Neoliberal establishment will attempt to take control of the evangelical electoral army using its most powerful asset for such an operation: Joe Biden
Here is another strong indication about the theory we support, according to which Trump, Brexit and other far-right governments in power, are primarily the product of a merciless civil war of the big capital.
Politico's article subtitle tells you almost everything you need to know:
The president’s supporters worry Biden can grab a larger slice of a critical voting bloc — when Trump can least afford departures from his base.
Let's take a look at some interesting parts [most important highlighted]:
It
was June 10, 2008. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack
Obama had gathered with dozens of evangelical leaders — many of them
fixtures of the religious right — at the urging of campaign aides. If he
could offer genuine glimpses of his own abiding faith, they insisted he
could chisel away at the conservative Christian voting bloc.
The
strategy worked. Obama’s campaign stops at churches, sermon-like
speeches and his professed belief in Jesus Christ earned him 24 percent
of the white evangelical vote — doubling Democrats’ support among young
white evangelicals and gaining three points with the overall demographic
from the 2004 election.
Now,
allies of President Donald Trump worry his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden,
can do the same — snatching a slice of a critical voting bloc from Trump
when he can least afford departures from his base.
Biden,
a lifelong Catholic, has performed better in recent polling among white
evangelicals — and other religious groups — than Democratic
presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and is widely
perceived as more religious than the current White House occupant. A Pew
Research study conducted earlier this year showed that a majority of
U.S. adults (63 percent) think Trump is “not at all” or “not too
religious,” versus 55 percent who said they believed Biden is somewhat
or very religious.
Many
conservative evangelical leaders have argued that Biden’s positions on
cultural issues — like abortion, judges and religious freedom — are
disqualifying. Still, anxiety is growing inside Trump’s orbit about the
former vice president’s ability to peel off Christian voters who
supported him in 2016, including the 81 percent of white evangelicals he
carried, according to eight administration officials, White House
allies and people involved with the Trump campaign.
“Here’s
the problem for Trump: he needs to be at 81 percent or north to win
reelection. Any slippage and he doesn’t get a second term, and that’s
where Joe Biden comes into play,” said David Brody, chief political
analyst at the Christian Broadcasting Network. “In this environment,
with everything from the coronavirus to George Floyd and Trump calling
himself the ‘law-and-order president,’ Biden could potentially pick off a
percent or two from that 81 percent number.”
One
adviser to the Trump campaign said Biden’s record on abortion will make
it difficult to peel away religious conservatives, for whom overturning
Roe is their top priority, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t white
evangelicals and Catholics who care more about other issues — or the
character of either candidate — and might be compelled to support the
presumptive Democratic nominee.
|
Note that, Jimmy Carter, a self-professed evangelical Christian, did not actively oppose his party's general pro-choice platform on abortion, nor did he work to bridge the church-state divide, both factors in the Moral Majority's decision to support Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1980.
As we wrote previously, what we see now in the United States with Trump, is a counter-attack by the part of the American capital against the globalist faction. The faction that is primarily consisted by the liberal plutocracy. Therefore, as the capitalist class splits, the capitalists around Trump are now taking with them the most conservative part of the American society, as they need electoral power. They have the money and their own media network. Their first big victory was Trump in the US presidency and this explains why the liberal media attack him so hard and so frequently.
Recall that as David Harvey writes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, "businesses needed a political class instrument and a popular base. They therefore actively sought to capture the Republican Party as their own instrument. [...] The Republican Party needed, however, a solid electoral base if it was to colonize power effectively. It was around this time that Republicans sought an alliance with the Christian right. The latter had not been politically active in the past, but the foundation of Jerry Falwell’s ‘moral majority’ as a political movement in 1978 changed all of that."
And as Adam Curtis describes in his film The Power of Nightmares, "by the late 70s, there were millions of fundamentalist Christians in America, but their preachers had always told them not to vote. It would mean compromising with a doomed and immoral society. But the neoconservatives and their new Republican allies made an alliance with a number of powerful preachers, who told their followers to become involved in politics for the first time."
So now, the political power of the neoliberal establishment (with the liberal plutocracy at the top) is almost exclusively resides in corporate Democrats. And Joe Biden, who appears to be more conservative than even Trump on many issues, is the perfect man for the mission. That is, to lure the critical mass of the evangelical voters and drive as many of them as possible away from Trump.
It seems that the neutralization of Bernie Sanders (for one more time), together with the outburst of the recent pandemic crisis (which Trump handled awfully) and the murder of George Floyd, unexpectedly worked in favor of the neoliberal establishment.
And now, a typical neoliberal centrist, who has nothing to offer to the working class apart from the typical empty promises, appears to be the favorite for the US presidency.
Biden will likely attempt to attract voters from a broader ideological spectrum, so he will also attempt to lure some progressives, probably through his VP pick.
Yet things won't be that easy this time for the neoliberal establishment.
Protests across the US, mostly by young people, have shown that there is a whole powerful movement now that seeks real change and it's not willing to compromise this time. Progressives are determined to abandon the corrupted Democratic party and push for a third grassroots independent party. Some of them think the Greens as the only alternative for now, but to vote someone like Biden is out of question, even if that means four more years of Trump.
Furthermore, even if Biden wins easily in November, things will never be the same inside his party. It seems that the progressive wave is getting stronger, especially after some big victories of progressive candidates in the recent Democratic Primary. The most impressive of them, is AOC's new victory against a Wall Street puppet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez achieved an astonishing victory through an unreal percentage (72.6%).
Wall Street CEOs, from Goldman Sachs to Blackstone, poured in millions to defeat our grassroots campaign tonight.
But their money couldn’t buy a movement.
Thank you #NY14, and every person who pitched in for tonight’s victory.
Here’s to speaking truth to power. pic.twitter.com/g9aRV3Cu1B
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2020
Bernie's political revolution is far from over. The progressive army is growing stronger and Biden will have a tough time to deal with the Leftist pressure inside the Democratic party. Maintaining the neoliberal agenda won't be a walk in the park on a sunny day.
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