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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nPhoto Source: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza \u2013 CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Future NBA Owner Barack Obama: \u201cVoting is the Most Important Action We Can Take\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the Democratic Party\u2019s main missions is to keep people off the streets no matter how urgent it is for the masses to flood the nation\u2019s roads, sidewalks, town halls and public plazas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As failed state America sinker further into an apocalyptic and authoritarian catastrophe that has been in the making for many decades, Barack Obama tells young people that \u201cthe best way to protest is to vote.\u201d That\u2019s bullshit. As the radical historian Howard Zinn noted in March 2008 essay \u201cElection Madness<\/a>,\u201d penned as Obamania spread across the Democratic electorate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe election frenzy\u2026 seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us. It is a multiple-choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students\u2026Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to meet them by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war\u2026.Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The remarkable George Floyd rebellion, the biggest protest wave<\/a> in American history, forced Obama to briefly acknowledge some of the power of people in the streets but only with the caveat that voting is still the main thing \u2013 and another one of his many shots at the supposedly dysfunctional 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obama reiterated the counsel at the funeral of Congressman John Lewis. There Obama devalued the significance of social movement protest beyond the election cycle\u2014the type of political engagement that had brought John Lewis on to the stage of history[1]<\/strong>\u2014by telling his audience that \u201cthe right to vote\u201d is \u201cthe most powerful tool we have\u201d and that voting is \u201cthe most important action we can take on behalf of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was also Obama\u2019s advice to LeBron James when he counseled the hardcourt superstar to call off a threatened National Basketball Association (NBA) player strike in the name of Black Lives Matter \u2013 a potentially powerful statement that Black men will not entertain white America with their bodies while Black bodies are regularly murdered and maimed by racist white cops and vigilantes. One NBA player after another can be heard and seen selling the ballot \u201cVote!\u201d \u2013 as the solution to America\u2019s ills on television and Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sports nut Obama is, incidentally, scheming to convert part of his post-presidential hyper-wealth \u2013 reward for eight years of dutifully serving his Wall Street masters in the White House \u2013 into part ownership of an NBA franchise<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Zinn knew, one does not have to choose between voting and protesting. The problem is that the \u201celection madness\u201d tends to trump (pardon the word) social movement politics, with millions diverted from taking to the streets by the fantastic notion that they garner significant input on the nation\u2019s direction by making little marks next to names selected in advance for them by the ruling class once every two or four years:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes\u2014the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth. But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools\u201d (Zinn, \u201cElection Madness\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The savagely time-staggered big money major party candidate-centered electoral spectacles are powerfully sold as \u201cpolitics,\u201d the only \u201cpolitics\u201d that matters<\/a>. The two sides of the protest-vote dichotomy are not evenly balanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Authoritarian Collapse, Underway<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The current ugly quadrennial electoral spectacle poses an interesting test for citizens\u2019 commitment to the notion of politics as voting alone. For this is an election cycle unlike any other in modern American history. We have a wannabe fascist dictator of a president who is attacking the nation\u2019s revered electoral process itself. Trump\u2019s threat to steal the 2020 election is a serious danger with a significant chance of success if people don\u2019t rise up beyond merely voting. As Umair Haque explains<\/a> in a recent reflection on why full \u201cauthoritarian collapse\u201d is NOT \u201ca low probability event\u201d in a nation where electoral \u201cdemocracy\u201d has long been badly weakened:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrump has a complex, sophisticated, meticulous, multilayered strategy<\/a> to finish the job of destroying American democracy<\/em>. To those of us who\u2019ve lived all this before, it is a battle plan par excellence, extremely well designed, carefully thought out, meticulously planned, redundant, interlocking, self-reinforcing. That should make you shudder. Yes, really. It\u2019s in open view, for anyone who cares to look.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt consists of five interlocking elements. One, delegitimise the vote<\/a>. Two, refuse to accede<\/a> to a peaceful transfer of power. Three, use one and two to mount legal challenges<\/a>, at a granular level which gum up the works, throwing the election into legal jeopardy. Four, arm-twist electors<\/a> to vote Republican on the basis on one, two, and three. Five, wait for the Supreme Court to decide the election in Trump\u2019s favour <\/a>\u2014 as it inevitably will now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026when pundits say that \u2018Trump is just trying to scare you!