by Kofi Natambu
December 31, 2024
The Panopticon Review
December 31, 2024
The Panopticon Review
Eight weeks ago on November 5, 2024 the national voting public of the United States of 154 million citizens--the second largest number of voters in a presidential election in American history next to the previously record setting total of 155 million in 2020--re-elected the former 45th president from 2016-2020, Donald J. Trump, as the new 47th president of the United States in an especially bilious national election rife with the most notoriously egregious, despicable, and vile public displays of overt racism, raging misogyny, rampant xenophobia, blatantly fascist propaganda, and endlessly demagogic and manipulative misinformation campaign ever spewed by a leading presidential candidate in the modern era (i.e. since 1945).
Meanwhile the Democratic Party led by President Joe Biden dramatically collapsed upon itself following the personal struggles of its standard bearer and his subsequent inability to properly perform his duties on the campaign trail due to the now clearly visible cognitive and physical decline of Biden as a result of the various demands on the rapidly aging candidate. This crisis led to a national decline in confidence with respect to the President’s overall performance and thus clearly jeopardized his chances to win re-election. As this problem rapidly metastasized in the summer of 2024 and was exposed to the entire nation in a disastrous nationally televised debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the Democratic Party went into an immediate tailspin with various members of its caucus in Congress as well as among its party leadership hierarchy and elites and its major donor class demanding that he now step aside from his leading role for the good of both the party and the nation.
As a result Biden was forced to do what he had been evading for at least two years and that is formally step down as the incumbent 2024 Democratic Party presidential candidate and choose a viable alternative to replace him on the ballot. Given the stark options of deciding on allowing the party to go ahead with plans to hold a now very late and sure to be chaotic and clearly disruptive 'open primary' during the Democratic Party convention in late summer, early fall leading into the general election in November or simply choose to nominate his own vice president as his open successor to replace him in the electoral campaign to defeat Donald Trump, Biden chose the latter option and insisted on making his VP Kamala Harris his pick to replace him on the ballot. Despite some inevitable grumbling and dissension within the party over the complicated ideological and administrative dynamics of allowing Biden to choose Harris the general party quickly closed ranks around Vice President Harris given the new time constraints and obvious limitations imposed on President Biden's candidancy in the wake of this mounting conflict. As a result Biden subsequently announced his nomination of Harris to the media on July 21 some three weeks after the national/global debacle of his own televised debate meltdown of June 27. The die was now cast for VP Harris to use the now remaining 107 days before the election to mount a major national campaign for the presidency under what were extremely challenging and frankly daunting circumstances.
Meanwhile the Democratic Party led by President Joe Biden dramatically collapsed upon itself following the personal struggles of its standard bearer and his subsequent inability to properly perform his duties on the campaign trail due to the now clearly visible cognitive and physical decline of Biden as a result of the various demands on the rapidly aging candidate. This crisis led to a national decline in confidence with respect to the President’s overall performance and thus clearly jeopardized his chances to win re-election. As this problem rapidly metastasized in the summer of 2024 and was exposed to the entire nation in a disastrous nationally televised debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the Democratic Party went into an immediate tailspin with various members of its caucus in Congress as well as among its party leadership hierarchy and elites and its major donor class demanding that he now step aside from his leading role for the good of both the party and the nation.
As a result Biden was forced to do what he had been evading for at least two years and that is formally step down as the incumbent 2024 Democratic Party presidential candidate and choose a viable alternative to replace him on the ballot. Given the stark options of deciding on allowing the party to go ahead with plans to hold a now very late and sure to be chaotic and clearly disruptive 'open primary' during the Democratic Party convention in late summer, early fall leading into the general election in November or simply choose to nominate his own vice president as his open successor to replace him in the electoral campaign to defeat Donald Trump, Biden chose the latter option and insisted on making his VP Kamala Harris his pick to replace him on the ballot. Despite some inevitable grumbling and dissension within the party over the complicated ideological and administrative dynamics of allowing Biden to choose Harris the general party quickly closed ranks around Vice President Harris given the new time constraints and obvious limitations imposed on President Biden's candidancy in the wake of this mounting conflict. As a result Biden subsequently announced his nomination of Harris to the media on July 21 some three weeks after the national/global debacle of his own televised debate meltdown of June 27. The die was now cast for VP Harris to use the now remaining 107 days before the election to mount a major national campaign for the presidency under what were extremely challenging and frankly daunting circumstances.
