The French Did It, We Can Too

Threatened with the possibility that a far-right political party, the National Rally, might come to power on its anti-immigrant platform, the French left united and created a coalition call the New Popular Front. After the first round of the election, pundits predicted that the quasi-fascist National Rally would win the election. But the fear of the right and its racism, authoritarianism, and odor of Nazism, and the rapid assembly of a coalition of leftists, pro-labor, pro-immigrant, and environmentalist parties inspired the French people who voted to defend their Republic and its historic values inherited from the French Revolution summed up in the slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” And in the Place de la République they celebrated by singing the socialist anthem the Internationale, the song that recalls the French attempt at a socialist revolution in 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, the powerful Socialist and Communist parties of the country’s past, and the Maqui, the French resistance to the Nazi occupiers during World War II.

Why did the New Popular Front win? First, they put forward a new political option, a leftist coalition created to meet the moment. Second, they engaged in a spirited campaign based on a progressive program aimed at taking wealth form the wealthy and providing resources to the working class and the poor. Third, they entered into an honest alliance with President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition, showing a willingness in contested constituencies to step aside for the centrist candidate, just as the centrist candidates stood aside for the left candidate. Witnessing this new idealistic political alternative, the French people seized the opportunity to be their best selves, a population rejecting fascism and endorsing democracy.

Let Us Do What They Did 

First, like the French, we need a new inspiring alternative. That means that Biden must step aside and allow the Democrats to choose a new candidate in some democratic process, through public debates and an open party convention. Whether this is Vice-President Kamala Harris or someone else, what is important is replacing Biden in whom the country no longer has confidence. Having done that, the Democrats need to put that candidate on the road in a national tour offering a progressive program and excoriating Trump’s far right, anti-democratic, misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, and anti-union platform. A new candidate running on a progressive program and lashing out against Trump could inspire the American people and let us too become our best most democratic, most egalitarian, most socially responsible selves.

The Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity has made it absolutely necessary to defeat Trump who if elected will, as Justice Sotomayor has said, have the power of a king. Beating Trump is not impossible, but it requires Democratic Party politicians to show courage and creativity and it demands that if they prove capable of that, that we vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate, whoever that may be.

Let us too be able to celebrate in our squares and plazas across the country, singing our anthems of social justice, “Solidarity Forever,” “We Shall Not Be Moved,” “De Colores,” “Bread and Roses,” “I Will Survive,” and “Won’t Give Up.” We will sing remembering the great workers’ movements of our past, the fight for the civil rights of Black Americans and of Latinos, the women’s liberation movement, Stonewall and the LFBTQ movements, and the environmental movement. We will vote for the Democrats not because we expect that party to deliver us, but because it will keep Trump from power and give us more time to organize the great movement we need and a new political alternative.

The French did it. We can and we must do it too.

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