\u2013Sun Tzu, The Art of War<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Successful strategic thinking starts with gaining knowledge, in particular gaining adequate knowledge of the big picture, of all the political and economic forces involved (Sun Tzu\u2019s Earth) and what they are thinking, about themselves and others, at any given time. (Sun Tzu\u2019s Heaven). It\u2019s not a one-shot deal. Since both Heaven and Earth are always changing, strategic thinking must always be kept up to date, reassessed and revised.<\/p>\n
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This statement above was part of the opening to a widely circulated article I wrote four times now, about two, four, six, and eight years ago. With the upcoming November 2022 elections, it\u2019s time to take my own advice again and do another update. The electoral strategic terrain is constantly changing, and we don\u2019t want to be stuck with old maps and faulty models.<\/p>\n
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In the earlier versions, I suggested setting aside the traditional \u2018two-party system\u2019 frame, which obscures far more than it reveals, and making use of a \u2018six-party\u2019 model instead. I suggested that the new hypothesis had far more explanatory power regarding the events unfolding before us. I still like this hypothesis.<\/p>\n
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Some critics have objected to my use of the term \u2018party\u2019 for factional or interest group clusters. The point is taken, but I would also argue that U.S. major parties, in general, are not ideological parties in the European sense. Instead, they are constantly changing coalitions of these clusters with no firm commitment to program or discipline. So I will continue to use \u2018parties,\u2019 but with the objection noted. You can substitute \u2018factions\u2019 if you like. Or find us a better term.<\/p>\n
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For the most part, the strategic picture still holds. The \u2018six parties\u2019, under two tents, were first labeled as the Tea Party and the Multinationalists under the GOP tent, and the Blue Dogs, the Third Way New Democrats, the Old New Dealers, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, under the Democratic tent. We had three \u2018parties\u2019 under each tent in the second and following versions.<\/p>\n
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There are still a few minor players outside of either tent\u2014the Green Party campaigns in California, Kshama Sawant\u2019s ongoing battles in the Seattle City Council, the local independent candidates of the Richmond Alliance, and a few more. They might be pretty important in local areas, but still lack the weight to be featured in this analysis.<\/p>\n
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But let\u2019s move to the central terrain.<\/p>\n
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First and most essential for us on the left now is Biden\u2019s victory over Trump alongside the persistent clout of Senator Bernie Sanders, who keeps showing far more strength than imagined. Today we would also certainly add the gains made by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and the growth of \u2018the Squad.\u2019 Other progressives wins in Congress and DSA gains in several state legislatures are also noteworthy.<\/p>\n
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But here\u2019s the danger. Biden\u2019s won by a clear margin, but Trump also gained in total votes over his past numbers. This is dangerous and too close for comfort. Given a 50\/50 Senate and a narrow margin in the House, Biden has to govern, as best as he can, alongside the continuing power of Trump and rightwing populism. Moreover, the right includes the full integration of Trump\u2019s forces into the GOP national and state apparatus and Trump\u2019s now overt alliances with growing fascist militias and related groups<\/p>\n
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Trump\u2019s still refuses to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes. Acceptance of this \u2018Big Steal,\u2019 transformed into a \u2018Big Lie,\u2019 is now a loyalty test throughout the Republican party, from top to bottom. Moreover, we all witnessed Trump\u2019s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, complete with an insurrectionary assault on the Capitol. Hundreds are now sitting in jail and their trials are underway. . The number of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on trial is a case in point. More importantly, the House Committee on Jan. 6 is starting its public hearings, which promises to be a powerful media exposure.<\/p>\n
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Therefore, what has moved from the margins to the center of political discourse is the question of a clear and present danger of fascism. Far from an ongoing abstract debate, we are now watching its hidden elements come to light every day in the media. We also see the ongoing machinations in the GOP hierarchy and in state legislatures reshaping election laws in their favor. Now, the question is not whether a fascist danger exists, but how to fight and defeat it.<\/p>\n
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The outcomes for Biden and Trump, then, challenge, narrow, and weaken the old dominant neoliberal hegemony from different directions. For decades, the ruling bloc had spanned both the GOP transnationals and those transnational globalists in the Third Way Democrats. Now neoliberalism is largely exhausted. This is a major change, opening the terrain for new bids for policy dominance. Team Biden is groping for a yet-to-be-fully -defined LBJ 2.0, largely making major investments in physical and social infrastructure, like universal child care or free community college. Weirdly, the GOP claims to stand for nothing, save fealty, Mafia-style, to Trump. Behind that smokescreen are the politics of fascism and a neo-confederacy.<\/p>\n
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But the GOP still has three parties. Back in 2016, Politico<\/em> had characterized them this way: \u201cAfter the Iowa caucuses\u201d the GOP emerged \u201cwith three front-runners who are, respectively, a proto-fascist, [Trump] a Christian theocrat [Cruz] and an Ayn Rand neoliberal [Rubio] who wants to privatize all aspects of public life while simultaneously waging war on the poor and working classes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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So here\u2019s the new snapshot of the range of forces for today (including a graphic map above).<\/p>\n
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Under the Dem tent, the three main groups remain as the Blue Dogs, the Third Way Centrists and the Rainbow Social Democrats. Although small, the Blue Dogs persist, especially given their partnership with West Virginia\u2019s Joe Manchin in the Senate. With Biden in the White House, the Third Way group keeps and grows its major clout and keeps most of its African American, feminist and labor allies. The Sanders Social Democratic bloc has gained strength, especially with the growing popularity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the growth of \u2018The Squad. \u2018Sanders has also formed and kept a progressive-center unity against Trump and has helped define \u2018Build Back Better\u2019 and other Biden reform packages.<\/p>\n
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The changes under the GOP tent have been radical, although keeping its three parties. The \u2018Never Trumpers\u2019, despite voting for Biden, have yet to split off entirely. In fact, despite the efforts to purge her, Liz Cheney of Wyoming continues fighting fiercely against Trump and his fascist measures and minions. The Jan. 6 insurrection also brought to the surface the tensions between the Christian nationalists headed by former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump\u2019s rightwing populists. Apart from tactics, a key difference between the two is Koch money and its institutional power. The Koch brothers never liked or trusted Trump, and never funded him directly, pouring their millions into the Christian Nationalist bloc instead.<\/p>\n
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Trump still has a tight grip on the entire party, but without his White House power, the number of his GOP critics is on the rise. Daily. Trump has denounced all rivals from these two groupings, and is building his alliances with the Jan. 6 insurrectionist supporters in state legislatures. The goal is new anti-voter laws to control those counting the votes and defining the districts in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
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Let\u2019s now look closer, starting from the left upper corner of the map:<\/p>\n
