The Counterpublic Papers vol. 5 no. 20

April 13, 2020

.   Nothing like fat Detroit beets. (For real though, who knew?)    Sanders formally left the race last week, as I thought he would. I’m writing a longer piece for the Jacobin about Sanders and black voters, and will probably use a little bit of last week’s newsletter to frame it. The biggest conversation folks are having on the left now given how bad a candidate Biden is, is what to do?

For me, the answer is really simple. Vote. And organize. The same as it ever was.

Blacks have been casting harm reduction votes since we’ve been voting. The closest to a non-harm reduction vote I’ve cast at the national level was for Obama in 2008, but even then I didn’t want Obama out of the primary. Whatever people say about 2016, Clinton didn’t lose the election because of us—technically she didn’t lose the election so much as have it stolen from her. But to the extent she’s responsible, she lost because she thought she was so privileged that she didn’t have to campaign  for votes in critical states, and she lost because she underestimated Trump.

Again, she didn’t lose…but to the extent that narrative is the one we go with, there’s that. She didn’t lose because people who supported Sanders turned to Trump. She didn’t lose because those people stayed home.

Similarly if Biden loses it’ll be because he couldn’t turn the corner to realize what was apparent two months ago but is even more apparent now—the issues that Sanders ran on, the policies he supported, are the policies we need to create a 21st century America worth living in. He’ll lose because he doesn’t effectively fight for the extension of democracy. It won’t be because Sanders voters decide to stay home.

With that said, though, there is a question. What’s the responsibility of people who are progressive?

This is what I plan to do. I plan to vote for Biden and if the conditions allow, campaign for him. I do so knowing he’s the worst candidate of the 21st century. I do so as an act of harm reduction, recognizing that how I feel about him as a candidate, how I feel about his party, doesn’t really matter in the broad scheme of things. My vote, thinking about it in this way isn’t mine. It’s my mother’s vote, my father’s vote. It’s my former wife’s mother’s vote. The janitor forced to work even now at Hopkins: It’s her vote. There are all types of ways I can organize before, during, and after to create conditions under which a new political tendency will seize power. Voting isn’t the only thing to do. It’s really in one way the most consequential small thing I can do. But if I can’t cast a vote and campaign for a candidate knowing I do so in support of a broader cause, then I can’t plausibly call myself a responsible adult.

Your mileage may vary. To quote a friend of mine though, if you don’t plan to vote for political reasons, join an organization for the express purpose of changing the political climate, either by forcing Biden to do more to earn the progressive voters who may vote, or by increasing the potential of some type of electoral success in the future. At some point in time, even if you believe revolutionary conditions are required to replace this mode of government with something more humane, we’re going to need a majority. And right now I don’t think we have one.

….

What happened in Wisconsin last Tuesday was criminal.

And, I believe, a test run.

To recap, Wisconsin held their primary last Tuesday. There were two important votes to be cast. The first was for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The second was for the democratic presidential candidate. The Wisconsin GOP has used every electoral tool at its disposal to maintain minority power—they’ve gutted labor unions (with, I believe, the critical exception of the police and perhaps fire fighters), they’ve hamstrung the ability of the democratic governor to repeal most of the GOP’s legislative agenda, and they hold X number of state seats even though they only constitute X percent of the state’s population. In the wake of the coronavirus the state of Wisconsin decided to go ahead with its April primary even as at least a dozen other states decided against it. The governor tried to postpone the primary by executive order and the GOP controlled state Supreme Court rejected this. He then sought to at the very least extend the length of time voters would have to mail in ballots .  The GOP promptly fought this decision and the US Supreme Court agreed with that. The electoral results will probably be known as soon as you get this, maybe a bit after. But what we do know is that people had to wait in lines for hours, the number of polls people were able to use were cut significantly, and given the way the virus works there’s a legitimate concern that people were infected.

(My middle son was playing Call of Duty with someone in Wisconsin. Turns out he’d worked the polls in Wisconsin and in his estimation shook the hands of several hundred people and was in the middle of a two week personal quarantine as a result.)

The result was a lot of handwringing, but not much else that I’m aware of.

….

The US Postal Service has been under threat for the past several decades. Once the neoliberal idea that government should function like a business takes hold, the first two major projects the GOP tried to cut were social security (and this actually had bipartisan support albeit weak) and the US Postal service. In 1971 the US Postal Service was transformed to a quasi-private agency required to fund itself. In 2006 the GOP passed legislation that forced the USPS to fund its retiree benefits for the next several decades within the next several years. Even given the robust public support the USPS has,  a combination of technological advances (more specifically the rise of email) the growth of private logistics firms (Amazon and FedEx are the major players here), and rhetoric suggesting the USPS is poorly run, it’s been easier to imagine. Particularly given that black men and women are disproportionately employed by the entity.

As a result of these policies, which haven’t received much pushback from the Democratic Party, the USPS is in danger of running out of money as early as June. The coronavirus stimulus package contained a measure in it to fund the USPS to the tune of $13 billion, less than 1% of the total relief package. That money never made it into the final bill. At this point there is enough general support for privatizing the USPS that I’ve had to see at least one person make the case for it—as soon as you have to argue why privatizing the USPS is a bad idea you’re in trouble because it means that the counter-argument has gained legitimacy.

On the one hand the USPS is such a national institution that it’d be hard to imagine even the GOP supporting gutting it.

But, if the argument is that the USPS is not only inefficient and slothful but also is potentially aiding and abetting voter fraud?

….

I bring up these two together—to make a few points.

First to point out how the GOP is taking a range of policies that it’s already supported and in the process of bringing them together to make a broadside attack not just against American institutions (voting, the mail) but against the notion of an American state itself.

Second, to point out, given this, how weak the response is to these actions. What responses we’ve seen (and I haven’t seen many, much less any that connect these few dots) have been largely responses that adhere to institutional norms. These norms allow for handwringing, and they threaten punishment in the form of legacy damage, but there isn’t much else.

Third to take these first two to suggest that this is in fact how a country slides into deeply regressive political forms. There are exogenous and sometimes endogenous shocks that drive this process, but I think these shocks are usually followed up by one side taking a set of fairly aggressive actions to define the terms of engagement, breaking rules and norms in doing so, and the other side adhering to the norms as if those norms will somehow win out. And history suggests it doesn’t quiet work that way.

We’ve a lot of work to do.

….

Been meaning to send a few friends links to Questlove’s sets—I listen to him as I go to sleep:

(The Stevie Wonder set isn't online anymore. Youtube probably got to it.) There’s a lot of good writing on the coronavirus particularly as it relates to capitalism. I’m going to share one of the best, given to me by my colleague and friend Sam Chambers.

….

We had a tornado warning today and for a second it stormed like no one’s business. Turns out I live in one of the Maryland zip codes with the highest infection levels. But you know what? The Baltimore area is blessed with the best and brightest days I’ve ever seen. So when I came outside after the end of the storm hoping to catch a rainbow I was able to bask in the sunlight just for a bit. Was able to sketch out what my spring/summer garden will look like. It is an honor and a wonder that I’m able to write this. And perhaps a wonder that you’re able to read it. We’re in this together. We will come out of this together.

Until next week. Reach out. Hold on.