Johnny Anarcho
7th February 2007, 16:59
Author: Dan Margolis
Publishing date: 05.02.2007 16:56
It seems impossible to overstate just how important the Nov. 7, 2006, election results are. The ultra-right, which had been steadily gaining strength since at least 1980 and had, in recent years, maintained one-party control over all three branches of government, has finally been dealt a damaging blow, or, as President Bush put it, a “thumping.”
Both houses of Congress “flipped” from Republican to Democratic control: Previously, the Republicans had about a 30 seat majority in the House, and now the Democrats have those seats. Across the country, state governorships and legislatures flipped Democrat as well. In many cases, like in New York and Massachusetts, Republican governors were finally replaced after more than a decade in office.
Obviously, there are those who would be unhappy with this recent turn of events. One would expect, naturally, that Bush and his extremist Republican allies would be unhappy at losing.
But, strangely, even some on the left are gloomy. There have already been complaints–sometimes overt, sometimes implied–that the election really meant nothing, that the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. To prove this they point to many things, especially positions around the war in Iraq. The December 4, 2006, edition of The Militant, a newspaper associated with the extreme-left Socialist Workers Party, summed up this sentiment in its post-election headline: “U.S. elections: No shift in rulers’ assaults on workers, farmers.”
Really, though? Is that the case? Is there really going to be “no change”? The change on Capitol Hill surely is far-reaching: All the chairs of committees in the House and Senate, currently Republican, will be replaced by Democrats. The Democrats will now be in charge of the debate that goes on in the capital, and in charge of which bills see the light of day. During the years of Republican rule, virtually any good bill put forward was bottled up in committee, never even allowed to be debated on the Senate or House floor.
Bills that can now be debated include the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers a much easier time of unionization. Also, there’s the “Reverse the Raid on Student Aid” act, a bill that would protect students from having their names turned over to the military. Of course, there are many other bills on which the Republican ultra-right has been squashing debate, especially a number of bills regarding troop redeployment in Iraq.
Bush himself has had to admit defeat. He’s begun speaking of “bipartisanship,” something that he never would have uttered before. Right after the election results were certain, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s incompetent secretary of war, was kicked out of power. Days later, that other symbol of Bush administration unilateralism–U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton–was gone as well. It had become apparent that there was no way that Congress was going to allow him to be reconfirmed.
No change, indeed. One wonders whether or not those students who may end up having the cuts to their student aid reversed will feel that there has been “no change” in their situation.
It will be easy to find things that the Democrats will do that we won’t like. Many Democrats will take positions on the war, on labor rights and on many different things that will be contrary to what is in the interests of the people. How could this not be the case, though? The Democratic caucus is a group rife with contradictions. On the one hand, there are the centrists, even some to the right of the center, in the new Congress. On the other hand, you have anti-war progressives like Sherrod Brown and Vermont’s self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.
Not everyone is as crude in their understanding of the situation as The Militant, but this type of thought, that the Democrats are no better than the Republicans, does have some currency on the left. To understand why this is not the case, one has to look beyond just the Democrats themselves and see exactly who they represent.
The Republicans aren’t just some people with bad ideas. They are a coalition: They represent a certain section of the U.S. corporate class, the corporations with the most to gain from reckless ultra-right policies: The energy companies, the Wal-Marts, the oil corporations, and so on. The party’s mass base has tended to be fundamentalist Christians whom the Republicans have been able to mobilize through certain churches. This coalition itself is an uneasy one: The corporations care about their bottom line, while the Christians have tended to focus on fundamentalist Christian issues. Some of these issues the business interests can accommodate themselves to. Other issues, such as the recently-stated desire to be “good stewards of God’s earth” (read: protect the environment) and to actually follow what Jesus said and help the poor, the corporations have trouble with.
The movement for progress in this country–and in pretty much all countries–is based on a coalition as well. The driving force for progress–which will eventually lead to a better society–is now, and will most likely always be the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women and youth. It is this core in whose interest it is to move forward and to eventually move past the current profits-before-people stage of society, capitalism.
It is obvious, then that the Republicans, as described above, are a total roadblock in the way of this core’s progress. Nothing can be won or done without defeating them first. Therefore, the main task currently is to do whatever is necessary to remove the ultra-right. Right now, more people have an interest, either material or spiritual, in ousting Bush’s allies than in fighting for socialism, and those people can be mobilized in the fight against these political extremists.
To do this, that progressive core has to build as broad a coalition as possible, pulling in everyone that can be pulled. This includes the LGBTQ rights movement, environmentalists, the peace movement, even the corporations whose interests are harmed by extreme Republican policies. This coalition, which is full of contradictions but does have a common goal, finds its political expression in the Democratic Party.
Looking at things like this, it’s easier to see that the elections were not just Democrats versus Republicans, or personal battles of this Democrat against that Republican, but a great battle between two contending forces in our society.