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The Rightwing Populists<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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This \u2018party\u2019, as mentioned, has taken over the GOP and is now tightening its grip. Trump was originally an \u2018outlier elite\u2019 with his own bankroll but now supplemented with funds from Russian oligarchs and Arab oil fortunes (See \u2018Proof of Conspiracy \u2018<\/em>by Seth Abhramson). He is also still directly connected to the Robert Mercer family fortune, the 4th ranking billionaire funding rightwing causes. For example, the Mercers keep Breitbart News afloat and funded the career of Steve Bannon, former Trump \u2018strategist\u2019 that took him to victory in the last stretch. Along with Breitbart, Fox News is the main hourly mouthpiece for Trump\u2019s war against the mainstream \u2018fake news\u2019 mass media. There are dozens of smaller outfits, but with millons of followers<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Trump is also pulling in some new wealth. One example is Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the fortune of the popular Publix supermarket chain. Alternet reports others: \u201cOne example is Dan and Farris Wilks, two billionaire siblings who have worked in the fracking industry in Texas and have \u201cgiven a combined $100,000 toward the president\u2019s reelection.\u201d The Wilkes Brothers supported Sen. Ted Cruz over Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary but are supporting Trump in 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But major events reveal some fault lines. The House has now impeached Trump twice, once following the Jan. 6 events and earlier in 2019. The Senate followed up by acquitting him in both cases. In Trump\u2019s second impeachment, 10 GOPers in the House and seven in the Senate votes against him. This is as good of an indictor as any of the remaining small but persistent strength of \u2018regular\u2019 Republicans in their own party.<\/p>\n
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The impeachment efforts, worthy in their own right, were also a major result of Trump\u2019s fierce ongoing political warfare against the \u2018Deep State.\u2019 The battle is actually a contest for a new \u2018America First\u2019 white nationalist hegemony against the old neoliberal globalists under both tents. The \u2018Deep State\u2019 is the federal civil service and includes the \u2018Intelligence Community,\u2019 with a long list of Trump-targeted CIA and FBI leaders, supposedly corrupt, of which FBI director James Comey was the first to be purged. The real \u2018corruption\u2019 was their refusal to pledge loyalty to Trump personally, again like an old-style Mafia boss.<\/p>\n
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In the first impeachment vote in Feb. 2020, the sole breakaway vote was Mitt Romney on Article One. Romney, with considerable wealth himself, is also a Mormon bishop, and his LDS church recently listed holdings of over $37 billion with the SEC. This is a factor in Romney\u2019s ability to stand alone. At the moment, however, the much-weakened GOP\u2019s old Establishment is left with the choice of surrender, or crossing over to the Third Way bloc under the Dem tent. A good number already did so to vote for Biden in the Dem 2020 primary and general, expanding the Dem electorate to the right.<\/p>\n
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Trump now needs even more to shore up an alliance with the Blue Dogs. But it remains tactical, stemming from his appeals to \u2018Rust Belt\u2019 Democrats and some unions on trade and tariff issues, plus white identity resentment politics. The economic core of rightwing populism remains anti-global \u2018producerism\u2019 vs \u2018parasitism\u2019. Employed workers, business owners, real estate developers, small bankers are all \u2018producers\u2019. They oppose \u2018parasite\u2019 groups above and below, but mainly those below them\u2014the unemployed (Get a Job! as an epithet), the immigrants, poor people of color, Muslims, and \u2018the Other\u2019 generally. When they attack those above, the target is usually George Soros, a Jew.<\/p>\n
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Recall that Trump entered politics by declaring Obama to be an illegal alien and an illegitimate officeholder (a parasite above), but quickly shifted to Mexicans and Muslims and anyone associated with \u2018Black Lives Matter.\u2019 This aimed to pull out the fascist and white supremacist groups of the \u2018Alt Right\u2019\u2013using Breitbart and worse to widen their circles, bringing them closer to Trump\u2019s core. With these fascists as ready reserves, Trump reached farther into Blue Dog territory, and its better-off workers, retirees, and business owners conflicted with white identity issues\u2014immigration, Islamophobia, misogyny, and more. Today they still largely make up the audience at his mass rallies.<\/p>\n
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Trump\u2019s outlook is not new. It has deep roots in American history, from the anti-Indian ethnic cleansing of President Andrew Jackson to the nativism of the Know-Nothings, to the nullification theories of Joh C. Calhoun, to the lynch terror of the KKK, to the anti-elitism and segregation of George Wallace and the Dixiecrats. Internationally, Trump combines aggressive jingoism, threats of trade wars, and an isolationist \u2018economic nationalism\u2019 aimed at getting others abroad to fight your battles for you. At the same time, your team picks up the loot (\u2018we should have seized and kept the oil!\u2019).<\/p>\n
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Trump\u2019s GOP still contains his internal weaknesses: the volatile support of distressed white workers and small producers. At present, they are still forming a key social base. But the problem is that Trump did not implement any substantive programs apart from tax cuts. These mainly benefited the top 10% and created an unstable class contradiction in his operation. Moreover, apart from supporting heavy vaccine research, his inability to deal adequately with the coronavirus emergency\u2013 over 900,000 dead\u2014is is still undermining the confidence of some of his base. Most of what Trump has paid out is what WEB Dubois called the \u2018psychological wage\u2019 of \u2018whiteness\u2019, a dubious status position. Thus white supremacist demagogy and misogyny will also continue to unite a wide array of all nationalities of color and many women and youth against him.<\/p>\n
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Trump\u2019s religious ignorance, sexual assaults and a porn star scandal always pained his alliance with the Christian Nationalist faction: (Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos, et. al.), and the DeVos family (Amway fortune). They were willing to go along with it for the sake of judicial appointments, with the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against Black voters in Alabama only one major achievement. The alliance, nonetheless, has become more frayed since Jan. 6 and the \u2018Hang Mike Pence\u2019 spectacle. But some stalwarts stood fast. The billionaire donor to the GOP right, Devos\u2019s brother Erik Prince is a case in point. He amassed billions from his Blackwater\/Xe firms that train thousands of mercenaries, These forces serve as \u2018private contractors\u2019 for U.S. armed intervention anywhere. Prinz is now reportedly preparing to spend a few million sending spies and other disruptors into \u2018liberal groups\u2019 to do dirty work in Trump\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
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The Christian Nationalists<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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This \u2018party\u2019 grew from a subset of the former Tea Party bloc. It\u2019s made up of several Christian rightist trends developed over decades, which gained more coherence under Vice President Mike Pence. It includes conservative evangelicals seeking to recast a patriarchal and racist John Wayne into a new warrior version of Jesus. It was strengthened for a period by the addition of William Barr as the Attorney General, He brought Opus Dei<\/em> and the Catholic far-right, a minority with the American Catholic Church, closer to the White house. But seeing that Trump was about to go beyond the law in trying to overturn the 2020 election, Barr jumped ship and resigned just in time<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A good number of Christian nationalists, however, are the Protestant theocracy-minded fundamentalists, especially the \u2018Dominionist\u2019 sects in which Ted Cruz\u2019s father was active. They present themselves as the only true, \u2018values-centered\u2019 (Biblical) conservatives. They argue against any kind of compromise with the globalist \u2018liberal-socialist bloc\u2019, which ranges, in their view, from the GOP\u2019s Mitt Romney to Bernie Sanders. They are more akin to classical liberalism than neoliberalism in economic policy. This means abandoning nearly all regulations, much of the safety net, overturning Roe v. Wade, getting rid of marriage equality (in the name of \u2018religious liberty\u2019) and abolishing the IRS and any progressive taxation in favor of a single flat tax. Salon<\/em> in April 2018 reported:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis rightwing Christian movement is fundamentally anti-democratic. Their \u2018prayer warriors\u2019 do not believe that secular laws apply to them, thus making it acceptable, if not honorable, to deceive non-believers in order to do God\u2019s work. Many evangelicals in the Christian nationalist or \u2018dominionist\u2019 wing of the movement want the United States to be a theocracy. In some ways, this subset of the evangelical population resembles an American-style Taliban or ISIS, restrained (so far) only by the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The classic liberalism of most Christian Nationalist is also a key reason they attract money from the Koch Brothers networks. While the Koch\u2019s hold Trump and his populists in some contempt, as mentioned above, the Christian Nationalist faction has access to Koch funds and its ALEC legislative projects, along with access to the DeVos fortunes. Effectively, Christian nationalist\u2019 prosperity economics\u2019 amounts to affirmative action for the better off, where the rise of the rich is supposed to pull everyone else upwards. Those below must also pay their tithes and pull upward with their \u2018bootstraps.\u2019 They argue for neo-isolationism on some matters of foreign policy. But as \u2018Christian Zionists\u2019 they favor an all-out holy war on \u2018radical Islamic terrorism,\u2019 to the point of \u2018making the sand glow\u2019 with the use of nuclear weapons. They pushed for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and ripping up the Iran nuclear deal. All this is aimed at greasing the skids for the \u2018End Times,\u2019 the \u2018Rapture, \u2018and the \u2018Second Coming.\u2019 With Cruz, Pence and Devos as leaders, they have become the second most powerful grouping under the GOP tent, and the one with the most reactionary platform and outlook, even more so than Trump himself in some ways.<\/p>\n
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The Establishment Neoliberal \u2018RINOs\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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This is the name now widely used in the media for what we previously labeled the Multinationalists. It\u2019s mainly the upper crust and neoliberal business elites that have owned and run the GOP for years, but are now largely out in the cold. It included the quasi-libertarian House\u2019 Freedom Caucus,\u2019 the smaller group of NeoCons on foreign policy (John Bolton and John McCain), and the shrinking number of RINO (Republican In Name Only) moderates in The Lincoln Project. The Establishment also favors a globalist, U.S. hegemonist and even, at times, unilateralist approach abroad, with some still defending the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq. Their prominent voice today is Liz Cheney of Wyoming.<\/p>\n
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We also need to keep in mind the global backdrop to these shifts. The worldwide process of technology-driven financialization has divided the ruling class of late capitalism in every major country into three\u2014a local sector of the transnational capitalist class, the nation-based multinationals, and an anti-globalist national sector. Thus among traditional U.S. neoliberals, some are U.S. hegemonists, but many have a transnational globalist understanding of the world with vast amounts of their money in foreign stock. China and global value chains integrate them with other global capitalists. This is why Trump\u2019s trade policy is so controversial with Wall Street elites of both Republican and Democratic leanings. U.S. economic hegemony makes no sense at this financial and productive integration level. The global three way division also serves to explain why Trump\u2019s rightwing populism, despite its American characteristics, is connected to the rightwing nationalist-populist rise in all European countries. He is not \u2018explainable\u2019 in American terns alone.<\/p>\n
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This subordination is a big change for the traditional GOP top dogs. They would like to purge a weakened Trump from the party and rebuild, but so far lack the ability. They could try to form a new party with neoliberal Dems. Or, more likely, they could join the Dems and try to push out or smother those to the left of the Third Way grouping.<\/p>\n
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Now let\u2019s turn to the Dem tent, starting at the top right of the graphic.<\/p>\n
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The Blue Dogs<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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The Blue Dogs, according to the online newsletter Sludge<\/em>, \u201coperates a political action committee, Blue Dog PAC, that raises millions of dollars each election cycle, mainly from corporate PACs, and spends money to help elect more conservative Democrats. Corporate PACs that donated to Blue Dog PAC in the 2018 election cycle include those affiliated with drug company Pfizer, defense contractor Northrop Grumman, oil company ExxonMobil, and Wall Street bank Citigroup.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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This small \u2018party\u2019 has persisted and gained some energy. The recent effort of West Virginia\u2019s Senator Joe Manchin to bloc or gut Biden\u2019s reforms is a case in point. One earlier reason was that the United Steel Workers and a few craft unions had decided \u2018to work with Trump\u2019 on tariffs and trade. The USW also got firmly behind Connor Lamb (D-PA) for Congress. Lamb won a narrow victory in a Western PA CD in a rural and conservative area, but with many USW miner\u2019s votes. He was endorsed by the Blue Dog PAC, although he is not yet a formal member of the caucus. Getting into a nearly physical floor fight with the GOP over Jan. 6 \u2018radicalized\u2019 Lamb a bit, moving him leftward.<\/p>\n
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But the small Blue Dog resurgence may not last. On the one hand, the DNC Third Way gang currently loves people like Lamb, and wants to see more candidates leaning to the center and even the right. On the other hand, an unstableTrump out of office has little to offer on major infrastructure plans save for \u2018Build The Wall\u2019 chanting at rallies. His potential votes among USW and other union members may shrink.<\/p>\n
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The Third Way New Democrats<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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First formed by the Clintons, with international assistance from Tony Blair and others, this dominant \u2018party\u2019 was funded by Wall Street finance capitalists. The founding idea was to move toward neoliberalism by \u2018creating distance\u2019 between themselves and the traditional Left-Labor-Liberal bloc, i.e., the traditional unions and civil rights groups still connected to the New Deal legacy. Another part of \u2018Third Way\u2019 thinking was to shift the key social base away from the core of the working class toward college-educated suburban voters, but keeping alliances with Black and women\u2019s groups still functional.<\/p>\n
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Thus the Third Way had tried to temper the harsher neoliberalism of the GOP by \u2018triangulating\u2019 with neo-Keynesian and left-Keynesian policies. But the overall effect is to move Democrats and their platform generally rightward. With Hillary Clinton\u2019s narrow defeat, the Third Way\u2019s power in the party has diminished somewhat but gained clout with the victory of Biden. As mentioned above, its labor alliances have weakened, with unions now going in three directions. Most of labor has remained with the Third Way. Some moved rightward to the Blue Dogs while others\u2014Communications Workers, National Nurses United, and the U.E.\u2014are part of the Sanders bloc. Regarding the current relation of forces in the party apparatus, the Third Way has about 60% of the positions and still controls the major money. In California in 2018, for example, the Regulars kept control of the state party committee only with extremely narrow margins over Bernie supporters.<\/p>\n
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The key test was the November battle with Trump: Who inspired and mobilized the much-needed \u2018Blue Wave\u2019, gave it focus and put the right numbers in the right places? The measured Third Way moderates? Or the Social Democrat insurgents? This question brings us to the last of the six\u2019 parties.\u2019<\/p>\n
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The Rainbow Social Democrats<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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This description is better than simply calling it the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), as this article\u2019s first version did. I\u2019ve kept the \u2018Rainbow\u2019 designation because of the dynamic energy of AOC and the Squad. The Third Way, which has kept the older and more pragmatic voters of the rainbow groupings under its centrist influence, can still share it as well.<\/p>\n
