White voters, whether establishment or progressive, have shown that the election is but another empty, performative gesture.
Two days before Super Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg terminated his presidential campaign. One day before, Amy Klobuchar also called an end to her race for the Democratic nomination.
Centrist or “establishment” Democrats, with the help of the Democratic National Party, consolidated to support former Vice President Joe Biden. With the endorsements of Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and former nominee Beto O’Rourke, Biden propelled to be the Democratic front runner after Super Tuesday. On Wednesday, Michael Bloomberg suspended his 2020 run to rally behind Biden while Warren, once a frontrunner, ended her campaign on Thursday morning and has yet to announce an endorsement.
The establishment, or centrists Democrats, have made it clear: Joe Biden will act as the final defense against the increasingly leftist policies that have proliferated within the Democratic voter base that threaten American capitalism, imperialism, and racism.
Biden is an obvious choice for the establishment.
His track record includes a close friendship with segregationist Storm Thurmond, who Biden eulogized, the mistreatment of Anita Hill and the subsequent confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, the 1994 Crime Bill that intensified the mass incarceration of BIPOC, and support of the Iraq War. Biden is the soft racist and white supremacist that best reflects and will likely uphold establishment politics.
Biden backed the Obama administration in its three million deportations to 540 drone strikes; Biden is a proponent of U.S. imperialism.
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Health insurance corporations secured a stock market gain of $48 billion, as Biden’s Super Tuesday victory garnered visibility. Biden does not support Medicare for All.
Biden, furthermore, does not care for consent. He has been accused by numerous women of inappropriate touching.
Biden’s political career is stained by blunder after blunder, which renders clear that the establishment does not care if Biden wins or loses. The establishment cares that the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy is intact, whether that occurs in the form of Biden or of Trump.
After all, Biden is a palatable Trump.
This is to be expected of the establishment. It is also to be expected of purported progressive voters, who have shown that their support of progressive policies is contingent upon identity politics that place white women first.
For white Elizabeth Warren supporters, a feminist victory is not one that cares for the marginalized, but one where a white woman is poised to be president. When that did not happen on Super Tuesday, as Warren’s campaign proved unsuccessful, it became equally clear that their interest had also resided in the maintenance of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
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Bernie Sanders’ voter base is multiracial and working class. Sanders’ victory in the California Democratic Primary is due to an impressive Latinx mobilization.
It is easier, for Biden and Warren supporters alike, to whitewash the Sanders’ voter base as consisting purely of white men. To listen to the working class or BIPOC would require a confrontation with one’s own role in the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Confrontation does not mean to suddenly then “act in a non-racist or anti-racist way” but rather to “inhabit the critique, with its lengthy duration, and to recognize the world that is re-described by the critique as one in which they live.” White people do not care to inhabit this confrontation, but rather perform anti-racism and ensure that racism persists.
U.S. domestic and foreign policies terrorize BIPOC, but white voters, whether establishment or progressive, have shown that the election is but another empty, performative gesture.