Introduction:
The Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign recently held a debate on whether socialists should support voting for Democrats in 2024, or ever. Lifelong socialist, former president of AFSCME Local 444 and co-chair of the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign spoke in the affirmative. Bob Price, former delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council and member of the Freedom Socialist Party spoke in the negative. Below is the video recording of the full event plus the transcript of Cheryl’s presentation. Oaklandsocialist fully agrees with Cheryl.

Cheryl Zuur:
Let’s be clear: This debate is not about whether the Democratic Party has ever been or can ever be depended on to advance the interests of the working class and the oppressed. It cannot. What this debate is about is whether we must do everything we can to keep the MAGA Republicans out, including voting for the only party that can do so at election time.

There is nothing more important than keeping Trump and Vance out of the White House.

There is a reason why  fascists and authoritarians around the world are intent on DESTROYING the right to vote, or rendering it completely meaningless.  We should consider that fact very carefully.

In this presentation I will address the following questions; 

1. In what ways are Trump and Vance different from past Republican candidates? Why is the Democratic Party now the actual “lesser evil”? What is Project 2025?
2. Who will be harmed if Trump returns to power? 
3. Isn’t it obvious that leftists should defend democratic rights and institutions such as a free press?
4. What forces are rooting for Trump and Vance to win? How will a Democratic  administration differ from a  Republican one on Ukraine and Palestine?5.How can a movement to stop MAGA develop and what role can socialists potentially play and what is the role of disinformation in this campaign?

In 2007 Naomi Klein published the book “Shock Doctrine” which meticulously documents “shock therapy” the brute tactic of systematically using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock—to push through radical pro-corporate measures. 

Since the rise of MAGA we have been living through a constant form of shock therapy where almost every week something incredible occurs that we have never seen before.

When Trump was elected in 2016 politicians and big business were shocked to learn that he was not controllable in the way that all previous presidents had been. 

 Quite aside from his extreme narcissism, Trump played the central role in creating and now leading a far right populist wave which he is now riding. Just as much as he created this wave, he is a creature of it and is largely beyond control even of the capitalist class itself.

In May 2020 President Trump wanted to send active-duty military troops to control the growing wave of protests against the murder of George Floyd in May. According to then secretary of defense Mark Esper and other witnesses, Trump was adamant that the protestors be shot.

In his last speech as Trump’s top military adviser and the nation’s top general Mark Miley said:

“We are unique among the world’s militaries,” Milley said. “We don’t take an oath to a country, we don’t take an oath to a tribe, we don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America-and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

 If Trump and Vance succeed in implementing the actions outlined in the 900 pages of Project 2025 it will be shock therapy on steroids. They will end government as we know it through Schedule F,  which would put 50,000 federal workers under direct control of the president, under threat of being fired.  They will privatize everything under the sun, institutionalize white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny and christian nationalism. 

 Trump wants to take immediate and direct control of the Federal bureaucracy, the military and the Department of Justice.

As president, Trump consistently defied democratic norms. He believed, and continues to believe, it is right and proper for the president to control the Justice Department to harass his enemies and protect his friends, to punish owners of independent media, and to deny the possibility that he could ever legitimately lose a democratic election.

The fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Trump cult that is called the Republican party is that the Democrats will maintain what we have  – capitalist democracy, or put another way democratic rights under capitalism. The Trump/Vance cult and its MAGA base, which is today’s Republican Party, will unleash an unprecedented attack on those democratic rights. We would see an extreme increase in  acts of terrorism carried out by Trump’s base. 

These are the “values” that the Trump/Vance cult intend to make the law of the land. Vance wants to institutionalize heterosexual marriage and criminalize LGBTQ+people as Putin has in Russia.

It’s all laid out in Project 2025. They will close the department of education as it won’t be necessary. Public education will be run by private for profit companies, headed by white christian nationalists. They will arrest librarians who refuse to remove banned books from libraries. 

They don’t need to hide their plans, because they could care less about what the majority of people want in this country. They will rule by decree and brute force. They’ve  succeeded in implementing elements of Project 2025; just look at the 21 states where abortion has been banned or severely restricted. The banning of books in thousands of school districts, the end of academic freedom in Florida. Or the SCOTUS decisions of the last few years; presidential immunity, reversal of  the Chevron decision and more. All of these are directly from the MAGA playbook. 

Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate because he trusts Vance to do what Pence refused to do. 

