Obama- One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

Commentary

Break With The Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Ralph Nader- Build A Workers Party!

I have purposefully attempted to stay on the sidelines, way on the sidelines, of this misbegotten 2008 presidential campaign season after I realized early this spring that it was just a more technologically sophisticated version of previous garden variety efforts, like the Gore 2000 and Dean 2004 campaigns. Apparently I am not alone in this as a recent poll, taken after the hoopla raised by the media and the hard-core partisans of the party nominating processes was over, indicated that the bulk of the electorate felt the same way, generally. Nevertheless I do have to break my relative silence here to make a small comment on the benighted Obama campaign and what it has turned into.

Having had no illusions that Obama and his Democratic Party have anything to offer in terms of positively addressing the pressing political, social and economic issues of the day I have had nothing to cry about (although I remain appreciative of the wind that Obama himself has generated among the young which can only help radicals in the end). However, Obama's dramatic post-Hillary headlong spin toward the ‘center’ of American politics, has apparently left others feeling betrayed. Given his vote on enhanced governmental wiretapping-eavesdropping, his votes for the war budgets funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his call for stepped-up troop deployment to Afghanistan, his new stance on the timing of ending tax cuts for the rich topped off by his ‘benign neglect’ of part of his core constituency, blacks, that has even Jesse Jackson, Senior up in arms there is little wonder that there is a feeling of ‘betrayal’ in left Demo-land.

However, there has been no betrayal by Obama or the Democratic Party. Despite the chagrin of the young, who can be forgiven a little naiveté, the Democratic Party and bourgeois politics are not about serious change but about winning electoral combinations. I was tipped off that some of the idealistic elements in the Obama campaign were in uproar over his wiretapping vote. I therefore went, based on that tip, to his social networking site to see for myself the gnashing of teeth. Damn, it is all there. The sense of betrayal, the desire to get the money contributed to the campaign back, the disgust with bourgeois political maneuvering. Be still my heart.

What I did not see was any sense (as yet) that it is necessary to break out of the capitalist-inspired politics of the day and fight for a workers party (or for that matter, even an ‘independent’ party a la Ralph Nader). Well, that is our job. Earlier this year I mentioned, when I was in the heat of my bourgeois political observation period, that the swirl that Obama was producing was similar (although, I think, maybe on an even greater scale) to the effect on the young that of John F. Kennedy's campaign had in my youth. I mentioned that the earlier Kennedy swirl itself was not decisive but that in response to the press of events started then it later created the youth/socialist movement of the 1960’s. I posed the question in that commentary, jokingly, After Obama-us. I now think our turn may come sooner than I expected.

IN DEFENSE OF RALPH NADER'S RIGHT TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT-IN 2000

COMMENTARY

FORGET ELEPHANTS, DONKEYS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

A documentary concerning the trials and tribulation of seemingly perennial presidential candidate and bourgeois gadfly Ralph Nader has just come out, oddly titled an “Unreasonable Man”. Ordinarily I would not give a tinker’s damn about reviewing such a film event but a couple of things brought out in the film have gotten me in lather. Those who have been reading this space over the last year should be well aware that I hold not truck with the Green Party or for that matter Ralph Nader’s run as an independent candidate. An alienated leftist (maybe?) candidacy, in either form, acting as a pressure on the Democratic Party to be ‘good’ is not the strategy necessary for the times. That strategy might have at least made a little political sense in about 1912 but, dear readers, that is a very long political time ago (although my candidate then, in any case, would have been the Socialist Party's Eugene V. Debs). But, as for the defense of Nader, fair is fair and besides I have an ulterior motive here-listen up.

One of the themes that come out of the film is a free-for- all retroactive thrashing of Nader, mainly by liberal Democratic gurus, for allegedly getting George Bush elected in 2000. Apparently, Mr. Nader is thus responsible for everything that has happened since then from the invasion of Iraq to global warming to the failure of the Chicago Cubs to win a World Series. Grow up! And get over it! Part of the charm of bourgeois politics is the necessity for political amnesia. The Bush-Gore contest was a yawner. People literally could not tell them apart, at the time. If there are quantitative differences today that does not undermine the central premise of their existence, or Nader’s either for that matter. None of them challenge the central capitalist production system and its profit motive. Of course not, that would be the beginning of wisdom.

Moreover, while we are at it why blame Nader for the debacle in 2000? And here is my real point. Why not blame Bill Clinton for his scandal-ridden second term? Why not blame the flimsy anti-democratic Supreme Court ruling that stopped the count? Why not blame the Constitutional Conventioneers of 1787 who created that albatross anti- plebian Electoral College system? Lastly, why not blame Al Gore himself whose insipid campaign against a ‘light-weight’ Bush candidacy drove even supporters to distraction? The point, although this thought is wasted on the liberal gurus, is that someone outside the two-party system should have the democratic right to run for any elective office he or she chooses. And that is what workers party advocates should take from this trashing of Nader. The two parties and their agents make it tough enough for third parties to have access to the electoral political process. Letting them get away with this cheapjack retro-bashing of Nader’s right to stand for the presidency should not go unopposed. Enough said.