\u2019 they couldn\u2019t be more wrong. They are making exactly the same mistake they have been for years now. They dismissed Trump when he spoke of camps, bans, raids, purges, when he backed literal Neo-Nazis<\/a> marching in Charlottesville. That is how things got this bad. Trump has been telling Americans who he is all along, but Americans have been too foolish to believe him. And now it\u2019s almost too late<\/em>. This is the last chance. So listen carefully. Trump is telling you exactly who he is and what he wants. If you don\u2019t believe him now, the final failure of democracy rests on your shoulders, too<\/a>.\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n\n\n\n (For my own extensive reflections on how Trump and his party\u2019s rolling neofascist coup is proceeding and could well succeed, please see my last Counterpunch essay: \u201cThe Rolling Constitutional-Fascist Coup in the World\u2019s Most Dangerous Nation<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Forgotten Obama Speech: \u201cAmerica[ns] First\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now might be a nice time to review leading neo-Weimarian Obama\u2019s counsel<\/a> to the American people the day after the repellent beast animal he privately (and accurately<\/a>) considered to be a \u201cfascist\u201d<\/a> was elected as the nation\u2019s 45th<\/sup> president:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, everybody is sad when their side loses an election. But the day after, we have to remember that we\u2019re actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage. We\u2019re not Democrats first. We\u2019re not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We\u2019re patriots first. We all want what\u2019s best for this country. That\u2019s what I heard in Mr. Trump\u2019s remarks last night. That\u2019s what I heard when I spoke to him directly.<\/em> And I was heartened by that. That\u2019s what the country needs \u2014 a sense of unity; a sense of inclusion; a respect for our institutions, our way of life, rule of law; and a respect for each other. I hope that he maintains that spirit throughout this transition, and I certainly hope that\u2019s how his presidency has a chance to begin\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026The point, though, is, is that we all go forward, with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens \u2014 because that presumption of good faith is essential to a vibrant and functioning democracy\u2026<\/em>And that\u2019s why I\u2019m confident that this incredible journey that we\u2019re on as Americans will go on. And I am looking forward to doing everything that I can to make sure that the next President is successful in that. I have said before, I think of this job as being a relay runner \u2014 you take the baton, you run your best race, and hopefully, by the time you hand it off you\u2019re a little further ahead, you\u2019ve made a little progress.<\/em> And I can say that we\u2019ve done that, and I want to make sure that handoff i<\/em>s well-executed, because ultimately we\u2019re all on the same team (emphasis added).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ain\u2019t that some shit? Thanks, Obama, that was great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The First \u201cPresidential\u201d \u201cDebate\u201d as Monstrous Fascist Performance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cpresidential\u201d \u201cdebate\u201d last Tuesday night is a case in point. Let\u2019s be clear about what was going on with the vicious Orange Monstrosity during that \u201chorrific\u201d (CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper) \u201cshitshow\u201d (CNN\u2019s Dana Bash)<\/a>. Yes, it was a nationally embarrassing \u201chot mess\u201d ruined by Trump\u2019s pathological bullying, browbeating, and interrupting. Yes, Biden looked flustered and the world was shocked by the brutality on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it was worse than all that. It was a corporate-sponsored fascism-telegraphing throw-down full of dark historical significance. The Tangerine Demon went far beyond mere far-right \u201cdog-whistling\u201d by telling the neofascist Proud Boys to \u201cstand back, stand by.\u201d That was a full-on shout-out to neofascist streetfighters from the man who holds the nuclear codes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bedminster Beelzebub refused to denounce white supremacism. It told its armed backers to descend on polling places. It refused to commit to a peaceful transition. It refused to tell its supporters to stand down from violence. It lied, twisting the truth at least 50 times. It continued its insane attack on the mail-in ballots required by the pandemic it fanned. It looked forward to its coming far-right Supreme Court deciding the election in its favor. It ominously said this about the election: \u201cthis is not going to end well\u201d \u2013 a presentiment of the far-right violence he\u2019s been egging his backers to engage in if the count doesn\u2019t go his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The flabby orange brute was absurdly obsessed with the mythical threat to America supposedly posed by \u201cthe radical socialist left.