Even as important as the bills that will get debated and passed in the Congress is the fact that the coalition that shows its face in and around the Democratic Party, has made gains against the ultra-right.
So then, what do we do next? If you see the elections as ends in themselves, without understanding all these complex forces behind them, then the answer is to protest pretty much everyone.
If you do see what is behind the elections, and you are partisan to the coalition that is fighting for progress, you understand that the ultra-right is down, but not yet out. Bush is still the President, and we can be assured that he and his cabinet–and all their think tanks–will be figuring out their battle plans for going forward, doing all that they can do to take power back for themselves.
We must prevent this from happening.
At the same time, though, we have to make sure that the core forces–labor, women, racially and nationally oppressed and youth–do not take any kind of back seat to the other, more moneyed, corporate forces in the coalition.
Victory presents us with a more difficult situation, in some ways. We have to push the Democrats in Congress to keep moving forward, to keep them as progressive as possible. We have to push them to confront the Bush administration at every turn, to not cave in. But at the same time, it would be a historical mistake to set them up as the main enemy.
The big marches and demonstrations that have been going on, especially since Bush took office, have to continue. But we have to continue with the same strategic focus of defeating the ultra-right. On top of that, though, the new ruling status of the Democrats has to be taken into account. The demonstrations and whichever other actions prove to be tactically necessary must be aimed against Bush: Also, they have to work with and encourage the Democrats to stand up to the main enemy. Just like the Republican Party is beholden to its religious base, and has to take into account their desires, the Democrats must do the same thing, but to a different base—us. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, must be responsive to the demands of the people’s movements.
Inevitably though, some, or many, of the things they do will disappoint us, especially around the war in Iraq. We have to fight against that. None of what has been said above should be taken to mean that we can back away from the idea of continuing the build political independence. It was that independence–the growing election machinery of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the youth vote, etc.–that allowed us to win in November. Continuing to strengthen that independence will allow us to keep strengthening the power of the core forces. This will push the Democrats in the right direction, thinking more long-term, will prepare the groundwork for, at a later stage, breaking with the Democrats and forming a people’s party. At the same time, we will be adding to the fight to put the final nail in the ultra-right coffin.
Once that is done, we can finally break with any corporate party. We just won a huge victory, and we should not make any bones about celebrating it. The battle against the ultra-right has moved forward in a way we have not seen in decades, and it’s our job to make sure that they are fully defeated, sooner rather than later.
2006 ELECTIONS: NO CHANGE? (http://yclusa.org/article/articleview/1783/1/321/)
Publishing date: 05.02.2007 16:56
It seems impossible to overstate just how important the Nov. 7, 2006, election results are. The ultra-right, which had been steadily gaining strength since at least 1980 and had, in recent years, maintained one-party control over all three branches of government, has finally been dealt a damaging blow, or, as President Bush put it, a “thumping.”
Both houses of Congress “flipped” from Republican to Democratic control: Previously, the Republicans had about a 30 seat majority in the House, and now the Democrats have those seats. Across the country, state governorships and legislatures flipped Democrat as well. In many cases, like in New York and Massachusetts, Republican governors were finally replaced after more than a decade in office.
Obviously, there are those who would be unhappy with this recent turn of events. One would expect, naturally, that Bush and his extremist Republican allies would be unhappy at losing.
But, strangely, even some on the left are gloomy. There have already been complaints–sometimes overt, sometimes implied–that the election really meant nothing, that the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. To prove this they point to many things, especially positions around the war in Iraq. The December 4, 2006, edition of The Militant, a newspaper associated with the extreme-left Socialist Workers Party, summed up this sentiment in its post-election headline: “U.S. elections: No shift in rulers’ assaults on workers, farmers.”
Really, though? Is that the case? Is there really going to be “no change”? The change on Capitol Hill surely is far-reaching: All the chairs of committees in the House and Senate, currently Republican, will be replaced by Democrats. The Democrats will now be in charge of the debate that goes on in the capital, and in charge of which bills see the light of day. During the years of Republican rule, virtually any good bill put forward was bottled up in committee, never even allowed to be debated on the Senate or House floor.
Bills that can now be debated include the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers a much easier time of unionization. Also, there’s the “Reverse the Raid on Student Aid” act, a bill that would protect students from having their names turned over to the military. Of course, there are many other bills on which the Republican ultra-right has been squashing debate, especially a number of bills regarding troop redeployment in Iraq.
Bush himself has had to admit defeat. He’s begun speaking of “bipartisanship,” something that he never would have uttered before. Right after the election results were certain, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s incompetent secretary of war, was kicked out of power. Days later, that other symbol of Bush administration unilateralism–U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton–was gone as well. It had become apparent that there was no way that Congress was going to allow him to be reconfirmed.
No change, indeed. One wonders whether or not those students who may end up having the cuts to their student aid reversed will feel that there has been “no change” in their situation.