Further the fact that the general Democratic Party itself was still not entirely clear on which specific strategic, tactical, and goal oriented directions, policies, and programs it wanted to fully commit to and struggle on behalf of in fighting for what it deemed to be a massive existential and practical task of "saving democracy” and thus putting forward a decisive alternative agenda of directly engaging and decisively defeating what the "clear and present danger" of the openly fascist politics and criminally licentious, illegal, and unconstitutional behavior by Trump, the GOP, the MAGA mass movement and its cultlike Trumpian voter base actually is and represents. In addition this entailed the DP politically combatting the many far rightwing think tanks and large dark money PACS and its supporting institutions as well as an ever widening range of local, state and federally based organizations which are dedicated to such ominous clearly fascist programs and agendas as Project 2025.
The net result of these deep seated political, cultural, and ideological realities tied of course to the larger economic and social forces that rule/dominate the political economy and much of civil society is that as always the racial, gender, and class dynamics of American society in 2024 going into 2025 are as starkly conflicted, divided, and crisis filled as ever with 87% of the national black electorate voting overwhelmingly for Harris just as they have for every single Democratic Party candidate except once since 1952, while as always 60% of all white American voters voted for Trump (and as white voters nationally have voted exclusively for every single Republican candidate since 1952 except ONCE in 1964).
What was surprising about the national vote this time around and ultimately proved even more disturbing generally speaking was the 46% of Latino American voters overall (50% of them male) who voted solidly for Trump. This vote indicated that there is a very pronounced gender split/division within the national Latino American vote where nearly 70% of Latinas voted for Harris. Since a whopping 83% of the national electorate are now represented by white and Latino voters overall and these respective national groups of voters are the top two electoral groups of American voters in terms of baseline percentages in the country as a whole these results do not auger well for at least the immediate future of the country going into the next two to three electoral cycles in 2028, 2032, and 2036.
What remains true whether we want to fully and honestly acknowledge and directly engage the fundamental facts and foundational contradictions in the body politic or not is the one glaring reality that cannot be swept under the rug no matter what the often truly clueless and self absorbed pundits and conventional Democratic and Republican party affiliated hacks say or think otherwise):
HALF of the national electorate (over 77 million people which is the second highest number of votes for any candidate in American history) openly and resoundingly voted for a fascist for President and thus a fascist government in this election. This result is far more than merely 'problematic' about what it says and signifies about the society we're actually living in today and no hopelessly fetishized and utterly reductive notion of a mythologically heroic and strangely immutable "(white) working class" is gonna save any of us any time soon (and please remember that the great majority of this segment of the national electorate along with the middle class has been voting for the Republicans at both the presidential and congressional levels since 1968 which is the major reason why out of the seven (7) Presidents who have been elected and re-elected since 1952 five (5) of them are reactionary white supremacists, corporate capitalist shills, imperial militarists, and raging sexists/misogynists from the GOP.
What was surprising about the national vote this time around and ultimately proved even more disturbing generally speaking was the 46% of Latino American voters overall (50% of them male) who voted solidly for Trump. This vote indicated that there is a very pronounced gender split/division within the national Latino American vote where nearly 70% of Latinas voted for Harris. Since a whopping 83% of the national electorate are now represented by white and Latino voters overall and these respective national groups of voters are the top two electoral groups of American voters in terms of baseline percentages in the country as a whole these results do not auger well for at least the immediate future of the country going into the next two to three electoral cycles in 2028, 2032, and 2036.
What remains true whether we want to fully and honestly acknowledge and directly engage the fundamental facts and foundational contradictions in the body politic or not is the one glaring reality that cannot be swept under the rug no matter what the often truly clueless and self absorbed pundits and conventional Democratic and Republican party affiliated hacks say or think otherwise):
HALF of the national electorate (over 77 million people which is the second highest number of votes for any candidate in American history) openly and resoundingly voted for a fascist for President and thus a fascist government in this election. This result is far more than merely 'problematic' about what it says and signifies about the society we're actually living in today and no hopelessly fetishized and utterly reductive notion of a mythologically heroic and strangely immutable "(white) working class" is gonna save any of us any time soon (and please remember that the great majority of this segment of the national electorate along with the middle class has been voting for the Republicans at both the presidential and congressional levels since 1968 which is the major reason why out of the seven (7) Presidents who have been elected and re-elected since 1952 five (5) of them are reactionary white supremacists, corporate capitalist shills, imperial militarists, and raging sexists/misogynists from the GOP.
Their names from 1952-2024 we should never forget are Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald W. Reagan, George W. Bush, and DONALD J. TRUMP)...
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
NOTE: To access previous commentaries on 'some final reflections on the presidential elections of 2020, 2016, and 2012' please click on the following links:
