Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Shaky Joe Biden, Billionaire Bloomberg, and the Global Race to the Bottom
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
23 Jan 2020
Shaky Joe Biden, Billionaire Bloomberg, and the Global Race to the Bottom
Shaky Joe Biden, Billionaire Bloomberg, and the Global Race to the Bottom

Bloomberg has put himself and his fortune into the contest to rally his (ruling) classmates to the task of shoring up corporate control of the Party if Sanders seizes the top spot.

“The fate and fortunes of the oligarchy cannot be allowed to depend on Old Shaky Joe.”

U.S. oligarchs have begun to panic at the prospect that they will lose control of the other half of the American electoral duopoly. With the GOP in Donald Trump’s unreliable hands, the Democrats four years ago became the de facto ruling class party, and thus the favored brand of the national security state and most of the corporate media. Although there is not even one genuine anti-imperialist among congressional Democrats – certainly not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren -- the party’s popular base is in revolt against a 40-year domestic austerity regime that offers nothing but ever-declining real wages, non-existent job security and a visibly decaying nation-scape. It has finally dawned on most Americans that they have been conscripted into a Global Race to the Bottom, and they want out of the downward spiral.

Sanders and Warren are running for president on austerity-busting issues supported by super-majorities of Democrats (and up to half of Republicans). In previous eras, the corporate rulers would embrace milder versions of reform in health care, wages, job security, educational costs, and environmental protection, in order to blunt demands for more transformative measures. But those days are over. The Lords of Capital are committed to the Race to the Bottom – locked in by the nature of capitalism-in-decline. 

“It has finally dawned on most Americans that they have been conscripted into a Global Race to the Bottom.”

Despite their vice-grip on media and corporate donor control of the Democratic Party machinery, all the oligarchs’ eggs are in Joe Biden’s basket this election year. The numbers show that, were it not for all-consuming fears of Trump among older Black voters, who cling to the notion of Biden’s “electability,” Sanders and Warren would collectively sweep the primaries. The corporate consensus on austerity – and, therefore, the shape of capitalism, at home and globally -- is in dire peril. That’s why Michael Bloomberg has thrown his $55 billion hat into the ring – not because he has any prospect of winning the nomination (his presence in fact helps the anti-austerity candidates), but as the first stage in what Bloomberg is determined will be an epic battle to preserve the austerity regime and its hold on the Democratic Party machinery – the favored party of the ruling class as long as Trump runs the GOP. 

Bloomberg is signaling to his fellow oligarchs, through his blaring commitment of up to a billion dollars, that they must become deadly serious about containing the economic populist wave among the Democrats, or face collapse of the austerity regime. The fate and fortunes of the oligarchy cannot be allowed to depend on Old Shaky Joe. Bloomberg has put himself and his fortune into the contest to rally his (ruling) classmates to the task of shoring up corporate control of the Party if Sanders, or some Sanders-Warren combination, seizes the top spots on the ticket. 

“The corporate consensus on austerity – and, therefore, the shape of capitalism, at home and globally -- is in dire peril.”

Winning the nomination, or even the presidency, doesn’t automatically get you control of the party. But the Democratic Party is a political organism with an institutional life. Although probably only 20 House members, and less than a handful of senators, can at this moment be counted on to support Sanders’ full agenda, that cohort would immediately swell if Sanders wins the nomination in Milwaukee -- and will explode if he is elected president in November. Former New York mayor Bloomberg, the most electorally-attuned of the oligarchs, knows this. He understands that Democratic politicians will only remain fully dependable corporate servants if they are provided with an assured source of funds, through reliable structures. Bloomberg’s gambit is to enlist his ruling class fellows in an all-out push to further consolidate their dollar-dominance of the institutional Democratic Party – the only electoral vehicle left to preserve austerity capitalism with a racially “diverse” face. Although Bloomberg cannot expect to win a decisive number of delegates, he is conducting a “demonstration-effect” campaign to fully engage his uber-class fellows in the fight to maintain the corporate nature of the Democratic Party. 

