But Will He Deliver?
Read below our analysis of the US elections plus an interview with anti war activist Cindy Sheehan. On Tuesday, voters delivered a decisive, historic defeat to the Republican agenda of corporate greed, corruption, and war.
By Ty Moore and Tony Wilsdon, Socialist Alternative (CWI in the US)

While the total voter turnout remains unclear, experts are estimating up to 64% of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest in at least 40 years, potentially the highest in a century.

As news agencies announced Barack Obama had secured the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, millions of Americans gathered in bars, living rooms, and election night rallies, erupted in cathartic celebration. Spontaneous street parties and raucous marches filled city streets late into the night. The reign of George W. Bush, the most hated president in modern history, is over.

On top of that, the election of an African-American as president of the United States, less than 50 years since legal segregation, is being greeted with widespread euphoria. Across the globe millions are in celebratory awe at the image of a black man, with the middle name of “Hussein,” replacing the hated Bush regime. There is enormous hope that Obama’s election night promise of “a new dawn for America” is indeed in progress.

But will Obama and the Democratic Party deliver? Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a projected trillion dollar budget deficit reaching 6% of U.S. GDP, and a new unraveling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama and the Democrats come to power amid a massive crisis of U.S. and world capitalism.

Their problems are worsened by a sharp contradiction between the massive expectations for change among millions of workers and the actual big-business agenda Obama intends to carry out. In particular, it will be the same fierce economic anger which propelled Obama to victory which will, at a certain stage, push growing layers of the multi-racial U.S. working class into active opposition to his administration. The stage is set for a new, tumultuous period in U.S. history.

Decisive victory

The Democratic victory was overwhelming. Obama won 52% of the vote to McCain’s 46%, defeating McCain by 7.4 million votes. Obama’s victory with the undemocratic Electoral College was even more decisive – 349 to 163 – with the Democratic candidate taking several states previously considered Republican strongholds. In Congress, the Democrats picked up five Senate seats, with several races still undecided, though they will not likely reach a filibuster-proof 60 strong caucus. While several races remain undecided, in the House the Democrats have secured 20 more seats, which added to the 30 seats they gained from Republicans in the 2006 elections, gives them a decisive 254 to 173 majority.

According to exit polls, Obama won majority support in almost every demographic. Seven out of every ten urban voters supported Obama over McCain. The same proportion held for young voters and first time voters. In small cities, Obama won 59% of the vote, as well as 50% in suburbs. Only among rural voters and those over 60, did McCain win.

Obama’s stunning fundraising advantage was another factor, allowing his campaign to dramatically outspend McCain in advertising and get-out-the-vote organizing. This was fueled in part by historic numbers of small donations, but more significantly big business and the financial oligarchs of America gave Obama their backing, filling his campaign coffers with over $640 million. The wealthiest Americans, making over $30 million a year, gave to Obama 3 to 1 over McCain.

Obama has rewritten the book on presidential elections, and not just by the sheer amount he raised or his decision not to take public financing. Obama received 3.1 million financial contributors. His Facebook page has 2.2 million supporters and he has more than 700 campaign offices in every state in America.

Among African-American voters, who turned out in historic numbers, 95% supported Obama. While only 43% of whites voted for Obama, this is a higher percentage than Clinton or Kerry received, and roughly half of white working-class voters backed Obama.

Though racism is by no means extinguished in the U.S. – indeed the McCain campaign’s thinly veiled racist attacks revealed that deep pockets of bigotry remain – nonetheless Obama’s ability to win support in regions and constituencies previously dominated by Republicans reveals a very real process of change in Americans’ attitude toward race.

Racism undermined

Obama’s victory itself does nothing to assure genuine change for the majority of African-Americans who continue to languish under poverty, de facto segregation, and police repression. At the same time, the symbolic importance of electing the first black president should not be underestimated. In a country where less than fifty years ago Jim Crow laws assigned African-Americans to second-class citizenship and where dogs and water cannons were put on those who fought against this, Obama’s victory will no doubt be a catalyst for further inroads against racism.

