Glen Ford - Elections Analysis (2016)

Speaker 1: Next up, giving us a 2016 elections analysis, is Glenn Ford. Glenn Ford is a founding member of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace, and Reparations. He is also the executive director of the Black Agenda Report, my personal favorite. In addition, he was a former White House Capitol Hill state correspondent. Please, please, please welcome Glenn Ford.

Glen Ford: Power to the people. The time keeper is going to keep track of me and I will bow to her discipline if I can. When I was going over what I was going to say today, I kind of realized that it was a little bit like what a Jewish rabbi or the head of a Jewish household would say on one of their holidays, and I think it's Passover. The head of household or the rabbi would begin the ceremony by saying something like, Why is this day different from any other day? And so I think that for us the question at this conference is why is this election season different from other election seasons in the United States, other election seasons that you and I have lived through? I think the answer is because there is a fundamental arrangement of the ruling structure in that country that is unraveling in this election season. That is, it is coming apart. And I'm talking about the duopoly. That's the two-party system in the United States. It's a system in which rich white people control both of the parties, but one of those parties, markets itself as the white man's party. That is, it is the overt party of white supremacy. And the other party claims that it is more inclusive. That's about all it says. We talked about this before at other conferences, but now the issue is right. It is unfolding right before our eyes in this election primary season. There has always been a white man's party in the United States. For most of the history of the United States, that white man's party has been the Democratic Party. But then in the 60s, the parties switched places. But there was still a white man's party and another party that claimed that it was more inclusive. This duopoly system is a political arrangement that balances itself out and in which the two parts react to each other. This arrangement makes promises to its constituencies, and it makes those promises in order to keep them voting for the representatives of the rich people who control both of those parties. But this election season, that arrangement is coming apart, and that is why this is a different election season than the ones that we have seen before. The Democratic duopoly arrangement with black people is that it will provide them with some representation and with, well, they make a promise of providing protection from the forces of white racism. That has never come through. They've never followed through on that promise of protection for black lives and certainly not of protection of black lives from the police and that would be a contradiction in terms anyway because the police job is to contain and suppress and keep the black population down. This is why we have a Black Lives Matter movement, because they have violated the implicit arrangement of the duopoly system. That Black Lives Matter movement, and I use that term to describe the whole umbrella of activity that's going on, That movement is largely outside of the Democratic Party, although the Democratic Party has tried mightily to absorb that movement and has had some success. But the Democrats have fulfilled much of their part of the bargain in terms of black representation. Two things were promised. Protection, they didn't fulfill that bargain. But in terms of representation, they have in large measure. But this representation has benefited mostly the black misleadership class, which owes its existence to the Democratic Party or feels that it does. For that reason, this black misleadership class is the last part of the duopoly that will budge from this arrangement. That's why much of the Democratic Party is in revolt against the rich men who control the party, but the black political class remains the most loyal element in that duopoly situation. Their allegiance is to the party that has nurtured their rise in social and economic status. Their allegiance is not to the larger black community and that will not change. The black rank and file, I'm talking about just average black folks, is also largely sticking with Hillary Clinton because the duopoly system is a trap and we have to look at it as a trap. If there are just two parties and one of those parties is the party of white supremacy, then white people have at least two choices. They can be in the party of white supremacy or they can be in the more inclusive party. But black people feel that they have no choice at all under this duopoly system. No choice but to support the party that is more inclusive. That's why it was so urgent to call this conference because when the ruler's system is in disarray, the new opportunities that open up for those who are entrapped by this system have to be taken advantage of. Things are moving very quickly in this season and the things that happen will have a mark on everything that occurs after this season is over. Nobody is more entrapped by the duopoly political system than black people are. So any crisis in that duopoly system is good news for us. We're not supposed to get upset when there's a Donald Trump out there wrecking the Republican Party. Go ahead and wreck it. That's all to our interest. And it's in our interest if the Saunders people wreck the Democratic Party, too. In fact, it's much more in our interest because we are in that party. The two-party arrangement was that the white man's party, which is for the Republicans, would defend the privileges and the social status of white people. And white people actually assumed that they would get good jobs as part of that deal as well. It was implicit, they thought, in the contract. But the global capitalist order has destroyed the economic side of that deal that white folks thought they had with the duopoly party, with the white man's party. And these white people have suffered what they consider to be the ultimate insult by having to endure and salute and sing hail to the chief to a black man. Barack Obama and for them that was the last straw. Now we of course see Barack Obama in an entirely different light at the Black is Back Coalition but for these white supremacists having to sing Hail to the Chief to a black man was just more than they could bear. It's been eight years of hell for a white supremacist. And they blame that on They blame that on the white man's party. They think that their contract with that party has been violated. How could you put us through this? That's the way they feel. This accounts for the viciousness and virulence of their opposition. Donald Trump sensed that, since he is a racist white man himself. He's in