But Shaky Joe Biden remains the first line of corporate defense. If he does poorly in New Hampshire and Iowa, his aura of “electability” will be shattered. Black voters are not ideologically wedded to Biden. If they voted their economic agenda, Blacks would be overwhelmingly for Sanders.  Only the existential threat of a Trump re-election keeps older Blacks in Biden’s corner. That will change in a flash if Biden does not win strong approval from whites in the first two contests – the corporate nightmare that terrifies and energizes Bloomberg. Biden’s long career as a gladiator for austerity has now moved to center stage, as he defends his role in Barack Obama’s attempt at an across-the-board slash in entitlements “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans, a betrayal of the Democratic base that ended -- blessedly -- in gridlock at the end of Obama’s first term. Sanders will have to be careful in his condemnation of Biden, to avoid indicting The First Black President.

“Biden’s long career as a gladiator for austerity has now moved to center stage.”

The best outcome in 2020 would be a break-up of the Democratic Party, creating space for a genuine political debate in the belly of the imperial beast. It now appears that such a rupture is at least as likely to come from the Right, from Bloomberg-organized billionaires, as from the Left, through a mass defection by Sanders supporters infuriated by yet another round of the Party’s dirty tricks. I believe Bloomberg is preparing to launch a kind of “Third Way” party structure to shore up corporate Democrats, and isolate and deny endorsement to Sanders should the Vermont senator win the nomination – leaving Sanders with only the rump of a party behind him.

If that happens, we at Black Agenda Report will celebrate the end of duopoly, and a new scenario of struggle.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

2020 Election

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Joe Biden is a White Supremacist War Hawk, Too
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Joe Biden is a White Supremacist War Hawk, Too
03 February 2021
No one in the Biden camp has spoken out against the past, present, and future war crimes which will undoubtedly shape the administration.
Biden’s Proposed Cabinet – A Kinder and Gentler Imperialism
Dr.Wilmer J. Leon, III
Biden’s Proposed Cabinet – A Kinder and Gentler Imperialism
02 December 2020
Biden, et al are planning to take us back to a romanticized Clinton and Obama eras.
Freedom Rider: The Real Trump Coup
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: The Real Trump Coup
18 November 2020
Trump puts whiteness first and that means he will always have support and Republican leaders know it.
Biden-Harris and the Diverse Faces of U.S. Imperialism
Tye Salandy
Biden-Harris and the Diverse Faces of U.S. Imperialism
18 November 2020
From Obama v McCain to Biden v Trump, the good cop/bad cop drama of US imperial politics, continues.
Don’t [Mourn] Celebrate, Organize!
Riva Enteen
Don’t [Mourn] Celebrate, Organize!
18 November 2020
The same “injustice” system that unlawfully locked up the Central Park Five will continue unabated with Biden and his “top cop” sidekick.
Black Voters: “Contrarian” Men and “Communal” Women
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Black Voters: “Contrarian” Men and “Communal” Women
12 November 2020
A significant portion of Black males are “contrarians” that take positions at odds with the general Black political consensus – while Black women t
Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: The Real Resistance Begins
11 November 2020
“Kamala Auntie” and Joe from Scranton will do as little as possible so that “nothing will fundamentally change” that would halt endless wars and th
Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss for Humanity
11 November 2020
The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the peopl
The Elusive Quest for Justice in Black America
Bashir Muhammad Akinyele
The Elusive Quest for Justice in Black America
11 November 2020
We as Black people must keep pushing, organizing, and demanding a Black agenda centered on reparations.
Now that Trump Has Been Defeated...
Popular Resistance
Now that Trump Has Been Defeated...
11 November 2020
We need to continue building power from the bottom up through organizing, political education and community assemblies.

More Stories


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
    07 May 2025
    Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
  • Jon Jeter
    The Only Language the White Settler Speaks: Ohio Police Say Grieving Black Father Avenges Son’s Slaying By Killing One of Theirs
    07 May 2025
    The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence. This struggle continues today, forcing a painful question: When justice is denied, does…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment
    07 May 2025
    "DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
    07 May 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Brittany Friedman. Friedman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
  • Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
    Black Politics and Mutual Comradeship: A Manifesto
    07 May 2025
    From Gaza to Sudan to the streets of America, the oppressors of our time demand mass resistance. Not just protest, but an organized, unrelenting struggle. Black radical politics remind us that only…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us