This will be seen as a victory not only for African-Americans, but also Latinos, Asians and Americans of other races who have been shut out of power throughout the long racist history of American capitalism. Today workers from Mexico and Latin America are being arrested, their families split up, in racist immigration raids.

For African-Americans, the election of Obama could have a huge galvanizing effect. The New York Times describes a 55 year-old African-American janitor who registered to vote for the first time a month ago. “This is huge. This is bigger than life itself. When I was coming up, I always thought they put in who they wanted to put in. I didn’t think my vote mattered. But I don’t think that anymore.” (11/2/08)

David A. Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington stated: “It’s not just a question of Obama as the first black nominee; it’s also that African-Americans have suffered substantially under the Bush years and African-Americans have been the single most anti-Iraq-war group in the population.” (NYT 11/2/08)

Obama’s election could be a spark that helps ignite a new movement to fight for better conditions among African-Americans. However, any such movement would rapidly find itself in opposition to the big-business agenda Obama will inevitably pursue. While Obama will likely pursue limited measures to address the impact of the deepening economic crisis on working people, resolving the mass poverty and unemployment in the black community will require a colossal public works program, funded by heavy taxes on big business, something Obama has shown little inclination towards.

Economic anger

The dominant issue which emerged in this election was the economy. The war in Iraq was a crucial backdrop to this at the beginning of the election process and will remain a running sore. After two decades of wage stagnation, leaving families to work more hours and more jobs to get by, working-class people have seen a real fall in their living standards in the last few years. The Bush administration’s blatant pro-business rhetoric and its outrageous handouts to corporate friends caused a large target to be painted on the back of any Republican candidate. The economic meltdown in October sealed their fate. In October 2008 an astonishing 85% of Americans said the country is on the wrong track.

Attempts by Republican candidate McCain to redefine the dominant issue of this election totally failed. Similarly, their attempt to paint Obama as a friend of terrorists, a Muslim, culturally ‘different’ (code for racism) and finally as a socialist, failed to affect most voters. The tried and trusted Rovian method of blatant misrepresentations, which they used to bury Democratic Party candidates in 2000 and 2004, failed to stick with a more politicized and attentive attitude among the voting mass. Interestingly, the attempt to define Obama as a ‘wealth re-distributor ‘actually helped expose how unequal America has become due in part to the Republican-initiated tax cuts for the rich, while stimulating a national discussion on “socialism.”

The ability of Obama to present himself as the agent of change has been decisive amongst an electorate desperately looking for an end to the disastrous consequences of a Republican-dominated agenda in Washington. What Obama has managed to conceal is how similar his policies are to those policies.

In a demonstration of how far this electoral system is from a democratic system, those candidates who could have offered a fundamental alternative to these polices were shut out of the debate. In particular, Ralph Nader was barred systematically form the media and from the debates. Cynthia McKinney, candidate for the Green Party, was also excluded. By offering a $10-an-hour minimum wage, ending the for-profit health care system that plagues the majority of Americans’ lives, ending the war, and exposing the corporate funding that defines the policies of the two major candidates, well-known consumer activist Ralph Nader would have transformed the debate by shining a bright light on Obama’s refusal to move beyond a promise of change.

Under these conditions, Nader’s vote was squeezed to less than 1%. Despite this, the 2008 Nader campaign’s ability to achieve ballot status in 45 states and to raise $4 million demonstrated the potential for building a national electoral challenge in years ahead.

Republican meltdown

Astoundingly, it was left to the right-wing Republicans and Sarah Palin to use the term “working class,” and attempt to explicitly tap the class anger in U.S. society. Palin looked to appeal to the deep alienation working-class Americans feel toward the political system. However, the majority of voters understood this was just another trick by Republicans to confuse voters. The spectacle of Palin firing up the right-wing base, and effectively running her own political campaign, merely exposed ever further the fissures in the Republican Party, the gulf between old Corporate Republican leaders like McCain and the alternative agenda of the right wing.