J.D. Vance is of particular concern because given Trump’s age Vance could end up as president at some point in a Trump/Vance administration. He represents the most extreme of Trump, but with a strategic plan. The same day that Trump announced Vance as his running mate, Elon Musk announced that he would be donating 45 million dollars a month to the Trump/Vance ticket.  Vance is linked to and has the full support of a group of neo fascist techno autocrats who have gone way beyond libertarian ideas. These include Silicon Valley billionaires Musk, Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and others.

Not enough people have heard of Curtis Yarvin.. Yarvin is described as Thiel’s “house political philosopher”. He is a racist crackpot openly contemptuous of democracy who thinks the United States would be better off as a monarchy. Yarvin supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

With Vance now on board as VP, Yarvin is positioned to become a sort of Alexander Dugin type figure in the White House. Alexander Dugin is a Russian fascist philosopher and political strategist who has largely shaped Putin’s rule. 

The pre MAGA Republican Party  stood for smaller government- but the MAGA cult now stands for the dismantling of  the institutions of capitalist democracy, including  a media independent of government control. .

Who will be the most at risk if Trump and Vance take power?

Immigrants and people of color
On day one he has promised to round up literally millions of undocumented immigrants and put them in detention camps and massive deportations.   Raids will be conducted in workplaces, schools and through door to door searches in immigrant neighborhoods. These actions would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike. These mass raids and detentions will be a useful practice for using military tactics to arrest large numbers of people later who attempt to protest the Trump/Vance shock policies. This is the meaning of the signs saying “mass deportation” that were printed up and waved around at the Republican convention.

Racism and white supremacy are at the heart of the MAGA project, which is why 44,000 black women and 21,000 black men so far attended zoom calls raising funds for Harris. 

This election will be a referendum on racism.

LGBTQ+
In Trump’s authoritarian world , anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order. MAGA  seeks to eliminate anyone who does not fit  into their rigid and misogynist world view. Project 2025 will end all protections for LGBTQ+ people. The Trump/Vance “traditional values” rhetoric incites violence towards LGBTQ people. 

Disabled people
Trump’s mockery of disabled people is well known. He considers them less than human. He refused to help the severely disabled son of his nephew.  When he was president he said, 

 “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

Vance’s philosopher Curtis Yarvin has said that “unproductive” people should be made into biofuel as that would be a more humane alternative to genocide. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control about 1 in 4 Americans lives with a physical or cognitive disability. There are approximately 7-10 million immunocompromised. And as of April 2024 there are approximately 17 million Americans living with Long Covid who are also immunocompromised. In September 2023 JD Vance introduced the “Freedom to Breath” act which was  signed by Biden, in part because of a poll that said Americans were “done” with the Pandemic even though it continues to cause harm today.   From masking to accommodations for disabled people, first and foremost comes profits. MAGA amplifies this drive by seeking to destroy all sense of solidarity. 

Women
Everyone here knows that overturning every gain made by the women’s movement is on their hit list. Reproductive rights will be criminalized and a national ban on abortion implemented. Vance has compared abortion to slavery. Vance says he will end no fault divorce. 

In addition to all of this, MAGA administration will be a gift to big business.  Schedule F,, a Trump/Vance administration will delight big business by putting an end to regulations of all kinds  including environmental protection, water quality, food safety, and  public health. 

The privatization of public lands is also  on the agenda. 

In Project 2025  they say “We must go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative state.” 

A Trump/Vance regime will be one of extreme cruelty, vengeance and retribution against Trump and MAGA’s perceived enemies, which certainly includes everyone here. 

3)Shouldn’t leftists defend democratic rights and institutions such as a free press?

Limited as it may be under capitalism, we still have democratic rights like freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and freedom to form unions.  You cannot say you support democratic rights and then say that it doesn’t matter if you vote in November, or that the two parties are the same. One of them calls for dictatorship and the other one does not. 

Dismissing this is dismissing the entire history of workers’ struggles to hold onto basic rights. It dismisses  heroic African American  people past and present who gave their lives for the right to vote, and organize freely. If you say that the Trump cult and the Democrats are the same today, you completely dismiss their sacrifices. 

4)What forces are rooting for Trump and Vance to win? How will a Democratic  administration differ from a  Republican one on Ukraine and Palestine? 

Trump is a member of an international mutual dictator admiration club. I will just name of few of his  friends who can’t wait for him to return to power;

Putin is at the top of the list, he has been in power for 3 terms with no end in sight and has turned Russia into a  police state. 

Netanyahu, who, like Trump, needs to stay in power to avoid prison.

Modi, the authoritarian Hindu supremacist of India. 

