Leaving the Party For All The Wrong Reasons

 Danny Haiphong on Tulsi Gabbard rationale for leaving the Democratic Party:

The Democratic Party has ridden on the back of its Russiagate conspiracy theory to serve the repressive imperatives of the national security state and expand censorship. Democratic Party support for a New Cold War against Russia and China has greatly increased the chances of nuclear exchange. Gabbard’s decision to leave the Democratic Party would have been a welcome development if it were for these reasons alone. However, Gabbard’s overall message for leaving the Democratic Party risks discrediting this all too important task of the movement.

The biggest problem (and there were many) with Gabbard’s statement is her citation of “anti-white” racism in the Democratic Party. While bemoaning “wokeness,” Gabbard plays into a racial politics that have zero basis in reality. President Joe Biden is the architect of the mass incarceration regime that targets Black Americans disproportionately for imprisonment and/or state sanctioned murder and his policy record as president remains firmly pro-police . It wasn’t too long ago when Gabbard was condemning Kamala Harris for her role in fueling the U.S.’s racist criminal justice regime. Furthermore, her reference of “open borders” ignores the fact that Biden has terrorized migrant populations such as Haitian asylum seekers with even more ferocity than Donald Trump.

The “anti-white” racism trope is thus nothing more than a dog whistle that represents another form of identity reductionism. Liberal identity reductionism promotes “diverse” faces in high places to entrap workers and oppressed people into the Democratic Party. White identity reductionism channels economic anxiety and mistrust in the ruling class into a politics of whiteness that supports the program of the GOP. In both cases, class struggle is suffocated under the weight of duopoly partisanship. Gabbard says that the Democratic Party stands for a government of, by, and for a powerful elite but fails to mention that this is the function of the duopoly in its entirety.

Read the whole article here. Personally Gabbard's reasoning reminds me of Kim Iverson talking about why she was separating from the Democratic Party and aligning with Republicans. Just to be clear:(Keeping in mind that as of now Gabbard hasn't officially joined the GOP) if the two major political parties were that different, jumping from one to the other would not treated so lightly by the leaders of these parties. As much as they bicker with each other and try to convince the voters that the differences are stark, there is no real process or trial for changing affiliation. It's easier to go from Republican to Democrat (or vice versa) than it is to register to vote or get a third party on the ballot.