The opposition and ridicule Palin inspired among the broader voting public shows how diminished the far right has become. Defections from the GOP have increased as Bush’s economic policies were felt by millions of “red-state” workers. The situation was epitomized in a photograph depicting a homemade sign with the Confederate flag and the words: “Rednecks for Obama. Even we’ve had enough.”

One can expect to see a fierce battle for the soul of the Republican Party in the coming months and years, as these two wings wage a battle for domination of the party. Their problems are worsened because candidates representing the traditional big-business wing of the party lost more seats in the House and Senate than the far-right wing. Now the ideology of the party is increasingly dominated by what The Economist describes as “southern-fried moralism.”

Obama’s agenda

Lacking from most post-election analysis was the crucial role played by big business in the election. With their money, their control of the media, and their political influence, the U.S. financial elite helped elect Barack Obama. Confident that an Obama White House will not defy them or shake things up too much, Corporate America opened their wallets to his campaign. Despite his carefully scripted comments about not receiving donations from corporate lobbyists, Obama’s candidacy has received far more corporate dollars than McCain’s (opensecrets.org).

Of course this does not discount the significance of donations made by historic numbers of working-class Americans to Obama’s campaign. However, it will not be ordinary working-class people who will be sitting in his cabinet, or advising him on policy issues. It will be the same Wall Street and corporate executives and established pro-imperialist foreign advisors who have been in the cabinet of the US presidents for the last 120 years. They will be the ones driving Obama’s domestic and foreign policy.

Here lies the contradiction in Obama’s victory. Obama has managed to speak to Americans of all incomes, including the very rich and the poor. He has received money from regular workers and from corporate CEO’s. He has promised to govern one America. However, we don’t live in one America. We live in two Americas. One that has grown fabulously rich, and another that is taking it on the chin, with working people scraping by, working unstable jobs, just a layoff away from losing their homes or apartments. One America for the billionaires and another for the rest of us.

During the election, this contradiction could be papered over. However, once he starts governing, Obama will be forced to decide between the two classes.

On Wednesday Obama announced his transition team, with the conservative chairman of the Democratic Caucus Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Emanuel emerged as a major power-broker in Washington after he engineered the Democrats 2006 election victory, which saw the strengthening of the so-called “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats. In several cases, Emanuel used his control of Democratic Party money to engineer the defeat of more liberal Democrats in the primaries, even where these candidates were more competitive than their favored conservative rivals.

Clinton’s former chief of staff, Leon Panetta, was reportedly the main architect for Obama’s transition plan, which has been crafted over months. Discussing how Obama will address the severe economic problems, Panetta advised, “You better damn well do the tough stuff up front, because if you think you can delay the tough decisions and tiptoe past the graveyard, you’re in for a lot of trouble… Make the decisions that involve pain and sacrifice up front.” (NYT, 11/5/08)

A long honeymoon?

Given the massive budget deficits, which is running at 6% of GDP federally and forcing emergency measures in state governments, Obama’s ability to enact serious reforms to relieve working-class people will be limited. The relatively minor new taxes he is proposing on the wealthy will not change the equation substantially, given the overall fall in tax revenue as the recession bites.

Nonetheless, Obama has reportedly been discussing with congressional leaders about a “possible $100 billion for public works, unemployment benefits, winter heating assistance, food stamps and aid to cities and states that could be passed during a lame-duck session the week of Nov. 17.” (NYT, 11/5/08) Even from the standpoint of big business, such limited proposals may prove necessary to prevent a further economic collapse and a more complete discrediting of capitalism. However, such measures will at best slow but not reverse the catastrophic declines in living standards that are already underway in working-class communities.

Furthermore, as he did with the $700 billion bailout in September, Obama has indicated support for further taxpayer handouts to the financial elite and big business. The big three auto-makers, who faced catastrophic declines in their sales last month, are faced with the near-term prospect of bankruptcy unless the federal government comes to their aid. Such aid, however, will not reverse the waves of layoffs and wage and benefit cuts facing autoworkers.