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As explained before, the \u2018Social Democrat\u2019 title doesn\u2019t mean each leader or activist here is in a social-democrat or democratic socialist group like DSA. It means the core groups\u2013the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Working Families Party (WFP), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Justice Democrats and Our Revolution and Indivisible\u2014all have platforms are roughly similar to the left social democrat groupings in Europe. This is made even more evident with AOC\u2019s and Bernie\u2019s self-description as \u2018democratic socialists\u2019 in the primaries and the general, where it only seemed to help. The platform, however, is not socialist itself, but best described as a common front vs finance capital, war, and the white supremacist and fascist right. This is true of groups like Die Linke (\u2018The Left\u2019) in Germany as well, which met recently with PDA and CPC members. In that sense, the \u2018Third Reconstruction,\u2019 promoted by Rev William Barber and the Poor People\u2019s Campaign, might also serves as a good designation and goal.<\/p>\n
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Finally, there is the ongoing dramatic growth of the DSA due to their wise tactics in the 2016 Bernie campaign. They went all in for Bernie but also lost no opening to make themselves visible. Prominent Justice Democrat and DSAer Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, who has been a firebrand in the House, has made the \u2018Green New Deal\u2019 a household term, and joined Sanders in his efforts to shape Biden\u2019s agenda. Now with nearly 100.000 members with chapters in every state, DSA has already won a few local and statehouse races the first time out. They are now an important player in their own right within these local clusters. But their growth may have peaked for a while. Their surfacing weaknesses reside in sorting out their own internal differences with sectarianism and even chauvinism against Black candidates.<\/p>\n
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This overall growth of this \u2018party\u2019 is all to the good. The common front approach of the Social Democratic bloc can unite more than a militant minority of actual socialists. Instead, it has a platform that can also unite a progressive majority around both immediate needs and structural reforms, including both socialists and non-socialists, the \u2018Third Reconstruction.\u2019 Apart from winning 46% of the 2016 Dem convention delegates and a good number of statehous seats, this \u2018party\u2019 is now noted for two things. First is the huge, elemental outpourings of young people\u2013mainly women, students and the young workers of the distressed \u2018precariat\u2019 sector of the class\u2013in the elemental risings of millions after Trump took office. Second was the enormous risings following the murder of George Floyd by the police\u2014over 20 million, the largest in U.S history. With other mass groups like Our Revolution and Indivisible, they all added a higher degree of organization at the base to this dynamic and growing cluster.<\/p>\n
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What does it all mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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With this brief descriptive and analytical mapping of the upper crust of American politics, many things are falling into place. The formerly subaltern rightist groupings in the GOP have risen in revolt against the Neoliberal Establishment of the Cheneys, Romneys and the Bushes. Now they have rightwing populist and white nationalist hegemony. The GOP, then, can be accurately called the party of the neo-Confederates and the main target of a popular, anti-fascist front. Under the other tent, the Third Way is seeking a new post-neoliberal platform, through President Joe Biden\u2019s reforms. The progressive-center unity of the earlier Obama coalition, with all its constituency alliances, is still in place. At the same time, the Third Way still wants to co-opt and control the Social Democrats as an energetic but critical secondary ally. The Sanders\u2019 forces have few illusions about this pressure on them, and don\u2019t want to be anyone\u2019s subaltern without a fight. So we are continuing to press all our issues, but adapting some policies to the common front vs. the fascist right. If we work well, we will build more base organizations, more alliances, and more clout as we go.<\/p>\n
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This \u2018big picture\u2019 also reveals much about the current budget debates. All three parties under the GOP tent still advocate neoliberal austerity. The Third Way-dominated Senate Democrats and Blue Dogs push for an \u2018austerity lite\u2019 budget and some Keynesian infrastructure programs. Team Biden, the Social Democrats and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are working on \u2018Build Back Better\u2019 programs and \u2018Green New Deal\u2019 projects that might expand advanced manufacturing jobs.<\/p>\n
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However, we must keep in mind that favorably \u2018shifting the balance of forces\u2019 in election campaigns is often an indirect and somewhat ephemeral gain. It does \u2018open up space\u2019, but for what? Progressive initiatives matter for sure, but much more is required strategically. Strategically, we are in a war of position, with periodic tactical \u2018war of movement\u2019 elemental risings. In that framework, we are interested in pushing the popular front vs. finance capital to its limits and developing a 21st-century socialist bloc. If that comes to scale in the context of a defeat of the pro-Trump right bloc, the Democratic tent is also going to be stretched and strained. It could even collapse and implode, given the sharper class contradictions and other fault lines that lie within it, much as the Whigs split four ways in the 19th Century. This \u2018Whig option\u2019 tactic would demand an ability on the part of the left to regroup all the progressive forces, inside and outside, into a new \u2018First Party\u2019 alliance or counter-hegemonic bloc. Such a formation also includes a militant minority of socialists, which will then be able to contend for governing power. The tricky part is to do this in a way that keeps the right at bay.<\/p>\n
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An old classic formula summing up the strategic thinking of the united front is appropriate here: \u2018Unite and develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, isolate and divide the backward forces, then crush our adversaries one by one.\u2019 In short, we must have a policy and set of tactics for each one of these elements, as well as a strategy for dealing with them overall. Moreover, take note of a warning from the futurist Alvin Toffler: \u2018If you don\u2019t have a strategy, you\u2019re part of someone else\u2019s strategy.\u2019 Then finally, as to tactics, \u2018wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint.\u2019<\/p>\n
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To conclude, we still need to start with a realistic view of ourselves as an organized socialist left. Save for DSA, we are mostly quite small as organizations, but now we can see we are swimming in a sea of millions open to socialism. What can we do now? If you can see yourself or your group honestly working to achieve DSA\u2019s stated program, by all means, join them and make them even larger. Or set up Jacobin \/ In These Times <\/em>Reading Groups in your living rooms and unite socialists and close friends with them. The same goes with the new Convergence <\/em>project growing out of Organizing Upgrade. Or join CCDS, CPUSA, Left Roots, or Liberation Road\u2014socialist groups which largely share some or most of the perspective here. Join or start PDA or WFP chapters everywhere, use organizations and broad \u2018Third Reconstruction\u2019 and \u2018Modern Tecumseh\u2019 alliances and popular rainbow assemblies to build mass mobilizations, register new voters and defeat the GOP in November 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With both socialists and rainbow progressives, start at the base, focus on city and state governments, and expand the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We rarely gain victories at the top that have not been won and consolidated earlier at the base. Most of all, in order to form broader and winning coalitions, you need base organizations of your own to form partnerships and alliances WITH! Seize the time and Git \u2018er done!<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Click HERE for a closeup view of the graphic. By Carl Davidson Feb. 27, 2022 \u201cIf you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.