EDITORIAL
U.S. Elections:
The Working Class Trapped in the Two-Party System

Nov 11, 2024

The world woke up on November 6 to find that Donald Trump had been elected to be the next president of the United States, starting on January 20, 2025.

Many expressed shock and horror. How could a convicted rapist, felon and twice-impeached president actually win re-election?

Maybe the answer could reside in the nature of capitalist politics itself.

To start with, Trump did not win because of some new surge of voters. He ended up getting pretty much exactly what he got four years ago. The difference in the election was, Harris got many fewer votes than Biden got four years ago. That was the difference in this election, state by state. Previous Biden voters just did not vote for Harris—or at all.

So, why not? For answers, we can look to all the problems working people have confronted in the past four years. An accelerated inflation that blew up prices of groceries, fuel and housing following on the heels of decades of reductions in workers’ standard of living. Dealing with a crumbling infrastructure and ravaged medical care system.

And while inflation came down recently, prices did not. Wages have not risen to keep up. This deterioration in workers’ standard of living was virtually ignored by the Harris campaign. In fact, they bragged that they had created higher wages and a better economy.

On top of that, the Biden foreign policy of the past four years has produced human rights disasters and the threat of ever wider war. Just in the past year, Israel has carried out a massacre in Gaza that has resulted in over 43,000 civilian deaths and has implemented the complete destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure; housing, streets, bridges, businesses and public facilities. Forcing evacuation to one ruined area after another. Now that war is expanding, with Israel invading Lebanon. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to send arms and other aid to Israel, while pretending to chastise it for its “excesses.”

The Harris campaign tried to play both sides, both touting its support for Israel and expressing “sadness” about the loss of life in Gaza and promising something better in the future. Is there any wonder voters didn’t see any reason to believe there would be a policy change?

And there is the war in Ukraine, directed by U.S. imperialism. And how many more?

People were fed up. And they voted that way.

Yes, Trump voters voted as they had in the past. Trump retained his popular vote from four years ago. But Harris’s vote dropped significantly from what Biden received four years ago. Clearly, the big change is that the voters Democrats depended on four years ago did not feel the same mandate to vote for the Democrats this time around.

Yes, there are voters who accept Trump’s reactionary attacks on women, minorities and immigrants. Yes, there are those who couldn’t accept a woman for president. But there are plenty more who didn’t vote for Harris because they were fed up.

Like it or not, Trump was seen as the “change” candidate in a system that always presents two candidates, Democrat and Republican, with no representative of the working class in sight or at the table. As usual, those who wanted a change, having only the choice of the “lesser of two evils”, would vote the sitting party out of office.

Trump has no answer to the problems facing working people. He is a representative of the billionaire class as much as the Democrats have been. He will serve up the same bitter stew in these next four years that was forced down our throats by previous administrations.

Those who voted for him in the hope that he would better their condition will be very disappointed.

The only way out for working people is to fight like hell to keep the billionaire class at bay and to build our own party that represents our own interests in the face of the attacks of the ruling elite and their governments.

To fight for our own interests as workers with the means that we have—in the streets, and in the workplaces, where we can shut things down and take back from the capitalists.

No matter who is the president, from whatever party, that is the power that we have and that is the way we can use it.