Electoral rout for Bush, but what's the alternative?
By a socialist activist in Chicago
Few on the left could have failed to smile at the results of the US mid-term congressional elections on 7 November, which saw the Republicans lose control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the Bush administration left isolated. Almost immediately, Donald Rumsfeld - Bush’s far right commissar in the Department of Defence and the man who Reagan sent to Iraq to sell guns to Saddam Hussein - announced his resignation, to shouts of joy from anti-war activists around the world.
Unfortunately but inevitably given the existing political set-up in the US, the beneficiaries of the electorate’s anti-Bush revolt were the predominantly pro-war and 100% pro-business and anti-working-class Democrats.
The main cause of the Republicans’ rout seems to have been disaffection with the Iraq war, and more specifically anger at the growing list of US casualties and disgust at the noxious cocktail of lies and militaristic rhetoric issuing daily from the White House and Pentagon. Although not all of this disaffection is unambiguously progressive — increasing numbers of right-wing Republican nationalists want to cut and run regardless of the consequences for Iraq — it has meant a boost for anti-war movement and the left. Nor should the extent of it be underestimated. In Illinois, for instance, voters in a number of cities voted in referendums to take a stand against the war and demand the speedy withdrawal of troops from Iraq, with Chicago passing the measure by more than 80%. (Though a counter-trend was visible in Connecticut, where right-wing Democrat Joe Lieberman won as an independent after losing the Democratic Party primary to an anti-war candidate.)
Against the Democrats’ (inconsistent) criticism of the war and the administration’s arrogance and corruption, the Republicans fought back with reactionary offensives on issues such as immigration and gay rights: seven states passed referendums to ban same sex marriage (voters in South Dakota rejected a ban on abortion, though all that means is that access to abortion in the state will be as largely hypothetical as before). However, this was not enough to save them, particularly given the sex scandals that engulfed the Republicans in the run-up to the election. But another, less entertaining factor in the Democrats’ favour was that many of their candidates were conservatives themselves: a number of their new congressional intake are against abortion rights, for instance.
The US Congress’s new Democratic majority has pledged to carry out some mildly progressive reforms, including kick-starting stem cell research and raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to a princely $7.25 (or £3.70) an hour. Meanwhile there is all sorts of manoeuvring on Iraq, with pro- and anti-withdrawal — not, of course, the same thing as anti-war — forces in both parties fighting to realign US policy in the run-up to the report due to be published by the Iraq Study Group commission in either December or January.
Whatever marginal changes in policy we see in the next few months, the possibility for American workers and radicals to use the ballot box as a lever for social change is sharply prescribed by the realities of the two party system. Despite the rhetorical heat and real antagonisms American elections generate, both Democrats and Republicans are of course unambiguously bourgeois parties with very minor differences even in terms of policy. Even in elections, we can see signs of alternative possibilities: Ralph Nader’s 3 million votes in the 2000 presidential election, for instance; the 11% won by the Green senatorial candidate in Illinois this year; or the election of self-styled “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders to the Senate (though in fact Sanders is more like a left-wing Democrat than what Solidarity readers will understand by socialist). And beneath the veneer of elections is the more fundamental reality of raging class war in the United States. The migrant workers’ revolt around May Day this year showed that the US is not some kind of exception, but the home of class struggle par excellence.
Unfortunately, while the unions continue their slavish support for the Democrats, the possibility of cohering these movements into a political alternative is limited. American workers need their own party!
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More on Bernie Sanders
A US socialist from Vermont writes:
Sanders is actually more interesting and potentially important to the workers' movement than other U.S. politicians. Senator-elect Sanders is one of a few candidates nationally who have captured the attention of working people.
His political formation, I believe, was in a fragment of the Workers Party-ISL third camp socialist tendency, a YPSL grouping that rejected liquidating into the Democratic Party in the early 1960s. He has traveled a long way into reformism since that time – though I believe that he might claim that his is a pedagogical, not a political adaptation to the Democratic Party.