It remains to be seen how rapidly or fully Obama will move to implement his various other campaign promises, from health-care tax credits to closing Guantánamo Bay. In Iraq, Obama’s pledge to draw down troops will be complicated by the failure of the Iraqi government to formally agree to a continued U.S. troop presence, and the renewed tensions between the Sunnis, Kurds, and governing Shia. In Afghanistan, the situation is unraveling fast with many warning that Obama’s plan for a troop surge there will only provoke further conflict.

Nevertheless, even limited reforms by an Obama White House will contrast sharply with Bush’s reign, and could give Obama a certain honeymoon period. Democrats’ call for patience in the face of the economic crisis, which they have blamed completely on Bush, will get an echo for a period.

However, the experience of the 2006 elections must be remembered, when the Democrats swept into power in Congress on promises to end the war and hold Bush accountable. Their failure to do either provoked rapid and sharp outrage among a more politicized minority of workers and youth. Cindy Sheehan, who broke with the Democrats in the summer of 2007, represented a small but important tendency. With expectations so high, Obama will undoubtedly eventually disappoint millions in office, and a radical minority will open to far-reaching conclusions about the need for a political alternative.

Millions of young people, people of color and ordinary workers have had their confidence raised. Many will be inspired to step forward into political activity as a result of this election. Many of them will see the need to mobilize campaigns and protests in an attempt to keep Obama’s attention on those who elected him. Others will be forced into struggle to defend themselves against the cutbacks and attacks resulting from this recession. The wave of political awakening which Obama rode to power was not the creation of his campaign, and the radicalization of the U.S. working class won’t stop with the end of this campaign – just the opposite, in fact!

Movements that develop will inevitably come into sharp conflict with an Obama administration. Events will expose Obama, and Congressional leaders as representatives of big business. As a result the way will be prepared, for a new political and class awakening in U.S. society. Consciousness of the need to break with the Democratic Party will grow. More than ever, the question of building a political voice for working people will emerge onto the political agenda. The idea of a new anti-corporate, antiwar political party, a party of working people, will gain traction in the minds of millions, as ordinary people struggle to find a path toward genuine change, a way out of the economic and social crisis engulfing U.S. society.

US: Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Anti-war Mom Calls For New Party, Polls 17% Against Nancy Pelosi
By Ty Moore, Socialist Alternative (CWI in the US)

“I will never concede defeat”, announced famed anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan after receiving an impressive 29,951 votes – 17 percent – in her insurgent bid for Congress. Sheehan took on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, architect of the Democratic Party’s betrayals following their 2006 takeover of Congress. The campaign faced a media blackout and Pelosi refused repeated calls to debate Sheehan. But supported by dedicated volunteers, Sheehan became just the 6th independent candidate in California history to overcome the restrictive ballot access laws, raised over $500,000, and mounted a serious campaign.

Sheehan came to national fame during her August 2005 protest outside Bush’s ranch, after her son Casey, a serving US soldier, was killed in Iraq. Hoping to end the war, Sheehan supported the Democratic Party in 2006, when they won a sweeping victory in the mid-term congressional elections on promises to end the war and reverse Bush’s corporate agenda.

But in the first months of 2007, the Democratic majority voted to expand funding for the Iraq War, and Sheehan made a decisive break from the party. In a speech launching her independent campaign against Pelosi, Sheehan explained: “An electorate disgusted with the policies of the Bush regime put the Democrats in the majority in Congress in November ‘06. We voted for change, however Congress, under the Speakership of Ms. Pelosi, has done nothing but protect the status quo of the corporate elite and, in fact, since she has been the Speaker the situation in the Middle East has grown far worse, with Congress’ help… That is not what we elected them to do!”

The interview

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was able to meet up with Cindy Sheehan and her campaign manager, Tiffany Burns, in their downtown office. It was October 13th, three weeks before election day. We discussed their campaign, but I was especially interested in Sheehan’s recent declaration to launch a new party following November 4th.