\u201d \u2013Sun Tzu, The Art of War Successful strategic thinking starts with gaining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pollical-analysis"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4012,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010\/revisions\/4012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ouleft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Six-Party-System-5.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n![HERE<\/a><\/strong> for a closeup view of the graphic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBy Carl Davidson<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFeb. 27, 2022<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cIf you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2013Sun Tzu, The Art of War<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nSuccessful strategic thinking starts with gaining knowledge, in particular gaining adequate knowledge of the big picture, of all the political and economic forces involved (Sun Tzu\u2019s Earth) and what they are thinking, about themselves and others, at any given time. (Sun Tzu\u2019s Heaven). It\u2019s not a one-shot deal. Since both Heaven and Earth are always changing, strategic thinking must always be kept up to date, reassessed and revised.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis statement above was part of the opening to a widely circulated article I wrote four times now, about two, four, six, and eight years ago. With the upcoming November 2022 elections, it\u2019s time to take my own advice again and do another update. The electoral strategic terrain is constantly changing, and we don\u2019t want to be stuck with old maps and faulty models.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nIn the earlier versions, I suggested setting aside the traditional \u2018two-party system\u2019 frame, which obscures far more than it reveals, and making use of a \u2018six-party\u2019 model instead. I suggested that the new hypothesis had far more explanatory power regarding the events unfolding before us. I still like this hypothesis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nSome critics have objected to my use of the term \u2018party\u2019 for factional or interest group clusters. The point is taken, but I would also argue that U.S. major parties, in general, are not ideological parties in the European sense. Instead, they are constantly changing coalitions of these clusters with no firm commitment to program or discipline. So I will continue to use \u2018parties,\u2019 but with the objection noted. You can substitute \u2018factions\u2019 if you like. Or find us a better term.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFor the most part, the strategic picture still holds. The \u2018six parties\u2019, under two tents, were first labeled as the Tea Party and the Multinationalists under the GOP tent, and the Blue Dogs, the Third Way New Democrats, the Old New Dealers, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, under the Democratic tent. We had three \u2018parties\u2019 under each tent in the second and following versions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThere are still a few minor players outside of either tent\u2014the Green Party campaigns in California, Kshama Sawant\u2019s ongoing battles in the Seattle City Council, the local independent candidates of the Richmond Alliance, and a few more. They might be pretty important in local areas, but still lack the weight to be featured in this analysis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBut let\u2019s move to the central terrain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFirst and most essential for us on the left now is Biden\u2019s victory over Trump alongside the persistent clout of Senator Bernie Sanders, who keeps showing far more strength than imagined. Today we would also certainly add the gains made by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and the growth of \u2018the Squad.\u2019 Other progressives wins in Congress and DSA gains in several state legislatures are also noteworthy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBut here\u2019s the danger. Biden\u2019s won by a clear margin, but Trump also gained in total votes over his past numbers. This is dangerous and too close for comfort. Given a 50\/50 Senate and a narrow margin in the House, Biden has to govern, as best as he can, alongside the continuing power of Trump and rightwing populism. Moreover, the right includes the full integration of Trump\u2019s forces into the GOP national and state apparatus and Trump\u2019s now overt alliances with growing fascist militias and related groups<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s still refuses to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes. Acceptance of this \u2018Big Steal,\u2019 transformed into a \u2018Big Lie,\u2019 is now a loyalty test throughout the Republican party, from top to bottom. Moreover, we all witnessed Trump\u2019s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, complete with an insurrectionary assault on the Capitol. Hundreds are now sitting in jail and their trials are underway. . The number of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on trial is a case in point. More importantly, the House Committee on Jan. 6 is starting its public hearings, which promises to be a powerful media exposure.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTherefore, what has moved from the margins to the center of political discourse is the question of a clear and present danger of fascism. Far from an ongoing abstract debate, we are now watching its hidden elements come to light every day in the media. We also see the ongoing machinations in the GOP hierarchy and in state legislatures reshaping election laws in their favor. Now, the question is not whether a fascist danger exists, but how to fight and defeat it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe outcomes for Biden and Trump, then, challenge, narrow, and weaken the old dominant neoliberal hegemony from different directions. For decades, the ruling bloc had spanned both the GOP transnationals and those transnational globalists in the Third Way Democrats. Now neoliberalism is largely exhausted. This is a major change, opening the terrain for new bids for policy dominance. Team Biden is groping for a yet-to-be-fully -defined LBJ 2.0, largely making major investments in physical and social infrastructure, like universal child care or free community college. Weirdly, the GOP claims to stand for nothing, save fealty, Mafia-style, to Trump. Behind that smokescreen are the politics of fascism and a neo-confederacy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBut the GOP still has three parties. Back in 2016, Politico<\/em> had characterized them this way: \u201cAfter the Iowa caucuses\u201d the GOP emerged \u201cwith three front-runners who are, respectively, a proto-fascist, [Trump] a Christian theocrat [Cruz] and an Ayn Rand neoliberal [Rubio] who wants to privatize all aspects of public life while simultaneously waging war on the poor and working classes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nSo here\u2019s the new snapshot of the range of forces for today (including a graphic map above).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nUnder the Dem tent, the three main groups remain as the Blue Dogs, the Third Way Centrists and the Rainbow Social Democrats. Although small, the Blue Dogs persist, especially given their partnership with West Virginia\u2019s Joe Manchin in the Senate. With Biden in the White House, the Third Way group keeps and grows its major clout and keeps most of its African American, feminist and labor allies. The Sanders Social Democratic bloc has gained strength, especially with the growing popularity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the growth of \u2018The Squad. \u2018Sanders has also formed and kept a progressive-center unity against Trump and has helped define \u2018Build Back Better\u2019 and other Biden reform packages.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe changes under the GOP tent have been radical, although keeping its three parties. The \u2018Never Trumpers\u2019, despite voting for Biden, have yet to split off entirely. In fact, despite the efforts to purge her, Liz Cheney of Wyoming continues fighting fiercely against Trump and his fascist measures and minions. The Jan. 6 insurrection also brought to the surface the tensions between the Christian nationalists headed by former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump\u2019s rightwing populists. Apart from tactics, a key difference between the two is Koch money and its institutional power. The Koch brothers never liked or trusted Trump, and never funded him directly, pouring their millions into the Christian Nationalist bloc instead.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump still has a tight grip on the entire party, but without his White House power, the number of his GOP critics is on the rise. Daily. Trump has denounced all rivals from these two groupings, and is building his alliances with the Jan. 6 insurrectionist supporters in state legislatures. The goal is new anti-voter laws to control those counting the votes and defining the districts in the years ahead.