{"id":29005,"date":"2023-10-11T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T19:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29005"},"modified":"2023-10-11T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T19:41:42","slug":"what-to-do-with-the-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/10\/11\/what-to-do-with-the-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"What to do with the Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They want to do it? Let\u2019s make them do it.<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Cory<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cory Doctorow<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 days ago (doctorow.medium.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Joe Biden walked a UAW picket-line<\/a>, it was easy to be cynical. After all, this is the same Joe Biden, that, less than a year before, broke the railway workers\u2019 strike<\/a>, using the power of his office to send some of the most exploited, most essential workers in the country back into the meat-grinder of mustache-twirling Robber Baron bosses<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are we to make of a president who breaks a strike and then joins <\/em>a strike? Remember, no American president has ever walked a picket-line with striking workers, and this is the first autoworkers\u2019 strike in history to target all<\/em> of the big car-makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autoworkers\u2019 strikes are the kinds of strikes that ripple out through the entire US labor market. It was an autoworkers\u2019 strike that created the American middle-class<\/a>, ushering in employer health-care, pensions, and cost-of-living allowances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current UAW leadership is amazing<\/em>, and their smart tactics<\/a> are paying off: the UAW just won a massive victory<\/a>, and autoworkers at non-union shops across the USA are taking notice and seeking to organize their workplaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it wasn\u2019t just that Biden joined a <\/em>strike \u2014 Biden joined this<\/em> strike, a strike that might once again transform America, clawing back the worker power that previous administrations helped US oligarchs siphon away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden broke the railway strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden joined the autoworkers\u2019 strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this make Biden a hypocrite?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But more to the point, it shows that Biden\u2019s actions are driven by expedience<\/em> as much as they are by principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden, after all, is a career politician, who was sold to voters on the basis of his deal-making ability<\/a>, his history getting things done in bipartisan smoke-filled rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden doubtless has principles, and maybe they\u2019re even good principles, but when those principles conflicted with \u201cgood politics,\u201d politics won and principles lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seen in that light, Biden\u2019s decision to join the autoworkers\u2019 strike makes perfect sense. With support for unions at their highest point in two generations<\/a>, joining an autoworkers\u2019 strike is good politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not saying that Biden doesn\u2019t sincerely support the autoworkers. I\u2019m saying that it doesn\u2019t matter<\/em>, because Biden is the kind of politician whose actions are driven by politics first and principles second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, Biden may want to do it, but, more to the point, <\/mark>we can make him do it<\/em><\/a><\/mark>.<\/em><\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Biden broke the railroad strike, he continued to work for the railroad workers. Months later, the administration brokered a deal to give those workers the sick leave<\/a> that had been at the center of their dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a very Obama-ish move. Obama\u2019s Chicago Democratic Machine-style politics was suspicious of the grassroots. That\u2019s why Obama\u2019s first act after winning office was to literally switch off the server that his grassroots campaign used to coordinate his victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Obama-style politics, the president is a power-broker, petitioned by various factions in his administration, the electorate and the legislature, and he weighs all their requests and apportions out wins based on his wise and technocratic view of what\u2019s best for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all benevolent dictatorships, this model works well, but fails badly. A benevolent dictator isn\u2019t the same thing as an infallible dictator. If the president decides he should take the side of bankers over homeowners<\/a>, he must first kick noisy activists out of the room, close the door, and bargain among the \u201cgrownups\u201d without being distracted by their noisy protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not enough that Biden won the railway workers sick-leave. If worker power comes from presidents unilaterally choosing which of their demands deserve to win, then workers are at the whim of the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Biden, the railroad gambit \u2014 sidelining the workers and then delivering for them on his own \u2014 was bad politics. Rather than burnishing his credentials as Union Joe, it made him look like a union-buster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s instinct is to find compromises between fundamentally incompatible positions. He\u2019ll appease the Sanders-Warren wing of the party by appointing the brilliant Lina Khan to run the FTC and aggressively target corporate consolidation; but he\u2019ll also appease the Clinton wing by appointing Jacqueline Scott Corley to the bench, from which position she will rule against Khan<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is pizzaburger politics<\/a>: half the family wants pizza for dinner, the other half wants burgers, and Biden serves up pizzaburgers, which no one wants. Because everyone is equally unhappy, he declares the compromise to be \u201cfair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changed between the railroad strike and the UAW strike? The outrage at Biden\u2019s paternalistic I\u2019ll-take-care-of-this-you-go-back-to-work gambit with the railroad workers convinced him that pizzaburger politics were bad politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden wasn\u2019t my first, or second, or third choice for president. But he has done some undeniably good things. Khan\u2019s leadership at the FTC, for example, has transformed American corporate consolidation, halting corrupt gambits<\/a> to circumvent even the weak regulation<\/a> that we labored under before Khan\u2019s term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden counted noses and decided he didn\u2019t have the votes to get the free college he\u2019d promised, so he\u2019s got a compromise position<\/a> that includes free pre-K and community college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court knocked back<\/a> Biden\u2019s plans for student debt cancellation, and rather than seeking to neutralize or circumvent the court<\/a>, he found ways to work in the margins, cancelling billions<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m glad he did these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish he\u2019d done more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish he\u2019d play hardball with Synema and Manchin (say, by loading up bills with pork for their states and then campaigning in person in their capitals to get voters to put pressure on their senators to back his play). I wish he\u2019d campaign on packing the Supreme Court or putting term-limits on its judges (or both).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we\u2019ve learned from Biden v Rail Workers <\/em>and Biden v Autoworkers <\/em>is that if we make weaksauce compromises and other pizzaburgers politically unpalatable, Biden will respond. He may or may not care about principles, but he definitely<\/em> cares about politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And delivering for the American people is good politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My next novel is The Lost Cause<\/em>, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won\u2019t sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I\u2019m pre-selling it on Kickstarter!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cory Doctorow (<\/em>craphound.com<\/em><\/a>) is a\u00a0<\/em>science fiction author<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>activist<\/em><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>blogger<\/em><\/a>. He has a\u00a0<\/em>podcast<\/em><\/a>, a\u00a0<\/em>newsletter<\/em><\/a>, a\u00a0<\/em>Twitter feed<\/em><\/a>, a\u00a0<\/em>Mastodon feed<\/em><\/a>, and a\u00a0<\/em>Tumblr feed<\/em><\/a>. He was born in Canada, became a British citizen and now lives in Burbank, California. His latest nonfiction book is\u00a0<\/em>The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation<\/em><\/a>, a detailed policy plan for dismantling Big Tech (Verso, 2023);. His latest novel for adults is\u00a0<\/em>Red Team Blues<\/em><\/a>. His latest short story collection is\u00a0<\/em>Radicalized<\/em><\/a>. His latest picture book is\u00a0<\/em>Poesy the Monster Slayer<\/em><\/a>. His latest YA novel is\u00a0<\/em>Pirate Cinema<\/em><\/a>. His latest graphic novel is\u00a0<\/em>In Real Life<\/em><\/a>. His forthcoming books include The Lost Cause, a utopian post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias (Tor, 2023).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cory<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Written by\u00a0Cory Doctorow<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https:\/\/pluralistic.net<\/a>; Mailing list: https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/plura-list;<\/a> Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They want to do it? Let\u2019s make them do it. Cory Doctorow 4 days ago (doctorow.medium.com) When Joe Biden walked a UAW picket-line, it was easy to be cynical. After all, this is the same Joe Biden, that, less than a year before, broke the railway workers\u2019 strike, using the power of… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[977],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29006,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29005\/revisions\/29006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}