BOUGHT POLITICIANS & PHONIES

CHRIS MARSDEN—The Corbynites have once again responded by waving the flag of surrender. Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell tweeted, “In interests of party unity let’s find a way of undoing & resolving this.” Corbyn told Sky News, “What I will be doing is appealing to the party… to kindly think again.” He later appealed to Labour members, “Don’t go away, don’t leave the party. Stay in the party and argue the case for economic and social justice in our society.” Fundamental lessons must now be learned from this degrading spectacle by workers in Britain and internationally.

DAVID PARSLEY—Mr Trump’s favourite newspaper, the New York Post, also owned by Mr Murdoch, dismissed the President’s latest unsubstantiated allegations with the headline: “Downcast Trump makes baseless election fraud claims.” None of this means that Mr Murdoch supports Joe Biden. He had instead dropped his support for Donald Trump. The Australian-born media proprietor cannot stomach backing a loser. He knows when to switch horses: he needs his news organisations to have access to whoever holds power. A gentle but obvious shift in Fox News coverage during the campaign will not have gone unnoticed in Biden circles any less than it has frustrated Trump.

Something at once sinister and refreshing in US politics: Kamala Harris makes no bones about her duplicity. She laughs and jokes about it. She must feel pretty sure of the power structure that supports her, for she’s in effect outing herself as a big phony.

The new left is characterized by criticism of the conservative nature of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, which has been  marked by the heritage of the Pinochet regime, by the remaining characteristics of the constitution, and by the support of the Convergence – an alliance between the Socialist Party and the Christian Democrats – of the neoliberal economic model.

ERIC SCHECHTER—Russiagate is interesting. The Democrats cannot accuse Trump of any of his real crimes, though they are many, because the Democrats are guilty of all those same crimes. So instead the Democrats had to invent a crime, and make use of the fact that they currently have better control of the corporate news media. A lie repeated sufficiently many times begins to seem true. And why not simultaneously paint Russia or China as bad guys; this will enable the weapons companies to sell more weapons at higher profit.