2024 U.S. Elections:
Democrats Pay the Price for a Rotten Economy

Nov 9, 2024

It’s a “rout”—that’s what headlines claimed the day after the election. Trump was said not only to be winning the popular vote by a big margin, he was on track to sweep up all of the “swing” states—solidifying a large electoral vote count. The Republicans already took over the Senate, and perhaps the House of Representatives. Trump, with his usual understatement, declared it, “the biggest victory ever for any president.”

In fact, as more numbers came in, it became clear that this was not so much a victory for Trump, as it was a vote against the Democrats. Trump appears to have about the same (or even slightly fewer) votes than he had in 2020 when he lost. But the Democratic vote literally plunged, with Harris down maybe 11 million votes from what Biden got in 2020.

In fact, it seems that a lot of people just sat out the 2024 election. The turnout was not particularly big, about 58% of eligible voters, down from 66% in 2020. Only about 143 million people voted, 15 million fewer than last time, and about 19 million people didn’t even bother to register to vote.

All of this is provisional—given that votes are still being counted in many states, particularly in California—but at least an outline can be seen.

This country has always been marked by deep strains of racism and misogyny, and it was obvious that Trump played on this history in his campaign to denigrate Harris. But history doesn’t explain the magnitude of the Democratic Party loss in 2024.

On the face of it, people were voting, as the saying goes, “their pocketbook.” And their pocketbook was not doing well. Inflation was killing most people, and above all the laboring people. The lack of decent paying jobs was forcing more people to work two jobs, or even three. Many more were working in the “underground economy.” And all the measures of social disintegration were painfully increasing: homelessness, drug usage, drug overdose, suicide, domestic violence.

No, the economy was not doing well, despite Biden’s claim that it was. It might have been doing well for the wealthiest layers of the population, but not for ordinary working people. Biden’s claim, with Harris signing on, was just a slap in the face, a mark of how disdainful the Democratic Party is toward the ordinary population.

So Trump got in with much less than full support from the population (only a little over one quarter voted for him). Nonetheless, Trump is about to be in the White House, and he will use the election to claim legitimacy for what he does.

The danger is not that Trump is now in position to carry out reactionary policies. The policies carried out by government, no matter who occupied the White House, have long been reactionary. And from one to the next, they got worse, and would have done so under Harris. The economy has been in the midst of a long-lasting crisis, which reinforces the push of the capitalist class to extort more wealth from labor. The political system simply signs on, helping not only to shift more wealth to the capitalists, but also to atomize the working class.

The danger of this election is not the so-called threat against American “democracy,” which has never been a democracy, but only a political system under which the people with money set the rules.

The lurking danger in Trump’s victory is that workers could begin to assimilate some of the most vile, and demeaning attitudes toward each other, attitudes that will help divide the working class just when it needs to bring all of its forces together.

Trump will soon be President, his party probably in control of Congress. If so, he won’t be able to blame the Democrats when he doesn’t carry out the myriad promises he made to workers.

But to carry them out, to really improve the situation of the laboring population, the majority in this country, Trump would have to take a knife to all the policies and tax codes that favor the capitalist class, the wealthiest class today—his class.

Of course, he will not do that.

And so we can expect to hear—from the White House—more screeds against criminal immigrants and welfare cheats, against women who can’t do “men’s jobs” but want them; denunciations of transsexuals invading women’s locker rooms, etc. etc. etc.

The profound danger in a situation with a demagogue like Trump in office comes from the fact the working class has no party of its own, no party that speaks from the viewpoint of the interests and needs of every part of the working class.

From that standpoint, it’s significant that in this election there were campaigns for a working class party, in which the multitudes of the working class could find their place. These campaigns were small, carried out by a few militants only, in the states of Michigan, Illinois and California. They, of course, cannot counter Trump.

But those three campaigns, small in Michigan, even if touching the whole state, only in one district each in Illinois and California—at least gave working people the possibility to register their support for the perspective that working people need their own party. The name of the slate in Michigan and Illinois said it all: Working Class Party. And it was for that name that many people voted, several hundred thousand in Michigan, some thousands in Illinois and California. This vote shows that there is a road that has been opened, a road that needs to be taken.

The following two pages lay out the perspective of the militants who started this work, and a report on the results of their campaigns for a working class party.