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nLet\u2019s now look closer, starting from the left upper corner of the map:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Rightwing Populists<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis \u2018party\u2019, as mentioned, has taken over the GOP and is now tightening its grip. Trump was originally an \u2018outlier elite\u2019 with his own bankroll but now supplemented with funds from Russian oligarchs and Arab oil fortunes (See \u2018Proof of Conspiracy \u2018<\/em>by Seth Abhramson). He is also still directly connected to the Robert Mercer family fortune, the 4th ranking billionaire funding rightwing causes. For example, the Mercers keep Breitbart News afloat and funded the career of Steve Bannon, former Trump \u2018strategist\u2019 that took him to victory in the last stretch. Along with Breitbart, Fox News is the main hourly mouthpiece for Trump\u2019s war against the mainstream \u2018fake news\u2019 mass media. There are dozens of smaller outfits, but with millons of followers<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump is also pulling in some new wealth. One example is Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the fortune of the popular Publix supermarket chain. Alternet reports others: \u201cOne example is Dan and Farris Wilks, two billionaire siblings who have worked in the fracking industry in Texas and have \u201cgiven a combined $100,000 toward the president\u2019s reelection.\u201d The Wilkes Brothers supported Sen. Ted Cruz over Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary but are supporting Trump in 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBut major events reveal some fault lines. The House has now impeached Trump twice, once following the Jan. 6 events and earlier in 2019. The Senate followed up by acquitting him in both cases. In Trump\u2019s second impeachment, 10 GOPers in the House and seven in the Senate votes against him. This is as good of an indictor as any of the remaining small but persistent strength of \u2018regular\u2019 Republicans in their own party.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe impeachment efforts, worthy in their own right, were also a major result of Trump\u2019s fierce ongoing political warfare against the \u2018Deep State.\u2019 The battle is actually a contest for a new \u2018America First\u2019 white nationalist hegemony against the old neoliberal globalists under both tents. The \u2018Deep State\u2019 is the federal civil service and includes the \u2018Intelligence Community,\u2019 with a long list of Trump-targeted CIA and FBI leaders, supposedly corrupt, of which FBI director James Comey was the first to be purged. The real \u2018corruption\u2019 was their refusal to pledge loyalty to Trump personally, again like an old-style Mafia boss.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nIn the first impeachment vote in Feb. 2020, the sole breakaway vote was Mitt Romney on Article One. Romney, with considerable wealth himself, is also a Mormon bishop, and his LDS church recently listed holdings of over $37 billion with the SEC. This is a factor in Romney\u2019s ability to stand alone. At the moment, however, the much-weakened GOP\u2019s old Establishment is left with the choice of surrender, or crossing over to the Third Way bloc under the Dem tent. A good number already did so to vote for Biden in the Dem 2020 primary and general, expanding the Dem electorate to the right.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump now needs even more to shore up an alliance with the Blue Dogs. But it remains tactical, stemming from his appeals to \u2018Rust Belt\u2019 Democrats and some unions on trade and tariff issues, plus white identity resentment politics. The economic core of rightwing populism remains anti-global \u2018producerism\u2019 vs \u2018parasitism\u2019. Employed workers, business owners, real estate developers, small bankers are all \u2018producers\u2019. They oppose \u2018parasite\u2019 groups above and below, but mainly those below them\u2014the unemployed (Get a Job! as an epithet), the immigrants, poor people of color, Muslims, and \u2018the Other\u2019 generally. When they attack those above, the target is usually George Soros, a Jew.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nRecall that Trump entered politics by declaring Obama to be an illegal alien and an illegitimate officeholder (a parasite above), but quickly shifted to Mexicans and Muslims and anyone associated with \u2018Black Lives Matter.\u2019 This aimed to pull out the fascist and white supremacist groups of the \u2018Alt Right\u2019\u2013using Breitbart and worse to widen their circles, bringing them closer to Trump\u2019s core. With these fascists as ready reserves, Trump reached farther into Blue Dog territory, and its better-off workers, retirees, and business owners conflicted with white identity issues\u2014immigration, Islamophobia, misogyny, and more. Today they still largely make up the audience at his mass rallies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s outlook is not new. It has deep roots in American history, from the anti-Indian ethnic cleansing of President Andrew Jackson to the nativism of the Know-Nothings, to the nullification theories of Joh C. Calhoun, to the lynch terror of the KKK, to the anti-elitism and segregation of George Wallace and the Dixiecrats. Internationally, Trump combines aggressive jingoism, threats of trade wars, and an isolationist \u2018economic nationalism\u2019 aimed at getting others abroad to fight your battles for you. At the same time, your team picks up the loot (\u2018we should have seized and kept the oil!\u2019).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s GOP still contains his internal weaknesses: the volatile support of distressed white workers and small producers. At present, they are still forming a key social base. But the problem is that Trump did not implement any substantive programs apart from tax cuts. These mainly benefited the top 10% and created an unstable class contradiction in his operation. Moreover, apart from supporting heavy vaccine research, his inability to deal adequately with the coronavirus emergency\u2013 over 900,000 dead\u2014is is still undermining the confidence of some of his base. Most of what Trump has paid out is what WEB Dubois called the \u2018psychological wage\u2019 of \u2018whiteness\u2019, a dubious status position. Thus white supremacist demagogy and misogyny will also continue to unite a wide array of all nationalities of color and many women and youth against him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s religious ignorance, sexual assaults and a porn star scandal always pained his alliance with the Christian Nationalist faction: (Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos, et. al.), and the DeVos family (Amway fortune). They were willing to go along with it for the sake of judicial appointments, with the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against Black voters in Alabama only one major achievement. The alliance, nonetheless, has become more frayed since Jan. 6 and the \u2018Hang Mike Pence\u2019 spectacle. But some stalwarts stood fast. The billionaire donor to the GOP right, Devos\u2019s brother Erik Prince is a case in point. He amassed billions from his Blackwater\/Xe firms that train thousands of mercenaries, These forces serve as \u2018private contractors\u2019 for U.S. armed intervention anywhere. Prinz is now reportedly preparing to spend a few million sending spies and other disruptors into \u2018liberal groups\u2019 to do dirty work in Trump\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Christian Nationalists<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis \u2018party\u2019 grew from a subset of the former Tea Party bloc. It\u2019s made up of several Christian rightist trends developed over decades, which gained more coherence under Vice President Mike Pence. It includes conservative evangelicals seeking to recast a patriarchal and racist John Wayne into a new warrior version of Jesus. It was strengthened for a period by the addition of William Barr as the Attorney General, He brought Opus Dei<\/em> and the Catholic far-right, a minority with the American Catholic Church, closer to the White house. But seeing that Trump was about to go beyond the law in trying to overturn the 2020 election, Barr jumped ship and resigned just in time<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nA good number of Christian nationalists, however, are the Protestant theocracy-minded fundamentalists, especially the \u2018Dominionist\u2019 sects in which Ted Cruz\u2019s father was active. They present themselves as the only true, \u2018values-centered\u2019 (Biblical) conservatives. They argue against any kind of compromise with the globalist \u2018liberal-socialist bloc\u2019, which ranges, in their view, from the GOP\u2019s Mitt Romney to Bernie Sanders. They are more akin to classical liberalism than neoliberalism in economic policy. This means abandoning nearly all regulations, much of the safety net, overturning Roe v. Wade, getting