The battle for the White House is on. The parties have officially endorsed their candidates, running mates have been picked and policy proposals are coming into focus.
Barack Obama’s official selection as the first African-American presidential candidate of a major US political party has been widely hailed in the media and among sections of US society as an historic event. Now Republican candidate McCain has tried to outflank Obama by picking a female running mate as his vice presidential candidate, in an attempt to appeal to the Christian right and middle class women.
Obama started out as a candidate more on the left of the Democratic Party, but as he got closer to the nomination, he took his support from black people and the poor for granted and set off trying to win middle class and rich votes, pulling him more into the centre ground politically. He has spent the last few months reassuring the US capitalist class that America’s foreign policy will be safe in his hands, sabre rattling at Iran and promising to pour troops and money into waging the war on terror in central Asia.
Accusations from his Republican opponents that Obama is too young or inexperienced, led to a choice of Joe Biden for the vice presidential nomination. Biden has decades of experience in Washington – as a warmonger and chairman of the foreign relations committee.
Biden truly is a „safe pair of hands“ for US foreign policy. He was a long-time supporter of US military intervention in Iraq and expansion of US military forces in Eastern Europe as part of the containment of Russia, and was a key architect of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. He proposes dividing Iraq up into three countries. He is also a strong supporter of Israel. Taken together he is a staunch right-wing member of the Democrats, a man who prides himself on his „close friendship“ with John McCain.
Biden is a strategically important vice president to have in the White House for the rich. He said in his speech to the Democratic Convention that the Bush administration had „failed to face the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers.“ The US ruling class needs a man who can handle the big powers, and with Georgia fresh in their minds they predict future conflicts and confrontations between the US and Russia.
The new Democrat line on Iraq is one that is designed to still hit the right notes with the anti-war constituency that was so crucial in getting Obama through the primaries, but in reality offers little prospect for change. Obama wants to scale back operations and pull out the „combat troops“ by 2010, but he wants to maintain a huge armed force in the military bases that are currently being built across the country.
Of course Obama has also tried to better McCain at gung ho fighting talk by promising to „go to the cave where [Bin Laden] lives“. Already Obama has a track record of threatening to use „missile strikes“ on Iran and the use of military force in Pakistan if both nations were not seen to be sufficiently prosecuting the war against Al-Qaeda.
In foreign policy the only change that Obama represents is a change of focus from the Middle East to central Asia. When it comes to Palestine, his comments about giving Jerusalem to Israel as its undivided capital was a move even further to the right than Bush had ever dared to make.
Domestic policy
But what about Obama’s policies for the home front? This is where it really matters, in terms of his election. If Obama can mobilise the traditional working class and lower middle class supporters of the Democrats with promises to alleviate the worst effects of a recession, then he can win the White House.
He has promised tax cuts for 95% of working Americans, more sick pay, protection from redundancy caused by bankruptcy, and legislation for equal pay for men and women.
On health care, his promise was a million miles away from the hoped for universal health care system. Instead he has offered to lower everyone’s insurance premiums, or give people the „same kind of coverage that members of congress give themselves“, effectively taking out insurance without check ups first, and protection against medical bills being „catastrophically high“.
He also promised to end the US’s dependency on Middle Eastern oil by 2018, and indicated some kind of public works scheme to build renewable energy sources that would create five million new jobs.
The Republicans have asked how he will pay for this. Obama’s answer was slippery: „Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programmes that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.“ This is an indication that there would be cuts made elsewhere in the budget.
What does Obama represent?
Once we get past all the smoke and mirrors and proclamations of the historic nature of this race, past the symbolic dates (Obama’s speech was given on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther Kings „I Have a dream“ speech) which were meant to organically connect Obama with the struggles of Black Americans for civil rights and equality, Obama is just like any other Democrat.
He combines populist rhetoric with a wink to the working class and a thumbs-up to the capitalists. He stands in the tradition of Democrats who are elected to power on the hopes of a radical change for the better from working class Americans, youth and the oppressed communities, only to carry out more of the same policies as the Republicans.
While the Democrats wish to refocus away from the „Project for a New American Century“ (PNAC) strategic orientation to securing the Middle East oil reserves, Obama is refusing to backtrack and pull all the troops out of the region. Indeed he has promised to ramp up military spending and use it anywhere he thinks is necessary.
Economically he has indicated sympathy with the plight of poorer Americans, but will not challenge the basis of profit or even raise corporation tax, simply proposing to close tax loopholes and tax safe havens.
The Republicans
If it is Obama’s race to lose then the ball is in McCain’s court to demonstrate that he can do all the things that Obama promises for the US ruling class – and more. However he has a long way to go. The role of the Democrats historically has been to act as a safe channel for popular discontent after people begin to turn on the Republicans. McCain has no separate vision from Bush and the PNAC cronies, and his choice of a relative unknown, anti-abortion Christian reactionary Sarah Palin, as his VP running mate is a desperate gamble, or rather a gimmick.
Having risen up from the ranks, from a mayor of a small town of around 7,000 people in Alaska, she became governor in a vote that many see as simply being a rejection of the previous corrupt incumbent, and not as an endorsement for her or her policies. Now she is the prospective VP, with no national policymaking experience, and the Republicans are trying to spin her as being uncorrupted by the Washington machinery.
Coming from an election team that tried to emphasis Obama’s lack of experience, this is ironic. Palin is a complete novice compared to the Ohio senator; she is designed to appeal to the powerful Republican right wing Christian wing and the women who are disaffected with the defeat of Clinton.
Indeed, McCain hopes to exploit tensions in the Democratic camp by having a young woman as his running mate. A large number of Democrat core Clintonites are refusing to vote for Obama and threatened to vote for McCain instead. The Republicans hope Palin can attract these dissidents to them, even though there are many policy differences between the two.
McCain represents more of the Bush doctrine and will be more blood thirsty in his attacks on US workers and poor people when the recession begins to bite.
Perspectives
Obama’s campaign has gone through something of a crisis over the last few months. He has lost massive ground: from being 14 points ahead, many polls now put him almost neck and neck. Of course one of the key things that has happened is that Obama has lost support from the people who genuinely wanted change, Americans who want a change to the warmongering, the neo- conservatism, the hundreds of policies that make everyday Americans lives more intolerable, such as the healthcare situation.
Despite Obama’s personal rhetoric and vision, he is a Democratic Party member, one of the two main capitalist war parties in the US. They might disagree with the Republicans on the speed, but never on the direction of US capitalism.
Working people, recent immigrants, youth, black people in the US don’t need false prophets of change like Obama. Instead they need their own party – a workers‘ party to fight for their interests. This means fighting against all job losses, for a free national healthcare system funded by taxing the rich, for a massive rise in taxation of the rich companies, for pay to be index-linked to inflation and for nationalisation of firms declaring redundancies. It means opposing military spending and demanding immediate troop withdrawal; it means organising to resist the war at home.
A movement also needs to be built on the streets, one to force reforms through the government where possible but ultimately aims to challenge and bring down the establishment, the whole ruling class.
If Obama loses, millions will be frustrated and looking to know why. If he wins, there will be celebrations in poor, black and working class communities across America, but they will quickly discover that his policies are no way to protect millions of American workers from the effects of the downturn. Either way, socialists in America have the chance to take a step forward in the years ahead in the fight for a new workers‘ party. Then American workers can really begin to enact change.