It will be easy to find things that the Democrats will do that we won’t like. Many Democrats will take positions on the war, on labor rights and on many different things that will be contrary to what is in the interests of the people. How could this not be the case, though? The Democratic caucus is a group rife with contradictions. On the one hand, there are the centrists, even some to the right of the center, in the new Congress. On the other hand, you have anti-war progressives like Sherrod Brown and Vermont’s self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.
Not everyone is as crude in their understanding of the situation as The Militant, but this type of thought, that the Democrats are no better than the Republicans, does have some currency on the left. To understand why this is not the case, one has to look beyond just the Democrats themselves and see exactly who they represent.
The Republicans aren’t just some people with bad ideas. They are a coalition: They represent a certain section of the U.S. corporate class, the corporations with the most to gain from reckless ultra-right policies: The energy companies, the Wal-Marts, the oil corporations, and so on. The party’s mass base has tended to be fundamentalist Christians whom the Republicans have been able to mobilize through certain churches. This coalition itself is an uneasy one: The corporations care about their bottom line, while the Christians have tended to focus on fundamentalist Christian issues. Some of these issues the business interests can accommodate themselves to. Other issues, such as the recently-stated desire to be “good stewards of God’s earth” (read: protect the environment) and to actually follow what Jesus said and help the poor, the corporations have trouble with.
The movement for progress in this country–and in pretty much all countries–is based on a coalition as well. The driving force for progress–which will eventually lead to a better society–is now, and will most likely always be the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women and youth. It is this core in whose interest it is to move forward and to eventually move past the current profits-before-people stage of society, capitalism.
It is obvious, then that the Republicans, as described above, are a total roadblock in the way of this core’s progress. Nothing can be won or done without defeating them first. Therefore, the main task currently is to do whatever is necessary to remove the ultra-right. Right now, more people have an interest, either material or spiritual, in ousting Bush’s allies than in fighting for socialism, and those people can be mobilized in the fight against these political extremists.
To do this, that progressive core has to build as broad a coalition as possible, pulling in everyone that can be pulled. This includes the LGBTQ rights movement, environmentalists, the peace movement, even the corporations whose interests are harmed by extreme Republican policies. This coalition, which is full of contradictions but does have a common goal, finds its political expression in the Democratic Party.
Looking at things like this, it’s easier to see that the elections were not just Democrats versus Republicans, or personal battles of this Democrat against that Republican, but a great battle between two contending forces in our society.
Even as important as the bills that will get debated and passed in the Congress is the fact that the coalition that shows its face in and around the Democratic Party, has made gains against the ultra-right.
So then, what do we do next? If you see the elections as ends in themselves, without understanding all these complex forces behind them, then the answer is to protest pretty much everyone.
If you do see what is behind the elections, and you are partisan to the coalition that is fighting for progress, you understand that the ultra-right is down, but not yet out. Bush is still the President, and we can be assured that he and his cabinet–and all their think tanks–will be figuring out their battle plans for going forward, doing all that they can do to take power back for themselves.
We must prevent this from happening.
At the same time, though, we have to make sure that the core forces–labor, women, racially and nationally oppressed and youth–do not take any kind of back seat to the other, more moneyed, corporate forces in the coalition.
Victory presents us with a more difficult situation, in some ways. We have to push the Democrats in Congress to keep moving forward, to keep them as progressive as possible. We have to push them to confront the Bush administration at every turn, to not cave in. But at the same time, it would be a historical mistake to set them up as the main enemy.
The big marches and demonstrations that have been going on, especially since Bush took office, have to continue. But we have to continue with the same strategic focus of defeating the ultra-right. On top of that, though, the new ruling status of the Democrats has to be taken into account. The demonstrations and whichever other actions prove to be tactically necessary must be aimed against Bush: Also, they have to work with and encourage the Democrats to stand up to the main enemy. Just like the Republican Party is beholden to its religious base, and has to take into account their desires, the Democrats must do the same thing, but to a different base—us. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, must be responsive to the demands of the people’s movements.
Inevitably though, some, or many, of the things they do will disappoint us, especially around the war in Iraq. We have to fight against that. None of what has been said above should be taken to mean that we can back away from the idea of continuing the build political independence. It was that independence–the growing election machinery of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the youth vote, etc.–that allowed us to win in November. Continuing to strengthen that independence will allow us to keep strengthening the power of the core forces. This will push the Democrats in the right direction, thinking more long-term, will prepare the groundwork for, at a later stage, breaking with the Democrats and forming a people’s party. At the same time, we will be adding to the fight to put the final nail in the ultra-right coffin.
Once that is done, we can finally break with any corporate party. We just won a huge victory, and we should not make any bones about celebrating it. The battle against the ultra-right has moved forward in a way we have not seen in decades, and it’s our job to make sure that they are fully defeated, sooner rather than later.
2006 ELECTIONS: NO CHANGE? (http://yclusa.org/article/articleview/1783/1/321/)