Democracy Despises a Coronation
Let the DNC be a battle. It’s healthy. We’ll kick Trump’s ass on the other side.
Hamilton Nolan
Journalists and progressives have something in common. Neither of us are allowed to get too happy. A journalist’s job, in the midst of celebration, is to ask, “What could go wrong?” A progressive’s job is to ask, “How could this be better?” Both groups are condemned to be perpetual downers.
For a good reason. If everyone gets swept up in enthusiasm and nobody thinks about what could go wrong or how things could be better, you can be certain that a disastrous collapse or a grinding stasis is soon to come. The wheel of progress doesn’t turn itself. It has to be pushed. Popular leaders don’t stay perfect. They have to be pressured. The more jubilant the national mood, the more important it is for the journalists and the progressives (and, worst of all, the progressive journalists) to stay focused on all the things we still have to do — especially when nobody wants to hear it. This is the political version of Warren Buffett’s capitalist maxim, “Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.”
This mandate has been on my mind as I watch the Democratic Party’s relief over not being saddled with Joe Biden as the nominee grow into unbridled excitement. First Biden dropped out — yes! And then Kamala Harris rapidly unified the party behind her — yes! And then, to top it all off, she picked Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate who did not suck, who was not defined as a retreat to the center, and was not a clear “fuck you” to the Left. YES! Every rally they’ve held since has been packed. The average Democrat’s sense of gloom has flipped to joy. And next week’s Democratic National Convention, which had been shaping up as a rerun of 1968’s blood-soaked battles between antiwar protesters and Chicago police, now seems destined to be the sort of blissful coronation that the party has not seen since 2008. We have a candidate who can speak! We have a candidate who is likable! We may not stumble our way into fascism through sheer ineptitude after all!
These are all good things. Though it is still unclear where Kamala Harris will land policy-wise, we should not minimize the positive signals emanating from her team. On labor, the fact that Harris has already given speeches to the AFT and the Culinary Union, and that Walz just to spoke to the AFSCME convention, is a flashing sign telegraphing the campaign’s intent to stay as tightly intertwined with the union world as Joe Biden made himself. On economic policy, Harris is likely to end up in more or less the same place as Biden as well: pro-worker, pro-big government investment, and at least better on taxes than any Republican would be.
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On many critical issues, though, we have to admit that we don’t actually know what a Harris administration would do. Will she retain Lina Khan and her aggressive antitrust FTC in the face of aggressive corporate and billionaire lobbying to ease back? Will she continue feeding weapons to Israel with few strings attached, weapons dropped on families in Gaza? Will she go to war in the Middle East to protect Israel’s interests, if such a war happens? Will she push to end the filibuster? Will she push to get the Supreme Court reformed? In a party comprised of both tech CEOs and trustbusters, investment firm owners and low-wage workers, Hollywood executives and the people who cut their lawns, which side will Kamala Harris tend to default towards? Not every issue within the Democratic Party coalition can be triangulated. Which side is she on?
We don’t know! That is a remarkable fact, given the level of zeal for her candidacy among normie Democrats right now. Teasing out solid commitments on all of these issues is a vital task for both journalists and left wing activists. It is also the reason neither of those groups will ever be very popular. Go to Tim Walz’s speech at a union convention and watch him hold up a “UNION” sign like Norma Rae and listen to him bring the house down with a succession of folksy and lovable stories about life as a wholesome small town teacher and then, as the standing ovation hits its peak, raise your hand and ask him, “How do you justify the current administration’s position on Gaza?” The flood of dirty looks you would get from pissing on that moment of collective love is what those of us who care about policy have to look forward to in coming weeks, as Harris and Walz try to glide straight into the White House unencumbered by anything but vibes.
Judging a presidential convention on substance is like parsing the nutritional value of a Dairy Queen Blizzard. It is contrary to the spirit of the thing. In today’s exceptional circumstances, though, the DNC must become not just a massive cheerleading meet, but a platform for Kamala Harris to define who she is in the context of the wildly disparate Democratic Party. The Left’s failure to make Barack Obama do this — allowing him to float into office as our champion and then proceed to hand the keys to the economy over to Wall Street — was a mistake that we are still paying for. (Indeed, there is a good argument to be made that a more progressive response to the 2008 economic crash would have spared us from the ascension of Donald Trump.) Now is the time to resist the urge to give in to the rapture of possible victory and fight hard to force Harris and Walz to plant their roots away from the grasping “centrism” of party elders who exist to seduce new presidents away from any inclination for fundamental change.
For the delegates inside of the DNC, that means that cutthroat platform fights and arm-twisting over policy papers is actually a healthy thing. For those outside the DNC, in the streets, it means that the cries of Gaza protesters that will echo throughout Chicago are an important civic duty. Party unity is important, considering the risks of a second Trump term. Equally important, though, is the work of democracy that must happen inside the party — the action of organized labor and progressives as a whole to build on their momentum and assert themselves as the governing force of the Democratic Party.
Trumpism will not be defeated by Silicon Valley CEOs and a rebranded version of neoliberalism. That’s the stuff that got us into this predicament in the first place. The rise of Trump is a reaction against a purported democracy that doesn’t actually work. As nice as it is to have a candidate who is not 80 years old, we need to keep in mind that Harris has now become the party’s nominee without ever going through a primary. Democrats are — let’s be honest about this — running someone who the voters did not nominate. We all understand the chain of events that got us here, but that doesn’t change this fundamental fact. To squash internal dissent and demand a DNC that is a glassy-eyed crowning of a new, not-quite-elected leader is the exact opposite of what the Democratic Party needs. We need to show that people can yell, and protesters can march, and labor can force capital into the back seat, and we can learn from our misguided timidity of the past.
We’re gonna protest. We’re gonna make demands. We’re gonna push the politicians into the right place with brute people power. And then we’re gonna kick the fascists’ ass. Don’t worry if the streets of Chicago get loud. This is exactly what we should be doing.
Disclosure: The views expressed in this article are held by the author. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, In These Times does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.
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Hamilton Nolan is a labor writer for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The Guardian, and elsewhere. More of his work is on Substack.
