. politics. Besides FDR, the only other presidential candidate who ran against an incumbent president and got more than 52 percent of the vote was William Henry Harrison in 1840. 

Also, Biden will likely end up getting a higher share of all the registered voters than Reagan did in his 1984 reelection landslide or Barack Obama did in 2008.

Trump did turn out more voters than the polls indicated he would. He won about 12 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. But the forces that turned out against him were bigger. Being able to vote to dump Donald Trump turned out to be the most popular and galvanizing choice to be put on the ballot. No one has lost bigger than Trump.

The defeat of Trump, however, does not defeat racism or the ideology of white supremacy. The police have not been abolished. A battle was won, but the war continues.