He was the first Senate candidate of Vermont’s Liberty Union Party (a radical, middle class party coming out of the Vietnam anti-war protest movement) in the early 1970s, where he secured a protest vote of two percent. Ten years and a few unsuccessful statewide campaigns later, Sanders, running as an independent, won the Burlington (Vermont’s only major city) mayor's race by 10 votes, and ushered in the Progressive Era of Vermont politics. Sanders has been the point person in building Vermont's “progressive” politics.
In his political autobiography, "Outsider in the House", Sanders writes of that first mayoral campaign, "The coalition we had brought together - low-income people, hard-pressed working-class homeowners, environmentalists, renters, trade unionists, college students, professors, and now the police - reinforced each other. I cannot emphasize enough how important it was that we developed a 'coalition politics.'" (Why the police? They were union. The Burlington Patrolmen's Association joined the coalition after Sanders
vowed to bargain fairly with them, unlike the incumbent mayor.)
During his first term, Sanders’ supporters formed the Progressive Coalition, forerunner of the Vermont Progressive Party – the only apparently credible independent third party in the U.S. – that is they are recognized by the state and the media as a major party, win up to 30% of the vote in statewide races, have consistently elected a few Vermont state legislators over the past ten years, plus winning the mayoral races in Burlington all but once over the past 20 years. Yet when the Progressive Party was formed, Sanders did not join. He maintains his own independent power base, while selectively endorsing Progressives – or, since 2004, their Democratic opponents!
Sanders was a member of Labor Party Advocates, but dropped away once the Labor Party was formed in 1996. Leading Progressives joined the Labor Party, but soon drifted away when the Labor Party rejected electoral activity.
Sanders maintains a uniquely close relationship with Vermont’s unions, speaking at nearly all major labor gatherings, supporting strikes, contract campaigns and organizing drives.
Sanders is alternately described as a populist or a socialist. He avoids using labels in public. When pressed in a recent interview, he explained, "In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia and from some of the work, very good work that people have done in Europe. In countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark..."
How do his policies play with conservative Republican Vermonters? "Truth of the matter is ... conservative Republicans don't have health care, don't have money to send their kids to college; conservative Republicans are being thrown out of their jobs as our good paying jobs move to China. And if you talk about those issues, you know what those people say? 'I want someone to stand up to protect my economic well-being.' Conservative people are very worried about Bush's attacks on our constitutional rights. So the job is to say, 'We're not going to agree on every issue, but don't vote against your own interests.'"
Early on, Sanders opposed endorsing Democrats. That began to change when Jessie Jackson ran in the Democratic Party primary for president. Then it was, “Democrat for a day” - ‘vote for Jackson.’ By 2004 Sanders was arguing that the authoritarian, right-wing extremists that had taken over the Republican Party had to be defeated at all costs – ‘vote Democratic.’ Sanders, himself, continues to run as an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats and is counted as a Democrat for the purposes of committee assignments.
Maintaining a formal independence, Sanders explains that, “What were beginning to see is that progressive Democrats are starting to speak about class issues and pocketbook issues that they weren’t speaking about years ago and beginning, just beginning to see that resonate with voters. But, clearly we have a long way to go.”
He echoed that theme in his victory speech: “Tonight it may be the end of a campaign but it is the beginning of something more important. It is the beginning of a grassroots movement all over America.”
Sanders, said “people around the country will be watching Democrats closely to see if they will cave in to the corporate interests. The easy part is to say no to a continuation of Bush’s right-wing policies. The hard part is to stand up against the powerful corporate moneyed interests
in Washington and begin, in fact, to face the problems facing the middle class in this country.”
Again, Sanders warns that, “if the Democrats can’t live up to the expectations, they will pay the price politically. If the Democrats do not show the American people that in fact their control of government can make a difference in the lives of ordinary people they will pay a terrible, terrible price for it.”
Different, interesting, and a reflection of U.S. labor’s failure to move towards political independence.