\u201d Its whole approach was designed to make Biden look \u201cweak,\u201d a word that the monster repeatedly used to describe Biden. These are key and core fascist narratives, of course: the supposed threat of Marxism\/socialism\/Bolshevism and the weakness of the liberals and centrist in the face of the alleged radical Left threat to take over the virtuous and aggrieved nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trumpenstein made it clear that it was making no effort to win over moderate and undecided voters so as to win the election in a \u201cnormal\u201d way. All it is trying to turn out is its hard-core base and by turn out it doesn\u2019t just mean coming out to vote \u2013 it means coming out to smash what\u2019s left of the constitutional republic. As my fellow left historian and journalist Terry Thomas wrote the day after the \u201cdebate\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was a made-for-television movie about a rabid fascist dog attacking a tottering, stammering, and somewhat confused old man. It was bizarre entertainment even for the \u2018pundits\u2019 on CNN and MSNBC\u2026representative of what might be called the neoliberal response to naked authoritarianism. They described the performance as everything from a \u2018shit show\u2019 to a train wreck to \u2018dumpster fire.\u2019\u2026 But the descriptions I did not hear were: this was frightening; this was dangerous; this was a declaration by the The Thing in the WH that he understands he has no legitimate shot at winning an actual election and he doesn\u2019t care, because he has armed militias covering his back and waiting for his marching orders; as importantly he has stacked the courts, which he sarcastically thanked Biden for, so that elections no longer mean much in his scheme, only serving his purposes in as much as they provide the excuse for the actual takeover attempt. This was about exposing his opposition as weak, an important thing in the fascist playbook, and generating the sort of emotional lather to keep his essential followers poised<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, Donito Trumpolini continued signaling that the \u201crolling coup\u201d (as Refuse Fascism co-founder Andy Zee calls it<\/a>) is underway and that he has every intention of staying in office by stealing the poisoned election in ways both constitutional and extra-constitutional. So, yes, Trump\u2019s performance was \u201cembarrassing,\u201d \u201cdisgraceful,\u201d and \u201cshameful\u201d and all that but, let\u2019s get serious about what the fascist fuck is really happening here.[2]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You Can\u2019t Just Vote Fascists Out of Office<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Having diagnosed the problem brilliantly thanks in part to his understanding of an institutional setting that failed the democracy test well before Trump became president, Umair Haque should write a follow-up piece about what is to be done<\/em>. One thing history teaches is that you don\u2019t just vote fascists like Donald Trump, Mike Pence (an open Christian fascist), William Barr (Trump\u2019s personal fascist attorney general), Stephen Miller (Trump\u2019s fascist political advisor), Betsy DeVos (the fascist head of the U.S. Department of Education) Amy Coney Barrett (a Christian fascist Handmaid jurist soon to become the sixth Republican on a nine-person appointed-for-life Supreme Court), Tony Pham (interim director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Derek Benner (director of the Department of Fatherland Security) out of power. Authoritarian rulers like Trump and Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Rodrigo Duterte (the Philippines), Viktor Orban (Hungary), Recep Erdogan (Turkey), and Jeanine Anez (Bolivia) don\u2019t just go away because of elections. You have to remove them out with prolonged mass action in the streets like the people of Puerto Rico forced out Rickey Rosello in Puerto Rico in 2019, like the people of Tunisia forced out Ben Ali in 2011, like how the people of Lebanon forced out their corrupt prime minster last year, like the people of Belarus are heroically acting to force out Alexander Lukashenko right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s going to take people in the streets, in the town halls, in the public plazas, in the workplaces, in the schools, ceasing and desisting from narrow business as usual, marching, banging, money-wrenching, street-preaching, striking, blocking, disobeying<\/a> day in and day out before, during, and after this election to remove Trump. It\u2019s going to take consistent mass protest, a giant popular presence beneath and beyond mere voting<\/a>. The sooner we mobilize for Trump\u2019s removal beneath and beyond the election, the better. If we don\u2019t start organizing until after the count is stolen by a far-right wing president, a far-right-wing U.S. Senate, numerous far right-wing state governments, a far-right-wing Supreme Court, a right-wing police state (the nation\u2019s white cops and sheriffs are heavily indoctrinated by FOX\/Fatherland News and other hard right-wing propaganda outlets), and far right militias and streetfighters (who often overlap and coordinate with state gendarmes), it may be too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Will the Democrats drop their mission of keeping people off the streets even when staying true to that mission is dysfunctional for their own electoral purposes? Could the ongoing rolling authoritarian\/fascist coup dent the party\u2019s sheepdog electoralism and ballot-fetishism enough for them to defend what\u2019s left of bourgeois electoral \u201cdemocracy\u201d and constitutionalism in the U.S.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent history does not bode well. The corporate Democratic establishment has twice trumped its party\u2019s most electable candidate, Bernie Sanders, who ran in accord with majority progressive public opinion (imagine that \u2013 he paid the price) on numerous key issues (Single Payer is now backed by 7 in 10 Americans) with dismal corporate warmongers \u2013 the highly unpopular Hillary Clinton and the insultingly uninspiring right-wing clown Joe Biden<\/a>. The Democratic \u201cleadership\u201d would rather lose to a white nationalist neofascist party, the Trumpified Republicans, than cede any significant measure of power to the nation\u2019s popular working-class majority. The party is about serving corporate and financial sponsors, first and foremost, not winning elections, and the Wall Street election investors who prefer Biden<\/a> by a wide margin are not interested in seeing the kind of popular upheaval we will require to compel the ruling class to make Trump exit by January 20th<\/sup> of next year \u2013 much less to remove him before that (and the notion of Trump staying in office four more months is frankly insane: the genocidal racist COVID-45 has already killed more than 200,000 Americans with the virus he fanned and will have killed half a million if not more by Inauguration Day).