“Ever since I left the Democratic Party, and even before, I was writing about how there is not much difference in the two-party system,” Sheehan explained to me. “I’ve seen a lot of energy around Ralph Nader’s campaign, around Cynthia McKinney’s campaign and certainly I see it in my campaign everyday. I see that all three of us basically stand for the same things. Even Ron Paul (a candidate for the Republican nomination who combined opposition to the Iraq war with a right wing, anti-worker programme) revolutionaries, who are anti-imperialist – some of them don’t really understand [Ron Paul’s] full programme… that certainly was a huge movement. Instead of having such disparate people trying for the same thing, why don’t we join our movements together to make an even bigger movement, to maybe have a viable third party.”

In a previous interview, Sheehan had reportedly already decided to name the new formation the “First Party.” My concern, I explained, was that simply declaring a new party, with a name and programme already picked out, could alienate other forces who would want to be part of the process. “I never said I would just form a third party,” Cindy responded. “I said I was going to use the energies of the movement to bring it together. My idea is to call it the First Party.” Cindy also explained, “Right now it’s just an idea. I’ve talked to McKinney about it. I’ve talked to people in the Nader campaign about it… After the elections, win or lose, I’m committed to bringing in all the voices.”

Campaign manager Tiffany Burns added that “we want to have a gathering and really create a space for people to come together and have a sense of what would the party look like, who would it represent, who wants to be a part of this, very soon after the elections, because we have to capitalize on the energy coming off of the elections.”

Is now the time?

There have been many failed attempts to build new left and working class parties, I pointed out. But big business’s two-party system in the US has proven more impervious to political challenges any other system in the modern capitalist world. What is different today?

“The independent movement is the fastest growing category in this country,” Sheehan explained. “Independents are the second most registered group in San Francisco… The abuses of the last eight years have awakened people who thought before that maybe there were two choices, at least an appearance of a choice. But they have seen the Democrats betray the country, the constitution, and their base over and over again. So I think that now is the time to strike with the ’First Party’ movement.”

I began to ask: “With the economic crisis and bailout, which Pelosi played an instrumental role in passing…” Cindy interrupted: “She didn’t just play an instrumental role, she jammed it down everybody’s throat. I mean she was the terminator of politicians at that time. She was like, ‘we are going to pass this mother f***er no matter what happens.’”

“The economic crisis is what is really motivating people, because it’s touching their lives, it’s not far away… [The new party] will of course be a party for the working class, and very pro-worker, pro-labor, pro-democratic structures. Not like the SEIU Andy Stern model. True organizing, true participation… There is not a true choice in the national picture – there is just the appearance of choice. It’s façade over substance. It’s imperialism, it’s capitalism, and it’s crumbling. No matter what they do to save it, it’s still crumbling. And I think people are going to start getting it.”

Movement building

Our conversation moved to a discussion about party building. Among the central mistakes of the Green Party, I argued, is their narrow focus on running candidates instead of devoting resources to initiating protests and community struggles. While plenty of individual Greens are active in antiwar groups, environmental campaigns, etc., the party itself rarely attempts to become an organizing center for non-electoral struggles, allowing Democratic Party-aligned groups to dominate most social movements unchallenged.

Sheehan seemed to agree. “A new party has to be diverse and it has to be a movement. It can’t just be people with registration cards walking around saying sign up for our party. It has to be something that the people will feel will actually help them. I think the Green Party is a wonderful conception, but it’s not about movement building – it’s about getting people elected. It’s not going to be a viable third party until it becomes a movement. And if people who are disaffected want to come and help us…”

“You know, we’ve had several people leave our campaign because they were only focused on getting elected, and that’s not what our campaign is about,” Sheehan finished. Burnsalso explained how they are taking “a completely different approach to a political campaign. But we’ve been really successful, which is frustrating to people who are in electoral politics, who have a cookie cutter method to getting elected, to running a campaign. We’re not just a campaign who shows up with leaflets to antiwar rallies, we’re organizing and leading them as part of our campaign tactics.”