North Korea’s ruthless dictator Kim Jong Un with whom Trump has had a “bromance” since  2018 when they first met. At that first dinner Kim told Trump how he had beheaded his uncle for being a traitor and then had the head displayed publicly. Trump laughed and probably thought, good idea. 

 Viktor Orban of Hungary who has been in power for twelve years is the role model that American conservatives aspire to more than any other. 

Some lesser known members of the mutual admiration club are the lunatic libertarian Javier Milie of Argentina.

Nayeb Bukele of El Salvador who calls himself “the coolest dictator in the world”.  He has imprisoned almost 2% of the Salvadoran population using extreme police brutality. 

As Trump has said, “dictators know best”. 

Trump has long standing ties to Putin and Russia.Trump  and Vance have promised that they will end aid to Ukraine and facilitate handing it over to Russia .The results will be catastrophic for Ukraine and democracy in Europe.  It will be a huge victory for Russia, for authoritarianism and fascist forces around the world. All defenders of human and democratic rights, social equality and an end to environmental degradation depend on the defeat of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you stand with Ukraine, you must work to prevent Trump and Vance from taking power.

 Many on the left dismiss the idea that there are any differences between Biden/Harris and Trump over Israel/Palestine. They point out  that Biden/Harris  support Israel and will continue to arm Israel in its genocidal war against Gaza. Trump’s approach can be seen by the comment of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was Trump’s unofficial ambassador to the entire region. 

 He said:  “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.

 A recent article in Haaretz explained how the fascists in Israel are trying to overturn Israel’s “step by step” expansion of the settlements in the West Bank. They want a wholesale and total annexation of the West Bank, which would necessarily mean widespread ethnic cleansing by the fascist settlers, unopposed by the Knesset. The  article made clear that they are held in check by Biden & Co.

Trump would give them the green light. 

Today, Israel is closer to war with Iran than ever. The Biden administration opposes this. Given Trump’s historic Islamophobia as well as his hatred of the Iranian regime, it seems likely that not only would he not oppose such a war, including an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, he could very possibly join in on it.

These are the reasons why according to a recent article in AL Monitor many Palestinians in Gaza support the Democrats and take the position of “anybody but Trump”. We should join them.

There are also domestic considerations: Trump and Vance would seek to crush any protests against Israeli genocide. 

5)And finally really the most important question of this discussion; How can a movement to stop MAGA develop and what role can socialists potentially play? 

First off, if you don’t think that stopping Trump/Vance from taking power matters enough to vote, or to vote for the only candidate who can get elected in place of them, then you are not serious about building a movement to stop MAGA and providing an actual alternative to the Democrats.

In addition, this is a position of privilege, and it must be said, white privilege. This very arrogant left will be completely unprepared for a Trump/Vance regime.

The left is completely out of touch with the working class, ordinary people.  I’m talking about the ORGANIZATIONS of the left, not the IDEAS of the left. In 2016 Bernie Sanders received tremendous support because of the IDEAS of socialism. 

If Trump and Vance are no different from previous  Republicans then there is no reason to do anything different from the past. No one but the LEFT thinks this way. 

This kind of thinking is possible only if you ignore facts, consider Marxism a kind of evangelical religion where nothing is ever questioned or you exist in an echo chamber.  This is why for the most part it is completely marginalized and virtually unknown to working class people. It will become completely irrelevant if it continues on this path. But maybe that is a necessary step towards building a new, healthier, independent democratic socialist movement.

Most of the left has been absorbed by campism and the rest of it is attached to the Democratic Party. The sooner the campist left dies off the better. 

Those that hold the view that voting doesn’t matter and that there is no one to vote for are in terrible company. Because that  is the exact  propaganda being pushed mainly by the Kremlin, and to lesser degrees China and Iran. The fangs of their disinformation campaign have sunk deep into American culture, with the left and the right being the conduit.

 Trump himself is telling his base now that they don’t need to vote. 

Burn the system down, except that the people prepared to take power aren’t socialists. They are the extreme right wing of authoritarians and neo fascists. 

Organized labor  now represents less than 11% of the workforce. Exact figures are impossible to know but about 50% of Teamster members and 50% of UAW members support Trump. 

As a former union president and activist whose experience went way beyond my own public sector union, I can tell you that members are ALIENATED from their unions which they mainly and correctly see as dues collecting agencies that do little to help them on the job. Workers need and want fighting unions. Unfortunately, many of the same left groups and individuals who oppose ever voting for Democrats do little or nothing to build an opposition to the cowardly policies of the union bureaucracy. 