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bernie, Bernie<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the so-called socialist Sanders can\u2019t seem to break from the false dichotomy of voting versus protesting to acknowledge the need for mass direct action and civil disobedience. Sanders predictably but despicably failed to call people into the streets in a recent address to the nation<\/a> about how to stop Trump from lifting the election:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn this unprecedented moment what can we as a people do in the struggle to preserve American democracy<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, it is absolutely imperative that we have, by far, the largest voter turnout in American history and that people vote as early as possible\u2026A landslide victory for Biden will make it virtually impossible for Trump to deny the results, and is our best means for defending democracy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, with the pandemic and a massive increase in mail-in voting, state legislatures must take immediate action now \u2014 now \u2014 to allow mail-in votes to be counted before Election Day, as they come in. In fact, 32 states allow for the counting or processing of absentee ballots \u2014 verifying signatures, for example \u2014 before Election Day. All states should do the same. The faster all ballots are counted, the less window there is for chaos and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, the news media needs to prepare the American people to understand there is no longer a single Election Day and that it is very possible that we may not know the results on November 3rd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourth, social media companies must finally get their act together and stop people from using their tools to spread disinformation and to threaten and harass election officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifth, in the Congress and in state legislatures, hearings must be held as soon as possible to explain to the public how the Election Day process and the days that follow will be handled. As we count every vote and prevent voter intimidation, everything possible must be done to prevent chaos, disinformation and, yes, even violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lastly, and most importantly, the American people, no matter what their political view, must make it clear that American democracy will not be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fine recommendations, I\u2019m sure, but what great \u201cAmerican democracy\u201d is Sanders talking about? I\u2019ve written at length on this, citing one solid academic-empirical study after another on the absence of anything remotely like a functioning democracy in the U.S. Does Bernie read books? Has he ever read the liberal political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page\u2019s (Northwestern) volume Democracy in America?<\/em>? The late political scientist Sheldon Wolin\u2019s Democracy Incorporated<\/em>? Ron Formisano\u2019s (University of Kentucky) American Oligarchy<\/em>? My 2014 book They Rule: The 1% vs. Democracy <\/em>(Routledge, 2014)? My 2010 book The Empire\u2019s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power<\/em> (Routledge)? Noam Chomsky\u2019s 2006 book Failed States<\/em>? (that\u2019s just for starters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPreserve American democracy\u201d? What, because before Trump there was a functioning \u201cAmerican democracy\u201d?<\/em> Really? Did Bernie miss (among many things showing that the U.S is under the \u201cdeep state\u201d command of the unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire regardless of which major party or party configuration holds nominal power). Does Bernie recall what happened to him in 2015-16 and 2019-20, running in accord with majority progressive opinion but rigged out of the nomination process so that depressing corporatists could ascend to the Democratic Party nomination? You cannot tell people the U.S. is anything like a \u201cdemocracy\u201d when 7 in 10 Americans support Medicare for All but corporate power mandates that no viable presidential candidate can advocate Medicare for All.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a recent interview (on Bill Maher\u2019s HBO show<\/a>) about what to do when Trump refuses to leave office, Bernie couldn\u2019t say one word about direct citizen action, civil disobedience, political strikes, marches, occupations, actual collective struggle. When pressed by Maher on whether mass upheaval \u201clike in other countries\u201d might arise, Sanders grudgingly said \u201cthe outrage could be that high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tumor Must Be Removed, the Revolution Must Follow<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you accuse a surgeon who removes a patient\u2019s malignant tumor of thereby supporting cancer and the conditions that giver rise to it? No, you wouldn\u2019t, or at least you wouldn\u2019t unless you were a hopeless moron. (In the medical metaphor I posit, the tumor must come out or the patient will die very soon. The conditions that give rise to cancer continue.