Democrats are a dumpster fire of a party.
Could it be any more obvious that they don’t give a damn about working and poor people?
They carried out a government shutdown as a purely performative gesture, claiming that they were standing up for Affordable Care Act subsidies and the restoration of Medicaid funding.
But they held the shutdown just long enough for the 2025 elections to get done. Then they picked a group of Senators who are either retiring or are not up for re-election anytime soon to be the bad guys.
Tens of millions of poor people went through absolute heartache for the basic food assistance they lost during the shutdown. TSA workers went six weeks without pay, many of them facing evictions because they were unable to pay their rent.
And NO, the Democratic Party politicians did not “cave in” to Trump and the Republicans because they lack a spine. Democrats capitulated on healthcare in this shutdown for the same reasons they never passed Medicare for All or made the ACA credits permanent — they are a party of the billionaires who HATE the idea of a public healthcare system.
As the great American socialist Eugene Debs said in 1912, the Democratic and Republican parties are not opposed to each other on any question of principle. They both represent the capitalist class, and they have an ironclad bipartisan consensus on screwing over the working class. They are merely competing with each other for the “spoils of office,” as Debs said.
The shutdown was cynically motivated by the Democrats to begin with — a ploy to get people to vote blue in the 2025 elections. They never had any intention of actually using the shutdown to get ACA subsidies or Medicaid funding restored. This is why they took NO ACTION on any of this when Biden was in the White House and they had a majority in the House and Senate. In California, where the Democrats have MANY TIMES had supermajority control of the legislature and the governor’s mansion, they could easily have passed the CalCare universal healthcare system — but they have pulled the plug on it again and again.
The point is that Democrats DON’T WANT to make working people’s lives better. Nor do the Republicans, obviously. What both these parties want is to do their job in maximizing the profits of the capitalists, and keeping working people yo-yoing between them without any real alternative.
Which is why my independent revolutionary socialist Congressional campaign is so crucial.
My campaign is fighting for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich, national rent control, and a national $25/hour minimum wage. We are fighting for an end the genocide in Gaza, for a permanent end to all U.S. military aid to Israel, and to the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands.