GR McColl reports on the US presidential election and argues that the resistance to American militarism could yet create a new party.
If most opinion polls in the US are at all credible George W Bush looks set for a second term in the White House. At first glance this seems quite extraordinary, given the fact that his administration has presided over a net loss of some one millions jobs, dramatic increases in the numbers of Americans living below the poverty line and a rise of 1.5 million people without any form of health insurance in 2003 to a total of 45 million. And, of course, this takes no account of the widespread unpopularity of the increasingly bloody occupation of Iraq.
Bush has engendered more deeply felt passion than any president in living memory, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon. His presidency and particularly the Iraq war have rekindled activism on a scale rarely witnessed in the US since the Second World War.
Half a million demonstrators took to the streets of New York City on 29 August in one of the largest demonstrations in US history to protest against Bush and the presence of the Republican Party convention in the “Big Apple”. And Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” has broken box office records in the most unlikely parts of the country.
Of course, the polls could be wrong. Kerry could trounce Bush in a televised debate or the combined efforts of Bruce Springsteen and REM playing around the nation could turn the tide. In the closely contested “swing states” voter registration among young people has risen sharply and a clear majority of them have registered as Democrats – something the polls would not typically reflect. In predominantly blue-collar Cleveland, Ohio, for example, new voters are registering at twice the rate recorded four years ago.
But let’s suppose the polls are right and the widely supported “Anybody But Bush” campaign fails.
A victory for Bush on 2 November will reflect the failure of John Kerry’s campaign. In recent weeks as his campaign has continued to flounder, Kerry has abandoned his absurd posturing as the “commander-in-chief in waiting” and begun to attack the rationale advanced by the Bush administration for going to war against Iraq. He remains, however, publicly committed to maintaining a military presence in the country for a full four years – albeit with more troops wearing blue UN helmets. Beyond this pledge Kerry will not and, most probably, cannot go.
As the Democratic standard-bearer, he faces an inherent constraint, which means that he dare not break fundamentally from the supposed post-9/11 consensus around US imperialism’s “foreign policy”. Regardless of the fact that 90 per cent of the delegates at his own party’s convention indicated in July that they were now opposed to the Iraq war, along with such pro-Kerry maverick billionaires as Warren Buffett and George Soros, the dominant capitalist interests in the US are not prepared to withdraw from Iraq any time soon since the overall cost of what would effectively be a humiliating defeat outweighs any of the potential advantages.
Bush has quite unashamedly served as the chief executive for the very rich and major multinational corporations, lavishing tax cuts on the upper middle class, bashing the west coast dockers and public sector unions and further deregulating swathes of industry. Still, Bush’s lead in campaign contributions from big business is narrow in most key sectors of the economy, with the extraordinary but unsurprising exception of the oil, gas and extractive industries, where an estimated 90 percent of contributions are going Bush’s way. At the same time, the Democratic Party leadership remains utterly and very willingly accountable to the interests of those bosses.
But there is a potentially powerful contradiction opening up between Kerry, the Democrats and their “base” in a diminished but still immensely powerful organised working class. The Democrats were, of course, the party that launched the first Cold War, including Korea; the party that under Kerry’s idol, John F Kennedy, dramatically escalated the war against Vietnam. And during the Clinton years took unilateral military interventions without the rubber stamp of the United Nations, in Haiti and the Balkans, while ruthlessly enforcing the sanctions regime that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for most of the 1990s.
Through all this organised labour has either slavishly supported US imperialism’s military adventures or remained utterly silent. In sharp contrast to the situation that prevailed for virtually the whole of the Vietnam War, significant sections of organised labour, sometimes in defiance of national union bureaucracies are adopting positions that are overtly opposed to the current war and occupation, and are incompatible with the line of Kerry and the Democratic nationally.
In late August the Communications Workers of America (CWA) joined the Service Employees (SEIU), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Postal Workers (APWU), Mail Handlers (a division of the Laborers’ Union – LIUNA), and the California, Washington, and Maryland/DC Federations of Labor in adopting strong antiwar resolutions this year. At present, all these organisations are also (more or less) backing Kerry’s campaign. In total, the unions are bankrolling the Democratic candidate to the tune of some $65 million – in absolute terms, at least, the biggest ever “investment” in a US election by organised labour
These factors, combined with the size and fervour of the anti-war protests, illustrate the basis for a “third party”, a genuine “Labour Party” independent of the pro-capitalist and imperialist duopoly of both Democrats and Republicans, with serious roots in the working class and among those oppressed by racism, sexism and homophobia.
Despite the dismal absence of choice in this as in other US elections over many decades (see box on Nader candidacy) such a party is not a utopian pipedream but a renewed possibility in the coming period, even if it is not about to enter the stage before the 2 November general election.
Whatever the eventual outcome of that poll, the tasks facing socialists in the US will not fundamentally change, even if Bush temporarily demoralises many around the world with a victory next month. The extraordinary size and fervour of the 29 August march through Manhattan was a powerful reminder that militant youth and US workers desperately need but can also construct their own alternative to both Bush/Cheney, Kerry/Edwards and the system of global exploitation and oppression that all four defend tooth and nail.