touch with those vibes. And so that's why he launched this campaign to capitalize on the white sense of betrayal. And that is what, that is the immediate factor in the destabilization of the Republican side of the duopoly. The Republican Party has the most acute problem, and it is headed for a breakup. We don't know where the pieces are going to fall, but it is in the process of breaking up. But we have to see the duopoly as kind of like a binary star system, the two stars. The two stars orbit around each other. And any disruption in that orbit affects both of them. You can't see them as just being separate entities. They interact together. And so the democratic half of that duopoly is also in trouble. But it's even worse than that in terms of worse than that for them. The logic of the duopoly system dictates that the real purpose of your vote, that is your part of the inclusive half of the duopoly system and the logic of your vote is to defeat the white man's party it is to defeat the republicans and that is why you're a democrat you're not a democrat because they have a list of principles like chairman yesha taylor outlined for the black is back coalition You are part of the Democratic Party because you want to defeat the other part of the duopoly, the white man's party. And by that kind of logic, what is best for the Democratic Party is what is best for you. That is the operative methodology. And this is what sets black people up for the trap that is within the trap it is a kind of double trap the duopoly system is a trap in itself but for black people there is another trap within the trap because if the purpose of voting is to defeat the republicans then black people should therefore give their votes to the democrat who has the money and who has the support from enough white people to win the general election, whether that candidate is the one that is closest to your political thinking or not. And that's why there was so little analysis of what Hillary Clinton's position is or Bernie Sanders' position is or what the Black is Back Coalition's position is or what anybody's position is, because positions are not important In this kind of logic, in this double trap, the only question is who can beat Donald Trump or who can beat whoever is put forward by the white man's party. That's what the black misleadership class calls strategic voting. If you follow the logic of the duopoly, and you fall into the double trap. Instead of saying that you have been entrapped, they say, no, we are voting strategically. And strategically always means voting for whatever the strongest, the most moneyed, the most well-connected, and usually that means the most right-wing Democrat is who comes up on the menu. The duopoly system itself mitigates against independent black politics on the electoral level. It's not some fault among our people. It's the system that we have to operate in or that has been imposed on us that says you will have no independent politics because that would violate the logic of the duopoly. It means that you are abandoning the fight against the white man's party. because you are not collaborating fully and wholeheartedly and entirely with the Democratic Party. This is why we don't have that many Charles Barons representing us. And it's why Chokwe Lumumba's brief victory in Jackson, Mississippi was such an anomaly. It was strange by American standards because it wasn't supposed to happen in this duopoly kind of system. And it's also why Ross Baraka's win in Newark, New Jersey, is still in what I would call an experimental stage. But we have to see how that turns out, because he is still a Democrat. He's still in the matrix, and we'll see how he operates within this matrix. But the good news remains that the duopoly system is in crisis. It is in a state of flux in both parties. Donald Trump's campaign is wrecking the Republican Party, and there is the real possibility that it will lead to a fracturing of the Republican Party into two parties, one of them headed up by Trump and the other representing the old line establishment, that is the corporate and financial elite. Now, I guess you're saying, well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't Donald Trump part of the corporate and financial elite? He's a billionaire and you'd be right but strange things do happen and they happen when the system is in crisis and this is one of those strange things and it's a great thing in terms of what has already resulted and that is the fracturing of the Republican Party. What Donald Trump has done is to take the rhetoric of the white man's party to its logical conclusion he understands that the white masses only supported the republican party because of race that was it that was their understanding all the other stuff were things that were added on layered on by the rich people that controlled the party but those white masses of folks We're only thinking about race, and Donald Trump understood that. They didn't care about the Republicans' positions on capital gains taxes. They didn't care about the corporate economic agenda, and they didn't care, or at least they didn't usually used to think about the corporate global marketing strategy. In fact, they hated the fact that these same corporations were sending what they considered to be their jobs overseas, jobs that they believed should go to good Americans, which meant to them white Americans like themselves. This made them doubly angry. They wanted the Republican Party to deliver on what they thought was being promised, and that is white privilege and exclusion of Muslims and of Mexicans, and it goes without saying it has always been exclusion of black people, and they felt that they were betrayed. They call themselves or think of themselves as America firsters. And that means that they want what white supremacists have always wanted. They want a white man's country. Now, since the 60s, since we put some fear of black folks into them, they don't speak like that in polite society. Donald Trump has given them the opportunity to go back to speaking that way out loud in big crowds. But mostly that kind of conversation has been quieted down. But they still want a white man's country. That's why they try to find neighborhoods and keep neighborhoods as white as they can and the whole panoply of white behavior. They feel betrayed by the corporate guys that run the Republican Party who they feel care only about their trade deals and about their tax advantages but are not living up to the racial side of the bargain. and that's why they are in revolt. That is the central reason. Now, folks want to prettify it up and put the economic issue first, and of course they are under great economic pressure. Of course the crisis of capitalism is what has destabilized their situation, but in terms of their subjective motivations, they're talking about race, and that's why they