rid of marriage equality (in the name of \u2018religious liberty\u2019) and abolishing the IRS and any progressive taxation in favor of a single flat tax. Salon<\/em> in April 2018 reported:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cThis rightwing Christian movement is fundamentally anti-democratic. Their \u2018prayer warriors\u2019 do not believe that secular laws apply to them, thus making it acceptable, if not honorable, to deceive non-believers in order to do God\u2019s work. Many evangelicals in the Christian nationalist or \u2018dominionist\u2019 wing of the movement want the United States to be a theocracy. In some ways, this subset of the evangelical population resembles an American-style Taliban or ISIS, restrained (so far) only by the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe classic liberalism of most Christian Nationalist is also a key reason they attract money from the Koch Brothers networks. While the Koch\u2019s hold Trump and his populists in some contempt, as mentioned above, the Christian Nationalist faction has access to Koch funds and its ALEC legislative projects, along with access to the DeVos fortunes. Effectively, Christian nationalist\u2019 prosperity economics\u2019 amounts to affirmative action for the better off, where the rise of the rich is supposed to pull everyone else upwards. Those below must also pay their tithes and pull upward with their \u2018bootstraps.\u2019 They argue for neo-isolationism on some matters of foreign policy. But as \u2018Christian Zionists\u2019 they favor an all-out holy war on \u2018radical Islamic terrorism,\u2019 to the point of \u2018making the sand glow\u2019 with the use of nuclear weapons. They pushed for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and ripping up the Iran nuclear deal. All this is aimed at greasing the skids for the \u2018End Times,\u2019 the \u2018Rapture, \u2018and the \u2018Second Coming.\u2019 With Cruz, Pence and Devos as leaders, they have become the second most powerful grouping under the GOP tent, and the one with the most reactionary platform and outlook, even more so than Trump himself in some ways.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Establishment Neoliberal \u2018RINOs\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis is the name now widely used in the media for what we previously labeled the Multinationalists. It\u2019s mainly the upper crust and neoliberal business elites that have owned and run the GOP for years, but are now largely out in the cold. It included the quasi-libertarian House\u2019 Freedom Caucus,\u2019 the smaller group of NeoCons on foreign policy (John Bolton and John McCain), and the shrinking number of RINO (Republican In Name Only) moderates in The Lincoln Project. The Establishment also favors a globalist, U.S. hegemonist and even, at times, unilateralist approach abroad, with some still defending the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq. Their prominent voice today is Liz Cheney of Wyoming.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWe also need to keep in mind the global backdrop to these shifts. The worldwide process of technology-driven financialization has divided the ruling class of late capitalism in every major country into three\u2014a local sector of the transnational capitalist class, the nation-based multinationals, and an anti-globalist national sector. Thus among traditional U.S. neoliberals, some are U.S. hegemonists, but many have a transnational globalist understanding of the world with vast amounts of their money in foreign stock. China and global value chains integrate them with other global capitalists. This is why Trump\u2019s trade policy is so controversial with Wall Street elites of both Republican and Democratic leanings. U.S. economic hegemony makes no sense at this financial and productive integration level. The global three way division also serves to explain why Trump\u2019s rightwing populism, despite its American characteristics, is connected to the rightwing nationalist-populist rise in all European countries. He is not \u2018explainable\u2019 in American terns alone.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis subordination is a big change for the traditional GOP top dogs. They would like to purge a weakened Trump from the party and rebuild, but so far lack the ability. They could try to form a new party with neoliberal Dems. Or, more likely, they could join the Dems and try to push out or smother those to the left of the Third Way grouping.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nNow let\u2019s turn to the Dem tent, starting at the top right of the graphic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Blue Dogs<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Blue Dogs, according to the online newsletter Sludge<\/em>, \u201coperates a political action committee, Blue Dog PAC, that raises millions of dollars each election cycle, mainly from corporate PACs, and spends money to help elect more conservative Democrats. Corporate PACs that donated to Blue Dog PAC in the 2018 election cycle include those affiliated with drug company Pfizer, defense contractor Northrop Grumman, oil company ExxonMobil, and Wall Street bank Citigroup.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis small \u2018party\u2019 has persisted and gained some energy. The recent effort of West Virginia\u2019s Senator Joe Manchin to bloc or gut Biden\u2019s reforms is a case in point. One earlier reason was that the United Steel Workers and a few craft unions had decided \u2018to work with Trump\u2019 on tariffs and trade. The USW also got firmly behind Connor Lamb (D-PA) for Congress. Lamb won a narrow victory in a Western PA CD in a rural and conservative area, but with many USW miner\u2019s votes. He was endorsed by the Blue Dog PAC, although he is not yet a formal member of the caucus. Getting into a nearly physical floor fight with the GOP over Jan. 6 \u2018radicalized\u2019 Lamb a bit, moving him leftward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBut the small Blue Dog resurgence may not last. On the one hand, the DNC Third Way gang currently loves people like Lamb, and wants to see more candidates leaning to the center and even the right. On the other hand, an unstableTrump out of office has little to offer on major infrastructure plans save for \u2018Build The Wall\u2019 chanting at rallies. His potential votes among USW and other union members may shrink.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Third Way New Democrats<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFirst formed by the Clintons, with international assistance from Tony Blair and others, this dominant \u2018party\u2019 was funded by Wall Street finance capitalists. The founding idea was to move toward neoliberalism by \u2018creating distance\u2019 between themselves and the traditional Left-Labor-Liberal bloc, i.e., the traditional unions and civil rights groups still connected to the New Deal legacy. Another part of \u2018Third Way\u2019 thinking was to shift the key social base away from the core of the working class toward college-educated suburban voters, but keeping alliances with Black and women\u2019s groups still functional.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThus the Third Way had tried to temper the harsher neoliberalism of the GOP by \u2018triangulating\u2019 with neo-Keynesian and left-Keynesian policies. But the overall effect is to move Democrats and their platform generally rightward. With Hillary Clinton\u2019s narrow defeat, the Third Way\u2019s power in the party has diminished somewhat but gained clout with the victory of Biden. As mentioned above, its labor alliances have weakened, with unions now going in three directions. Most of labor has remained with the Third Way. Some moved rightward to the Blue Dogs while others\u2014Communications Workers, National Nurses United, and the U.E.\u2014are part of the Sanders bloc. Regarding the current relation of forces in the party apparatus, the Third Way has about 60% of the positions and still controls the major money. In California in 2018, for example, the Regulars kept control of the state party committee only with extremely narrow margins over Bernie supporters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe key test was the November battle with Trump: Who inspired and mobilized the much-needed \u2018Blue Wave\u2019, gave it focus and put the right numbers in the right places? The measured Third Way moderates? Or the Social Democrat insurgents? This question brings us to the last of the six\u2019 parties.