Thanks to the labor movement here being tied at the hip to the Democrats, with a whole sector of the left participating in that apparatus, we have no independent labor party. 

The outpouring of support to Kamala Harris demonstrates that Americans want to stop MAGA and Trump. What alternative to the Democrats do they have? Absolutely none. 

The challenge that we face is how to actually build something serious and appealing to mass numbers of people. Difficult but not impossible. But to do that, MAGA must be defeated. 

We have seen the outcome of the recent European elections and they are very mixed. 

France and the UK narrowly dodged the authoritarian bullet.  

In the UK the Labour Party, with all of its flaws, routed the Tories. However, Nigel Farage’s “Reform UK” party won five seats and Farage said “we’re coming for Labour” and vowed to build a “national movement”. He further said ““This is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you.” Farage is in many ways the British equivalent of Trump, so this is an ominous development. In the last week we have seen the rioting and fights with police by racist anti immigrant supporters of Farage. 

 In France the trade union movement called for a left electoral front of the Greens, Socialists, communists and the Unbowed party, parties that normally have nothing to do with each other and kept the Fascist “National Rally” at bay.

 In Brazil a center-left coalition of ten parties narrowly elected Lula in 2023 against the fascist Trump ally  Bolsonaro. 

They formed broad coalitions to maintain democracy. It was the same in Brazil when the left united to support Lula and remove Bolsonaro in 2023.

But the left in France and Brazil wouldn’t have bothered  if they didn’t recognize that voting and democratic rights matter.

There is a whole sector of the left in the United States that does not agree with either of those premises. 

 We don’t have the luxury of defeating MAGA like the French. We don’t have a parliamentary system and there are no significant parties of the left that run candidates in any meaningful way. 

In his July 2024 article in New Politics Green Party co-founder and 2020 Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins argues that socialists should vote for GP candidate Jill Stein, who opposes aid to Ukraine and is a Putin apologist.

I am calling for NO SUPPORT for any third party candidate, especially those like Cornel West and Jill Stein who oppose aid to Ukraine. Furthermore, by refusing to distinguish between capitalist democracy and an authoritarian regime with elements of actual fascism, they are encouraging the most myopic and one-sided view imaginable.

They are in effect encouraging people to commit collective suicide. To the extent that they have any impact they are a barrier to any movement of workers and the oppressed and the sooner they collapse and the better. 

There are activists in the Palestinian solidarity movement who insist that Biden and the Democrats must be punished for the genocide in Gaza to teach them a lesson once and for all that there is a price to be paid for war crimes. This is another kind of  magical thinking and denial of what we are facing. The people who will actually be punished by a Trump return to power will be PALESTINIANS, and many other people. Some Democratic politicians will be impeached and sent to prison by Trump. Maybe they will even share jail cells with activists arrested for protesting the genocide in Gaza. 

It is an insurmountable contradiction to first minimize the differences between today’s Democrats and the MAGA Republicans and then turn around and call for organizing to resist MAGA. That is why the ultra left is doing nothing serious to build that resistance.

In addition to a Trump/Vance regime taking power, we have the MAGA base and it’s increasing willingness towards open violence. No one knows what will happen at black voting polls in November. 

Harris and the Democrats are not talking about it much, other than Biden’s too little too late proposed SCOTUS reforms, but they know that the MAGA campaign intends, through it’s manipulation of the state electors, to throw the electoral results to the SCOTUS, who will appoint Trump as supreme leader. 

The Democrats’ plan  is to file lawsuits just as they did in 2020  and before that in 2000. 

This is the only plan of action that the Democrats would consider. They oppose mass movements. 

More and more people are rightly worried about this and have no idea what to do, other than get a gun,  and see nowhere to turn to.

The starting point is to campaign for a vote against authoritarianism and fascism; a critical and necessary vote for Harris. Union members could demand that their leadership organize community based committees of resistance that could organize to defend polling stations where needed. 

There could be the beginning of a conversation about forming a united front of all of those who want to build a movement to defeat MAGA and take off from where the anti-globalization movement, the Occupy Movement and the movement for Black Lives Matter left off; what can be done to defeat the real enemy-Capitalism? How, through what channels, can a movement to stop MAGA develop? The answer is far from clear but we must be on the alert for even the slightest tendencies and help and encourage those to grow. Of course, those who don’t think MAGA Republicans are that different from the Democrats rule themselves out of any serious role in doing so. And such a united front would necessarily need to run candidates, first at the local level and eventually at the national level. 

This is the conversation that we must be having.