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why then say, as I am still hearing from some people who say they are on the left, that they think efforts by leftists to remove Trump amount to support for the conditions that gave rise to Trump? The Trump regime is a malignant (I would say fascist) tumor that needs to be cut out in the hope of living on to undo the conditions \u2014 class (capital and commodity) rule, imperialism, sexism, racism, nativism, bourgeois political institutions and culture \u2014 that give rise to authoritarianism and fascism. To say that one backs neoliberal (or any other model of) capitalism and Joe Biden because one acts to remove Trump is like telling a surgeon that he supports cancer and\/or the conditions that give rise to cancer by removing a patient\u2019s malignant tumor. The bizarre passivity that is induced by this moronic claim amounts to saying that \u201cit would be better for the patient to die.\u201d Better to die than to cut out the tumor. How absurd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To say this is to mark myself as a target for a by now standard tragically Trumpen-leftish lecture on how awful the capitalist and imperialist Dems are, as if I haven\u2019t written four books and at least 300 essays on how awful the capitalist and imperialist Dems are. The lecturer wants a Lenin Prize for having figured out an elementary point: that the Dems are a capitalist and imperialist atrocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So just to be clear: the struggle in the streets that I and others advocate would NOT be just be about removing the tumor and saying \u201cokay, all good now.\u201d Not at all. Rather, it would be about setting a precedent of popular power that activists would strive to deepen and broaden going forward to take on yes, the conditions that gave rise to the tumor. Those conditions include the absolutely pathetic corporate-imperial Democratic Party that Sheldon Wolin rightly dubbed \u201cthe Inauthentic Opposition\u201d<\/a> as Obamania spread across the nation and the Western world in the late winter and early spring of 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mass endeavor that I and others promote to remove the fascist (and racist and sexist and nativist and eco-exterminist) Trump-Pence-Barr-Miller-DeVoss regime and then, after that, the whole damn capitalist-imperialist-racist-patriarchal system (a fake, corporate-managed democracy<\/a>) that gave rise to it must begin now, not merely after Trump goes forward with the election theft he is telegraphing and setting up for all to see. It would seek not only to save what little is left of \u201cdemocracy\u201d (bourgeois constitutional republicanism and \u201crule of law\u201d at best) in the U.S. but also to create a real and functioning popular democracy in the U.S. We need to institute democracy from the bottom up. It\u2019s never been done before. It would be called the first real American Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The notion that one embraces neoliberalism by refusing fascism<\/a> is idiotic slander. I do not encourage people taking to the streets (now, just after the election) merely to secure the ascendancy of the corporate-imperial buffoon Biden, an insultingly slow-witted and racist candidate (thanks, Obama!) who can be counted on to serve the wealthy Few and oppress minorities and the working class as president \u2013 and to thereby set the nation up for another white nationalist political ascendancy in 2022-2024. Not at all. We will have to undertake a mass people\u2019s uprising of the kind that could blossom into a revolutionary confrontation with the whole rotten authoritarian system, the Weimar Democrats<\/a> included, that hatched Trump and Trumpism in the first place. It starts with cutting out the malignant fascist tumor both constitutionally and extra-constitutionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. John Lewis walked into the pages of American and world history in the early 1960s by putting his body on the line occupying segregated southern lunch counters and buses. He didn\u2019t wait for savagely time-staggered ruling class elections to change history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Richard Duda writes this to me from Florida: \u201cSo all the signs are now here and his intentions and game plan are crystal clear. We will soon be an authoritarian, undemocratic fascist failed state with a White Nationalist group leader self-installed as dictator. He\u2019s telegraphing his moves clearly as he activates his civilian militia troops by dog-whistling through a megaphone as he PROACTIVELY sows the seeds that the election WILL be a self-fulfilling prophecy of fraud. Unprecedented that the POTUS is the greatest threat to the electoral process, delegitimizing it IN ADVANCE! Wow. So we have 5 weeks of \u2018OMG, wow!\u2019 reporting, then five weeks in purgatory while the lawsuits after the election move through the courts, and then in early\/mid-December, the reckoning will come when election certification is due. We will likely have several winners reported by several different entities. Then when the new Congressional winners are seated, more fun begins, as we spend the time before the inauguration not knowing the fate of our country, with several sets of rules \u2014 one of which is nearly uninterpretable \u2014 will be deferred to by different actors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul Street\u2019s <\/strong>next book is The Passive Resistance: Obama, Trump, and Politics of Appeasement<\/em>. It will be released later this summer by CounterPunch Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OCTOBER 4, 2020 (counterpunch.org) \u201cWhat Can We Do?\u201d BY\u00a0PAUL STREET Photo Source: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza \u2013 CC BY 2.0 Future NBA Owner Barack Obama: \u201cVoting is the Most Important Action We Can Take\u201d One of the Democratic Party\u2019s main missions is to keep people off the streets… Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2020\/08\/Hollow-Resistance-1.png\")
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