What's Next? A Look Into the Middle Distance

The Sack of Rome in 1527 by Johannes Lingelbach

by Thomas Neuburger

Diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe

The following offers a brief look into the middle distance, a view past the immediate future — the next few weeks or months when the virus will run its predictable, consequential course — but not so long a view as to reach the logical next phase of human history, the reduction of the species by the ravages of the “Jackpot,” as William Gibson called it: the big one, the global climate crisis and all that will bring.

What's missing from a view of the inevitable immediate and the collapsing distant is what gets us from here to there, from the virus in our faces to the emerging climate to come. The future's unknown, but much can be deduced. In that vein I offer these reflections on the few years or so. From this we learn that despite all that is uncertain, despite the many branches of our path, all roads may yet lead to Rome.

• On the 2020 nomination: Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee or he will be replaced as unfit — not unfit for the job (he's already unfit for that) but for the job of appearing to be fit for the job. A middle path is to give the VP nomination to his heir apparent and hint that the Party will be in charge, but these are roughly equivalent alternatives. Corporate Democrats will offer a corporate candidate.

• On the 2020 election: Trump will beat the Democrat (not certain, but likely in my opinion) or the Democrat will win the White House (much less likely). If Biden is the nominee after all, the election will turn on the votes of Democratic Party loyalist voters — most will turn out — added to the independent anti-Trump vote, who may or may not turn out in sufficient numbers to stem the incumbent tide. In that case, the election may well turn on incumbency.

If someone other than Biden is the nominee, the election will turn on Sanders-supporting independent voters, who will likely look at the substitute nominee, a person who received no primary votes and won no delegates, and ask, “Who is this person? Where was he when the primary was actually happening? Oh, nowhere; that’s where I thought he was.”

In other words, a more-competent-than-Biden alternative will have an even bigger hill to climb than Biden would have had, and his or her odds of losing to Trump will be significantly increased. The impression of increased competency won't increase support among Party loyalists, whose votes are guaranteed in any case, but an out-of-the-blue corporate candidate will increase the resistance of non-Party-loyalist and Bernie-got-screwed independents. Many will stay home, more than would have stayed home for Biden; others will revenge-vote for Trump under the principle, "I don't like the knife in my chest, but I hate the one stuck in my back."

• In none of these cases will much of anything change after the election, at least not once Covid has run most of its course. The need for a radical restructured economy will be waved away — by the corporate Republicans as too much "government interference"; by corporate Democrats who control the post-Sanders Party, as “irresponsible” and “unaffordable” given the glut of spending on the virus crisis itself.

In other words, whether Biden is the nominee or not, his promise that nothing will fundamentally change will indeed be kept by whoever is elected. Trump, if president, will do what Trump will do, or something worse. The Democrat, if president, will do what the Party always does, serve its donors while trying to placate workers they've abandoned. In neither case will workers see relief.

• The rebellion against both parties’ corruption will continue as before — or as it would have continued had Coronavirus not worked its interrupted the course.

If Trump is the next president, his Republican critics (they do exist) will be moved to silence by the thought that at least “their guy” is in power. Angry independents though, and newly bankrupt Sanders-supporting Democrats, will not depart so quietly.

In fact, they will not depart at all. They will conclude, instead and correctly, there’s no electoral path that will change their lives.

If a corporate Democrat (the only kind still standing) is the next president, his Democratic critics will be guilted into silence by the shame-selling corporate press. Angry independents though, newly-bankrupt Sanders-supporting Democrats, and all struggling Trump-supporting Republicans will not depart so quietly.

In fact, they will not depart at all. They will conclude, instead and correctly, there’s no electoral path that will change their lives.

• Thus the non-electoral portion (to steal a line from My Favorite Year) of this decade-long rebellion will begin, with all that this implies for endless populist promises not kept, multinational billionaire bailouts purchased and passed, and the clash of the newly-desperate against the muscular force of federal, state, local and judicial machines, all charged with keeping the “peace” at the expense of the people. 

With Sanders out of the game — whether by choice, inability, or the sly Obama hand that puppeteered in plain sight, it matters not at all — with Sanders gone, there are no non-corporate candidates left, which leaves the ravaged with no good choice at all. If they choose to act, they will choose among bad choices, and the corporate state will do what it will do, what entrenched power always does when faced with rebellion.

So far in this drama, the people have not lain quiet; they have acted. I expect no less now. Thus we arrive at Rome by any path.

This is the middle-distance as I see it, the route for the next few years. All roads may lead to Rome, but maybe not to the empire of our minds. People forget that Rome was sometimes sacked.