I’ll spare you, fair reader, any breathlessly rehearsed platitudes about 2020 and how much it sucked. Below are six pieces that, from my vantage, had an impact this year, on issues I think will play an important role in the year to come, none of them especially optimistic.
“How Uber and Lyft Are Buying Labor Laws”
One (accurate) version of the story of Prop 22 is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia picked a fight in the front yard of American progressivism in order to protect its investment in Uber, and in so doing created the blueprint for the final destruction of organized labor by creating a third worker category. And sold it in the language of racial justice to California voters, who gobbled it up! The future of labor is right here; the future undoing of the Democratic Party is right here too, given that organized labor is the only institution left that reliably drives votes for the party. Bonus: Alice Huffman, the president of the California NAACP, who was personally paid handsomely by these companies to advocate for this proposition, as I wrote, stepped down a few weeks later.
“How Progressives Built a Campaign Machine … Thanks to the DCCC”
Every time progressives lose an election, corporate media calls it a referendum on a losing and unpopular ideology. Of course, that often has little to do with it: Putting together a winning campaign is an infrastructure problem, not an ideological one, and this piece looks into how progressives figured out, in just a couple of years, how to make their victories reproducible, despite trenchant opposition from the Democratic Party. This also foreshadowed just how abysmal the mainstream Democratic campaign world is, a sign of the party’s absolute face-plant to come in November. Cheri Bustos, the story’s villain, stepped down shortly thereafter, and her replacement pledged to end the blacklist. But the party’s enmity toward progressives and outrageously awful strategy that resulted in a +3 House majority is going to haunt them for the next two years.
“How Kamala Harris Fought to Keep Nonviolent Prisoners Locked Up”
This has less of a forward-looking element to it, but was the result of months of feeling around in the dark for legal documents. Almost no one wanted to speak on the record about it, given that Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential elevation was considered a fait accompli at this point in the year. It’s a devastating window into Harris’s legacy as California attorney general, where she was not only ideologically conservative but generally incompetent, and contemptuous of the rule of law and procedural norms that she and Joe Biden went on to run on. It came out a week or so before she was nominated for VP, and, in theory, became the de facto future of the party. Draw your own conclusions about what that means.
“It’s Time to Nationalize the Airlines”
You’d think this would be settled, given that this was nine months ago and the airlines reaped a sweetheart bailout package. But even with a vaccine on the way, the state of the airlines remains unsettled, the layoffs are substantial, and the environmental impact is profound. They’re almost certainly going to have to go back to the well. Biden loves to brag about his and Brian Deese’s role in the 2009 auto bailout, but if they’d gone for public ownership and converted the fleet to all electric, GM would be a world leader and industry pacesetter. Instead, they’re making 22 mph rental cars in Matamoros. There’s likely to be something of a similar opportunity with American Airlines at some point, which is so bogged down by financialization it can barely keep its head above water.
“The Dawn of the BlackRock Era”
If you’re feeling negative about the rightward drift of the Democratic Party, this one is for you. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton allegedly committed to having no BlackRock execs in her Cabinet. Now, the only people under 70 anywhere near Joe Biden are BlackRock alums, the people he’s called the “future” of the party. BlackRock is really a novel entity in terms of financial institutions by dint of its sheer holdings, and it’s everywhere. Trump cracked the door; Biden let them rush in.
“Barack Obama’s Legacy Is Narendra Modi”
Given that we’re effectively running it back with former Obama employees (aka the very conditions that led us to Trump in the first place), it seems like a good time to be clear-eyed about Obama’s legacy, no matter how great his book tells us he was. The good stuff he did (Paris accord, Iran deal) was shredded almost instantly; the only contribution on foreign policy that lasted was the wave of anti-democratic strongmen he and his team endorsed abroad, and that entire team returns with Biden.