listen to Donald Trump. Trump has stripped away the civic pretense and the public hypocrisy of the Republican Party by showing its raw racist face. He's giving the game away. And once you snatch that fig leaf that covers the emperor's naked body, things are never the same again. This does not go away. So the party elites find that they must separate themselves from Donald Trump. That's why you see this Never Trump movement. That's why they're spending tens of millions of dollars. That's why there's going to be a fracture in the Republican Party. Because they cannot afford to have this fig leaf stripped away. But there are more reasons. And there are dangers for them in this. Because when they reject Trump, who is simply tapping into the basic racist impulses and expectations, the racist expectations of a huge chunk of the Republican Party, they risk alienating a core constituency of the party and endangering the whole basis of them being a mass party. This is a life and death dilemma for the Republican parties. But it gets even worse than that for them. Trump has rejected much of the rationale for the maintenance of U.S. empire in the world. He's rejected much of the rationale for imperial wars. He says that the NATO alliance is obsolete. He says that the Europeans ought to pay a lot more for U.S. protection. In fact, he seems to be saying that the U.S. should be in the business of a protection game. He clearly does not consider NATO to be part of US national security. He says the same thing about Saudi Arabia. He says that Saudi Arabia would go out of business without US protection and he doesn't seem to mind the idea. The amounts This amounts to a rejection of US policy in the Middle East that goes all the way back to President Roosevelt during World War II. Every president since Roosevelt, through Carter, and including up to now with Obama, has said that Saudi Arabia specifically and the Middle East in general are a vital national security interest to the United States and that is a cause for war. But Donald Trump says that these are simple financial transactional relationships. He says he wants to withdraw the nuclear umbrella from South Korea and from Japan and that they are rich enough to pay for their own nukes and that they ought to do that. He says he wants to deal with China through economic measures and not by military confrontation. And it appears that the same thing would apply to Russia. It would also logically apply to the vast U.S. network of 1,000 bases all over the world, which is just part of the protection racket. And by Trump's logic, all those places in the world, even third world countries that don't have budgets, ought to be paying for all those U.S. troops. may change his tune at any time on any of these subjects, and he probably has changed what he said. But the cat is already out of the bag. They violated a taboo, and you can't turn back the clock. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. The damage has been done. And if Donald Trump's supporters do not reject him after he has said all of that, then that would tend to show that there really isn't any popular basis for the U.S. imperial position or for U.S. militarism. It would show that the rationale for the war party, and by the war party I mean both the Democratic and Republican parties, is really just a construct that was created by the rich people who control those parties and spread by the U.S. media but is not really a part of the broad opinion in the United States because if the right wing of the right-wing party, that is the Donald Trump wing of the right-wing Republican Party, doesn't believe in all these shibboleths about national security and the U.S. obligation to police the world and the city on the hill and all that other crap. If they don't believe that, then who does believe that? This is some heavy stuff that's going down. what donald trump is saying cannot coexist with the republican party as we know it and as a matter of fact it cannot coexist with the democratic party as we know it i'm not going to say that donald trump is to the left because that dignifies his position as if he's he can come into the ranks of the left but his show is not the war party's position. And that is one of the reasons. You see, there are layers and layers of reasons why the Republican Party as an institution is headed for a split. On the Democratic side, something similar is happening, although the crisis, the duopoly crisis for the Democrats is not nearly as acute as it is on the Republican side. Bernie Saunders supporters are revolting against the corporate leadership of their party. I think that is a fair general statement. And the corporate leadership is embodied in Hillary Clinton. It's not about Hillary Clinton's personality, although there's so much to dislike there. It's about the fact that she is seen as the embodiment of the corporate leadership, the corporate rulers of that party. Although Bernie Saunders himself may not be prepared and probably is not prepared to split the party, the polls show that a significant proportion of his followers are prepared to make that move. Time is, there wasn't a number on that, so that means the time is entirely up. All right. I can dig it. I can dig it.

Speaker 3: She was talking about imperialism.

Glen Ford: Time is up for U.S. imperialism. I got you. All right, well, time is up. Time is up for me. Well, I think I'm going to skip and go ahead to the central point. We have a struggle ahead, and one has to note what's going on in the Democratic Party, in the Saunders camp, which is largely a white camp, and it's extremely important to talk about why the Republican Party is is fracturing because that sets the whole scenario. But our problem is an internal one. If we talk about self-determination, most of that struggle is internal because in all colonized situations, you have to get through the surrogates for the master in order to get next to the master himself. And those surrogates are the black misleadership class. And as I said before, they are the most loyal, the most loyal component in the country to this duopoly system. They think they live and die by the health of the Democratic Party. They're the last ones who are going to back off of this system, but they're the people who stand between us, who disrupt, whose job is to make sure that there is no independent black political activity. And so this new phase that has been engendered by the split, the crisis in the duopoly is going to put us heads up in confrontation with that black misleadership class. We need to get used to the fact that it is internal struggle that will be central to all of our struggles for self-determination. We've got to go through those people to get where we need to go. And that will set the terms of our activities in the coming months as we adjust to this new situation. Power to the people.