“Our anti-war base left us”

After gaining national fame for her camp outside Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch in 2005, Sheehan became a darling of mainstream anti-war groups and within liberal Democratic Party circles. She accepted a position on the Progressive Democrats of America advisory board. And as Burns explained, “Cindy has been approached many, many times about running. From the second she became a household name everybody thought, ‘Oh, she’d be a great Democratic candidate.’”

However, once she broke from the Democrats, “Everybody that supported Cindy before she decided to run totally turned their back on her. Our anti-war base left us when the groups that should have supported Cindy, and supported her before when she was fundraising for their groups or speaking the anti-war message without calling out the Democrats… every one of those groups totally abandoned her. There were lots of groups who just flat out said: ‘We wish you were running as a Democrat.’”

Imagine what would be possible if the social movement organizations – the unions, antiwar groups, civil rights and community organizations, the environmental movement, etc. – broke from the Democrats and dedicated their resources building a new party for working people. Tiffany made a similar observation: “And so we have been able to raise $500,000 in spite of not having access to the membership of those [anti-war] groups. We probably would have been able to raise exponentially more if we’d been able to reach those members.”

Opposing Obama

Both Sheehan and Burns had a lot to say about pressures to water down their campaign from fair-weather friends on the liberal left, most of whom abandoned Sheehan after she broke with the Democrats. “At every single event we’ve gone to since Cindy became the candidate, whether an antiwar protest or a community event, they all say, ‘Oh this can’t be a political event,’” Burns explained. “They want her because she is the peace mom, they want a name draw, but they won’t identify her as a candidate, they don’t want her to speak about why she’s running, who she’s running against, and that all has to do with not wanting to challenge Pelosi and the Democrats… You know, this is an intentional campaign that is about bringing down the two-party system and about bringing down the most powerful Democrat in Congress… If you don’t want us to say that, then we’re not going to be there.”

“The most political decision we have,” Burns said, is walking “this fine line of not alienating everyone who will vote for Obama but also support Cindy… Not in any way, shape, or form have we ever said anything supportive of either mainstream presidential candidate. Cynthia McKinney is the co-chair of our campaign, and we’ve done lots of work with Ralph Nader too… The first article [Cindy] wrote against Obama, we got so much criticism from people who thought they had a lot of political insight, who thought she was committing voter suicide. That was a year ago. But we said that Obama is just going to move to the political center, everybody knows that. The voters you think we’re alienating are smart too. They’re going to see that. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So a lot of those people who a year ago just thought Cindy was an asshole have come to agree with her.”

The campaign

I asked Tiffany about how the campaign itself was going: “We started with a very small, concentrated volunteer base. Now at times we’ll have like 40 people, but those 40 people are doing the work of 400 people. At times we’ll have 100 people come in over a weekend and do things. So it ebbs and flows… We have 60 dedicated phone bankers from across the country. We have a campaign staff of four people, and seven paid interns, and half a dozen volunteers who might as well be staff. And a normal weekend we’ll have 20-25 volunteers to help us table, do neighborhood walking. These people are much more dedicated than the average volunteer.”

“We just crossed the $500,000 mark last week. That’s phenomenal! That was from a list of 8,000 people that we started with. You know,” Tiffany said proudly, “I think there were expectations that we would only raise $50,000. We didn’t have any infrastructure or party backing.”

The Cindy Sheehan campaign signed another year’s lease for their downtown San Francisco office. They have already announced plans to challenge Pelosi again in 2010, but Sheehan hopes that by then a new party will be up and running, with candidates across the country running for Congress and other offices. Whether Sheehan’s project succeeds or not remains to be seen. There are many potential pit-falls. But the coming years will no doubt provide more opportunities than ever for the American working class to develop its own political voice.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 7:53 am and is filed under World news and analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.