We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

(FDR, as interpreted by the California Democratic Party)

By Gregg Robinson

I attended the California Democratic Party Executive Board which met this last weekend here in San Diego.  It is clear that the message repeated over and over by Party leaders going into November is BE AFRAID TRUMP IS COMING FOR OUR DEMOCRACY.  The most powerful of these statements came from one of the Party’s most charismatic elected officials, Secretary of State Shirley Weber.  She had the crowd on its feet (including me) by invoking how far we have come in her lifetime, where we need to go, and what we will lose if Trump takes power.  She pleaded for us to keep our country from joining so many other countries that have slipped into authoritarianism.

This is of course true.  This is the most important election of our lifetime, and it currently doesn’t look good, according to polls in battleground states.  My criticism is not with the truth of this position, but with the fact the Democratic Party seems quite uninterested in adding anything to it—especially anything that might alienate the corporate side of the Party. 

The most important of these missing messages is economic populism—defending working class interests against the corporate elite.  These are the kind of issues that those such as Ian Haney Lopez (see my previous discussion) have argued can appeal to working-class people of all ethnicities, and these are the people that polls tell us Biden is losing. 

It is not as if the Party doesn’t have speakers who are capable of addressing this issue.  Labor leaders like Lorena Gonzalez or Crystal Irving are every bit as eloquent as Dr. Weber, but with a proven track record of speaking to working class rage at the billionaire class. This, however, would have alienated the corporate funders whose names appeared on the screen in back of the speakers.

Also missing from the two main sessions of the Executive Board meeting was the issue that is electrifying college campuses: the war in Gaza.  Party leadership likes to keep controversy confined to the Caucuses and in the Subcommittees, so it was in the Resolutions Committee where Gaza was discussed.  Four separate resolutions were submitted to the Committee, but the least aggressive of these was the only one considered. While this resolution did call for a permanent cease fire, the language leading up to it was so tortured that Amnesty International should have been called in as an editor.

I agree that any resolution on this current conflict must begin with recognition of Hamas’ terrorist violation of international law, but does this disclaimer have to appear in every sentence about Gaza?  After an hours-long fight to make the language more reflective of the current humanitarian disaster in Gaza, a version that did call out Israel’s violation of humanitarian law was approved.

However, while this resolution will appear on the California Democratic Party website, not a mention of it was made in any of the main meetings. The five resolutions that did make it to the larger body focused on such hot-button issues as Citibank’s discrimination against Armenians, the need to protect biometric data, and saving Medicine Lake in Central California. You can’t say this committee wasn’t ready to confront the “controversial issues” of our day.

On a side note, though the state Party was able to bury the Gaza resolution, the San Diego County Party two days later did the opposite. While there was a similar attempt at the SDCP Central Committee to bury an even stronger resolution than was approved by the State Party, this burial failed. After over two hours of heated debate a resolution focusing on Gaza using the term “genocide” in the body of the text was approved.

The only additional substantive action by the Executive Board was the election of representatives to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  These are part of the group of Democrats who will be going to Chicago in August to anoint Biden and determine the platform of the Party for the national election in November.  

There was a sign of hope for those of us concerned with working-class issues in this election.  The Labor Slate championed by Lorena Gonzalez at the California Labor Federation was able to elect five of their eight candidates.  Most encouraging of all, the top vote getter was the fiery Ada Briceño from UNITE/HERE 11 in Orange County.  She is a supporter of labor rights, single-payer healthcare, and a strong opponent of the corporate wing of the DNC.   With a leader like her in Chicago there may yet be hope the Party will be able to fashion some kind of appeal to this country’s working classes.

Gregg Robinson is a long-time activist, retired Grossmont College Sociology professor, and a member of the AFT Guild, Local 1931 Retiree Chapter.