US President Joe Biden (French)

Joe Biden and the Democratic Party made a Trump presidency possible once, and it looks like they will make it possible again.

If Trump returns to power, it will not be because of Russian interference or voter suppression or because the working class is full of irredeemable bigots and racists.

It will be because Democrats are as indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza as they are to immigrants, the poor in our poor inner cities, those driven into bankruptcy by medical bills, credit card debt and usurious mortgages, and those who have been dispossessed, especially in rural America. , due to waves of mass layoffs.

Dismantling the nation

Biden and the Democrats, along with the Republican Party, have destroyed the foundations of antitrust and deregulated banks and corporations, allowing them to dismantle the nation.

They supported legislation in 1982 that established the manipulation of stocks through massive buybacks;

Which led to mass layoffs of workers.

They made trade deals burdensome for the working class, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which paralyzed union organizing.

They were full partners in building the vast archipelagos of the American prison system - the largest in the world - and militarizing the police to turn them into internal armies of occupation.

They finance endless wars.

Democrats serve their corporate masters, without whom most of them, including Biden, would not have a political career.

This is why Biden and the Democrats will not pay attention to those who are destroying our economy and extinguishing our democracy.

Calling for reforms puts their fiefdoms of privilege and power at risk.

They fancy themselves “captains of the ship,” writes labor journalist Hamilton Nolan, but “in reality they are wood-eating shipworms that consume them from within until they sink.”

Bankrupt liberalism

Authoritarianism is nurtured in the fertile soil of bankrupt liberalism.

This was a reality in Weimar Germany.

This was a reality in the former Yugoslavia.

This is our reality now.

Democrats had four years to enact new social contract reforms.

They failed, and now we will pay the price.

Trump's second term will not be like his first.

It will be vengeful.

Retaliation against the institutions that targeted Trump: the press, the courts, intelligence agencies, disloyal Republicans, artists, intellectuals, the federal bureaucracy, and the Democratic Party.

If Donald Trump returns to power, our presidency will turn into a dictatorship that strengthens the legislative and judicial branches.

The plan to systematically extinguish our fragile democracy is laid out in an 887-page plan compiled by the Heritage Foundation called “Mandate for Leadership.”

The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million developing policy proposals, staffing lists and transition plans in a 2025 project to rescue Trump from the chaos that plagued him during his first term.

Trump blames "snakes," "traitors" and the "deep state" for undermining his first administration.

Jobs die

Our hard-working American fascists, holding the Christian cross and waving the flag, will go to work on day one purging the federal agencies of “snakes” and “traitors,” issuing “biblical” values, cutting taxes for the billionaire class, abolishing the EPA, and stacking the courts. Federal agencies with ideologues are stripping workers of the few rights and protections they have.

Internal security, including wholesale surveillance of the public, will remain the state's main business.

Other functions of the state will die, especially those focused on social services, including social security and protection of the vulnerable.

Unfettered and unregulated capitalism, with no self-imposed limits, turns everything into a commodity, from humans to the natural world, which it exploits, until exhaustion or collapse.

It creates first a mafia economy, as Karl Polanyi writes, and then a mafia government.

Political theorists, including Aristotle, Karl Marx, and Sheldon Wolin, warn that when a few seize power, the only options left are tyranny or revolution.

Democrats know the working class has abandoned them.

And they know why.

Economic challenges

Democratic pollster Mike Lux wrote: “Contrary to the assumptions of many pundits, economic issues are far more at the forefront of Democrats' problems in working-class districts than the culture war...These voters would care less about cultural difference if they thought Democrats burdened them with more economic challenges.” “The voters we need to win over in these districts are not inherently conservative on social issues.”

But Democrats will not alienate the corporations and billionaires who keep them in office.

They chose instead two self-defeating tactics: lies and fear.

Democrats express false concern for workers who have been victims of mass layoffs while simultaneously flirting with corporate leaders who coordinate these layoffs with huge government contracts.

The same hypocrisy is practiced when they express concern about the slaughter of civilians in Gaza while transferring billions of dollars in weapons to Israel and vetoing UN ceasefire resolutions in order to continue the genocide.

Filled with comprehensive surveys and data, Les Leopold shows in his book Wall Street's War on Labor that economic dislocation and despair are the drivers behind an angry working class, not racism and bigotry.

He writes about Siemens' decision to close its factory in Olean, New York with 530 decent-paying union jobs.

While Democrats bemoaned the shutdown, they refused to halt Siemens' federal contracts to protect workers at the plant.

Biden then invited Siemens USA CEO Barbara Hampton to sign the 2021 infrastructure bill at the White House. The signing photo shows Hampton standing in the front row with New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

Lying Democrats

Mingo County in the early 1900s was the center of an armed clash between the United Miners and coal barons, with gun thugs hired by the Detective Agency.

Gun thugs in 1912 evicted striking workers from company housing and beat and shot union members until the state militia occupied the coal towns and broke the strike.

The Roosevelt administration did not lift the federal blockade until 1933. The union, which had been banned, was legalized.

“Mingo County was not forgotten, at least not for long,” Leopold wrote.

“Late in 1996, with more than 3,200 coal miners still working, Mingo County gave Bill Clinton 69.7 percent of its votes.”

But every four years after that, support for Democrats declined, and by 2020, Joe Biden received just 13.9 percent of the vote in Mingo, a radical downturn in a county that once saw the Democratic Party as its savior.

Mingo County's 3,300 coal mining jobs by 2020 fell to 300, the largest loss of coal jobs of any county in the country.

The lies of Democratic politicians have done far more harm to working men and women than any of the lies spewed by Trump.

There have been at least 30 million mass layoffs since 1996 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking them, according to the Labor Institute.

The oligarchs, not content with mass layoffs and reducing the unionized workforce in the private sector to 6 percent, have filed legal papers to shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that protects workers' rights.

Elon Musk's SpaceX, as well as Amazon, Starbucks, and Tradergo have targeted the NLRB — which had already been stripped of most of its power to impose fines and force corporate compliance — after it accused Amazon, Starbucks, and Tradergo of breaking the law by preventing union organizing.

The NLRB accused SpaceX of illegally firing eight workers for criticizing Musk.

SpaceX, Amazon, Starbucks and Tradergo are seeking to have federal courts overturn the 89-year-old National Labor Relations Act;

To prevent judges from hearing cases against companies for violating labor laws.

Fear — fear of the return of Trump and Christian fascism — is the only card Democrats have left to play.

This will work in urban and liberal enclaves, where university-educated technocrats, part of the globalized knowledge economy, are busy berating and demonizing the working class for ingratitude.

Fear does not pervade the deindustrialized urban landscapes and neglected wastelands of rural America, where families struggle without sustainable employment, the opioid addiction crisis, the desertification of agricultural areas, personal bankruptcy, evictions, crippling debt, and profound despair.

They want what Trump wants.

Revenge.

Who can blame them?

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.