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Rainbow Social Democrats<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis description is better than simply calling it the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), as this article\u2019s first version did. I\u2019ve kept the \u2018Rainbow\u2019 designation because of the dynamic energy of AOC and the Squad. The Third Way, which has kept the older and more pragmatic voters of the rainbow groupings under its centrist influence, can still share it as well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAs explained before, the \u2018Social Democrat\u2019 title doesn\u2019t mean each leader or activist here is in a social-democrat or democratic socialist group like DSA. It means the core groups\u2013the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Working Families Party (WFP), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Justice Democrats and Our Revolution and Indivisible\u2014all have platforms are roughly similar to the left social democrat groupings in Europe. This is made even more evident with AOC\u2019s and Bernie\u2019s self-description as \u2018democratic socialists\u2019 in the primaries and the general, where it only seemed to help. The platform, however, is not socialist itself, but best described as a common front vs finance capital, war, and the white supremacist and fascist right. This is true of groups like Die Linke (\u2018The Left\u2019) in Germany as well, which met recently with PDA and CPC members. In that sense, the \u2018Third Reconstruction,\u2019 promoted by Rev William Barber and the Poor People\u2019s Campaign, might also serves as a good designation and goal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFinally, there is the ongoing dramatic growth of the DSA due to their wise tactics in the 2016 Bernie campaign. They went all in for Bernie but also lost no opening to make themselves visible. Prominent Justice Democrat and DSAer Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, who has been a firebrand in the House, has made the \u2018Green New Deal\u2019 a household term, and joined Sanders in his efforts to shape Biden\u2019s agenda. Now with nearly 100.000 members with chapters in every state, DSA has already won a few local and statehouse races the first time out. They are now an important player in their own right within these local clusters. But their growth may have peaked for a while. Their surfacing weaknesses reside in sorting out their own internal differences with sectarianism and even chauvinism against Black candidates.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis overall growth of this \u2018party\u2019 is all to the good. The common front approach of the Social Democratic bloc can unite more than a militant minority of actual socialists. Instead, it has a platform that can also unite a progressive majority around both immediate needs and structural reforms, including both socialists and non-socialists, the \u2018Third Reconstruction.\u2019 Apart from winning 46% of the 2016 Dem convention delegates and a good number of statehous seats, this \u2018party\u2019 is now noted for two things. First is the huge, elemental outpourings of young people\u2013mainly women, students and the young workers of the distressed \u2018precariat\u2019 sector of the class\u2013in the elemental risings of millions after Trump took office. Second was the enormous risings following the murder of George Floyd by the police\u2014over 20 million, the largest in U.S history. With other mass groups like Our Revolution and Indivisible, they all added a higher degree of organization at the base to this dynamic and growing cluster.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWhat does it all mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWith this brief descriptive and analytical mapping of the upper crust of American politics, many things are falling into place. The formerly subaltern rightist groupings in the GOP have risen in revolt against the Neoliberal Establishment of the Cheneys, Romneys and the Bushes. Now they have rightwing populist and white nationalist hegemony. The GOP, then, can be accurately called the party of the neo-Confederates and the main target of a popular, anti-fascist front. Under the other tent, the Third Way is seeking a new post-neoliberal platform, through President Joe Biden\u2019s reforms. The progressive-center unity of the earlier Obama coalition, with all its constituency alliances, is still in place. At the same time, the Third Way still wants to co-opt and control the Social Democrats as an energetic but critical secondary ally. The Sanders\u2019 forces have few illusions about this pressure on them, and don\u2019t want to be anyone\u2019s subaltern without a fight. So we are continuing to press all our issues, but adapting some policies to the common front vs. the fascist right. If we work well, we will build more base organizations, more alliances, and more clout as we go.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis \u2018big picture\u2019 also reveals much about the current budget debates. All three parties under the GOP tent still advocate neoliberal austerity. The Third Way-dominated Senate Democrats and Blue Dogs push for an \u2018austerity lite\u2019 budget and some Keynesian infrastructure programs. Team Biden, the Social Democrats and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are working on \u2018Build Back Better\u2019 programs and \u2018Green New Deal\u2019 projects that might expand advanced manufacturing jobs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nHowever, we must keep in mind that favorably \u2018shifting the balance of forces\u2019 in election campaigns is often an indirect and somewhat ephemeral gain. It does \u2018open up space\u2019, but for what? Progressive initiatives matter for sure, but much more is required strategically. Strategically, we are in a war of position, with periodic tactical \u2018war of movement\u2019 elemental risings. In that framework, we are interested in pushing the popular front vs. finance capital to its limits and developing a 21st-century socialist bloc. If that comes to scale in the context of a defeat of the pro-Trump right bloc, the Democratic tent is also going to be stretched and strained. It could even collapse and implode, given the sharper class contradictions and other fault lines that lie within it, much as the Whigs split four ways in the 19th Century. This \u2018Whig option\u2019 tactic would demand an ability on the part of the left to regroup all the progressive forces, inside and outside, into a new \u2018First Party\u2019 alliance or counter-hegemonic bloc. Such a formation also includes a militant minority of socialists, which will then be able to contend for governing power. The tricky part is to do this in a way that keeps the right at bay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAn old classic formula summing up the strategic thinking of the united front is appropriate here: \u2018Unite and develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, isolate and divide the backward forces, then crush our adversaries one by one.\u2019 In short, we must have a policy and set of tactics for each one of these elements, as well as a strategy for dealing with them overall. Moreover, take note of a warning from the futurist Alvin Toffler: \u2018If you don\u2019t have a strategy, you\u2019re part of someone else\u2019s strategy.\u2019 Then finally, as to tactics, \u2018wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTo conclude, we still need to start with a realistic view of ourselves as an organized socialist left. Save for DSA, we are mostly quite small as organizations, but now we can see we are swimming in a sea of millions open to socialism. What can we do now? If you can see yourself or your group honestly working to achieve DSA\u2019s stated program, by all means, join them and make them even larger. Or set up Jacobin \/ In These Times <\/em>Reading Groups in your living rooms and unite socialists and close friends with them. The same goes with the new Convergence <\/em>project growing out of Organizing Upgrade. Or join CCDS, CPUSA, Left Roots, or Liberation Road\u2014socialist groups which largely share some or most of the perspective here. Join or start PDA or WFP chapters everywhere, use organizations and broad \u2018Third Reconstruction\u2019 and \u2018Modern Tecumseh\u2019 alliances and popular rainbow assemblies to build mass mobilizations, register new voters and defeat the GOP in November 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWith both socialists and rainbow progressives, start at the base, focus on city and state governments, and expand the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We rarely gain victories at the top that have not been won and consolidated earlier at the base. Most of all, in order to form broader and winning coalitions, you need base organizations of your own to form partnerships and alliances WITH! Seize the time and Git \u2018er done!<\/p>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Click HERE for a closeup view of the graphic. By Carl Davidson Feb. 27, 2022 \u201cIf you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.\u201d \u2013Sun Tzu, The Art of War Successful strategic thinking starts with gaining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pollical-analysis"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4012,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010\/revisions\/4012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ouleft.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20230306021404\/http:\/\/ouleft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Six-Party-System-5-dense.png\"){kind=link}