After several weeks of preposterous and self-serving legal challenges, and an absolutely ludicrous and continuing disinformation campaign led by the President himself, the dust has settled on the 2020 election.

The decisive winner was the ruling class, the capitalists. Working class discontent and energy was once again successfully diverted from class warfare into the dead end of bourgeois electoralism. The latest “most important election of our lifetime” yet again offers not the slightest prospect of the kinds of policies required by and adequate to the multiple and converging epochal crises faced not only by our nation, but all humanity.

With the victory of Joe Biden most of the “progressives,” whose political activity was fueled only by revulsion at Donald Trump, will return to the accustomed state of passivity. Now that they have done their duty and cast their vote for the person whose single biggest virtue was not being Donald Trump, they have every excuse to do what they prefer; namely, to be at brunch smugly assuming everything is fine because Trump was defeated. Anyone who has been paying attention to the state of American politics and not just over the last four years knows that even though Trump was defeated, Trumpism will remain a potent and menacing force.

While Joe Biden will undoubtedly play the role of President much better than the out-going vulgarian, his agenda comes nowhere close to addressing the scale of the crises we face. No matter the outcome of this election, the task the Socialist Party sets for itself remains the same: To unite the working class in a political force capable of reshaping society along just, equitable, solidaristic and sustainable lines. A future in which the “condition for the free development of each is the free development of all.”