Elections: Fighting for Our Common Interests
Elections
Fighting for Our Common Interests
Lessons from the 2022 Midterm Elections
Reprint from: Jan 18, 2023
By the Executive Committee for the National Council
The 2022 midterm elections showed the power of the people fighting for their life-or-death needs and rights. Clearly, the working class and poor people are the vast majority. That can and will change everything. The Trump MAGA movement was held at bay in the electoral arena. In particular, a number of candidates for secretary of state were soundly defeated. These Stop the Steal/MAGA candidates were meant to secure election denial for 2024. Gun control and anti-slavery initiatives were passed in Oregon and elsewhere. In Michigan, the governor created an anti-poverty commission to secure steps to end poverty while a pro-choice referendum on the ballot helped Democrats win both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in more than 40 years. Struggles for the right to choose; the right to healthcare; the right to housing and a good living along with the right to protest energized the electorate across the country.
The working class forced gains on many fronts in November 2022 and we proved that we are building an understanding that we can and must build real political power as a key to our survival. But there is no time to relax. We are in a transformation of society. The elections and campaigns contribute to that transformation. It is clear that the working class is awake and in motion, fighting for the lives of the vast majority of the people. It is time to celebrate these gains and keep the momentum, to keep fighting and ensure changes for the good of all.
Women’s and young people’s votes again made all the difference. More people voted in Michigan than ever before and a powerful coalition of connected groups helped elect pro-reproductive rights and pro-economic rights allies. The powerful movements that have been in motion for decades in that state will now push for all the gains they fought and voted for in elections. They know we cannot vote our way out of our problems. We need to keep building power and systems that will bring and maintain the gains we must secure for the good of all society and the very earth we live on.
Results were mixed – both across the country and within the same areas. Some initiatives addressed the needs of the 50 percent (and growing) of people in the United States who struggle with housing insecurity and/or houselessness. All of Oakland’s affordable housing measures passed including authorizing the construction of 13,000 affordable, social housing units, effectively exempting the city from a racist law in California called Article 34 that requires voter approval to build low-rent housing. Florida elected the first Gen Z member to Congress, 25-year-old Democrat and gun control advocate Maxwell Frost.
These are all samples of inspiration, yet we have not forgotten videos of handcuffed voters being arrested and charged with voter fraud in Florida and armed militia in many locations “guarding” ballot boxes and terrifying voters. DeSantis, Kemp, Abbott and many others not only won but they will regroup, learn from the losses, and double down on social control, taking away our rights to our bodies, to protest, while continuing to create policies to ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We cannot forget the women, and others, who have already been put in prison for having abortions in Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. You risk being charged with Level One felonies, murder, homicide, child abuse or child trafficking if you take your daughter over state lines to receive services and/or care.
The Democratic Party continues to polarize. Moderate or “corporate” Democrats did not do well and lost many seats. Again, Socialist-leaning Democrats were enthusiastically elected and they nearly doubled their ranks. In San Jose, the Democratic mayoral candidate moved to the right and lost the election while the moderate New York Democratic governor almost lost to a Trump follower. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is again calling for the resignation of the Democratic Party chair. This increasing polarization is an important struggle for our future. Will the Democratic Party listen to the people and rise to the occasion? Or will it fail us all? People with life-or-death needs cannot stop fighting. Calls for a third party are emerging out of struggles for housing, clean water, healthcare, and other basic needs.
We must unleash this new power. But the ruling class will not sit idly by. Vicious voter suppression tactics are in place and more can be inflicted. We must continue to fight and expose the lie that resistance is futile.
The accession to fascist rule is more than a shift from one party or administration to another. It is a substitution of one state form of class domination for another – a change in how the ruling class exercises its authority – from “democracy” for the capitalist class to dismantling democracy altogether, from democratic rule to rule by lies and terror.
And the best way to fight against it is to use every bit of democracy we still have to hit the ruling class where it is strategically weak, where it is not meeting the basic needs of the vast majority of the people. Unity in the fight for the immediate economic and political interests of the working class is the starting point for the struggle against fascist rule.
Pundits say the people are still polarized. But the real, underlying polarization we face is not between blue and red, but between the wealthy corporate elites and the masses of working people of all ethnicities, colors, religions, and sexual identities. We are one class around what we all know is necessary and what we all need – housing, food, safety, freedom, etc. These are our common interests. The danger is still there. But people are waking up to their power to join forces and create a society where meeting those needs becomes the basis for a whole new world.
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