On Thursday, in Clarkston, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, for the first time since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket some 90 days ago she was joined by former President Barack Obama for a joint rally. An October 22 poll by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution/University of Georgia found Trump leading Harris in the pivotal state 47 percent to 43 percent, just outside the poll’s margin of error.

Thursday’s rally was the first of several celebrity-packed concert events the Harris campaign is holding in the week and a half before the November 5 election. These rallies follow a week-long battleground state tour Harris conducted with former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, daughter of war criminal and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Pop star endorsements, touring with Republican reactionaries and over $166 million in spending in the last 16 days have not propelled Harris above former President Donald Trump in recent polling. On Friday, the New York Times and Siena College released their final polls before the election. They found Harris and Trump tied at 48 percent, with the newspaper observing that Harris’s position, “if anything, may have declined among likely voters” since the previous poll was taken in early October.

The decline in support for Harris is attributable to her pro-corporate and right-wing, war-mongering program. The Biden-Harris administration, far from being the most “pro-worker” in US history, has constantly intervened on the side of corporations and union bureaucracies to suffocate workers’ struggles for decent pay and working conditions, including infamously banning railroad workers from striking in December of 2022.

Since securing the nomination, in campaign rallies, television appearances and commercials, Harris has reneged on all her previous “progressive” positions and promised to be more effective in prosecuting the war against immigrants. This week, she promised to spend $650 million to build more border wall along the US-Mexico border and provide the genocidal Israeli military “everything” it needs to wage war across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Millions of outraged workers and young people are refusing to vote for Harris, and increasing numbers are looking to build alternative independent organizations that will advance the class interests of the working class in opposition the ruling class and both capitalist parties.

Thursday’s Atlanta rally featured music from Bruce Springsteen and appearances by director Spike Lee, billionaire Tyler Perry, CNN commentator Van Jones and actor and Capital One spokesperson Samuel L. Jackson, in addition to the Georgia Democratic congressional delegation. The following day, as Israel launched military strikes with US support against Iran, Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon, Harris held a similar rally—minus Obama—in Houston, Texas, featuring pop singer Beyoncé.

Thursday’s event mirrored the unreality of the Democratic National Convention in August. After musical interludes and hosannas to the “American Dream,” Obama and Harris delivered speeches that ignored not only the ongoing US-backed genocide in Gaza and the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine but also well-advanced and publicized Republican plots to hijack the election. These include a purge of voter rolls and the mobilization of militia elements as “poll watchers” to intimidate and even assault election workers and likely Harris voters and the delay of vote certifications and submission of fake Trump elector slates to overturn the election should Trump lose.

Despite the well-reported machinations to steal the election for Trump, Harris and Obama did not make any appeal to the working class to mobilize against such efforts and in defense of democratic rights. Instead, less than four years after Trump’s coup nearly succeeded after he lost the popular and Electoral College votes, the Democratic politicians advanced the conception that simply voting for Harris would prevent Trump coming to power.

This is because the overriding concern of the Democratic Party and the factions of the capitalist oligarchy that back it is to secure the home front against a growing rebellion by workers and maintain support from the Republicans to continue and escalate the genocidal war in the Middle East and Central Asia and the war against Russia in Ukraine. Harris, Obama and the Biden administration fear any popular mobilization against the conspiracies of Trump and the GOP that could spiral into a broader movement of the working class against war and inequality. They are fully prepared to accept a Trump dictatorship as preferable to an eruption of class struggle.

In his speech Thursday, Obama sought to downplay the danger of another coup by making fun of Trump as an incompetent huckster. “All he cares about is his ego” and “status,” Obama said, adding, “It’s a question of competence.”

“He’s acting so crazy” Obama chortled, “so goofy.” Obama cited retired Marine General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, publicly recounting Trump’s praise for Hitler and his generals, without Obama himself directly calling Trump a fascist. He praised Kelly and retired General Mark Milley, who has also denounced Trump as a fascist, as “serious people,” suggesting that the American people place their trust in the military to defend democracy.

Making a joke of Trump’s pro-Nazi sentiments, Obama offered Trump some “good political advice.”

Now in politics I want to explain, a good rule of thumb is, don’t say you want to do anything like Hitler. You know that’s just good political advice.

Obama never pointed to the immense support Trump has within the Republican Party, the military-intelligence apparatus and the financial oligarchy. Obama, and Harris after him, sought to present Trump as an isolated case, an aberration, not an expression of the broader collapse of constitutional rule in America of which Trump is an expression.

In her short speech, after thanking “her friend” Obama, Harris claimed that “we” would be able to “chart a new joyful way forward” after voting Trump out.

Like Obama, she downplayed the threat of a Trump dictatorship. “Look, I do believe Donald Trump to be an unserious man,” she said. She characterized him as “confused,” “unstable” and “unhinged.”

After recounting Kelly’s and Milley’s comments and the fact the Supreme Court had granted him immunity from prosecution earlier this year, Harris called on everyone to vote saying, the “choice is in your hands. Your vote is your voice. Your voice is your power.”

The refusal of Harris and Obama to warn the population of the very real danger of another coup, if Trump does not win outright, is not a mistake. The Democrats fear that if they alert the population to the danger, the response will be so explosive it will not be able to be contained by the trade union bureaucracies and their pseudo-left appendages.

The stolen 2000 election, in which Al Gore and the Democrats buckled to Republican threats, demonstrated there is no progressive or democratic tendency within the ruling class. Following the stolen election, George W. Bush, with Democratic support, launched the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Elected in 2008, Obama expanded the wars, bailed out the banks and refused to prosecute the war criminals. Under Obama, inequality and wars abroad widened, paving the way for Trump’s demagoguery to find a hearing among sections of the population.

After Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat, Biden and the Democrats did nothing to warn the population about the pending coup, including on the day of the attack itself. Instead, Biden called on Trump to come on television and order his fascist foot soldiers to stand down. Since the failed coup, Biden and the Democrats have repeatedly called for a “strong Republican Party” while refusing to hold Trump and his co-conspirators accountable.

The defense of democratic rights and the defeat of fascism require a frontal assault on the unearned wealth of the ruling class and the overthrow of the capitalist system. The only social force capable of carrying out this historic task is the American and international working class.