Adapted from a talk given at a Party for Socialism and Liberation meeting in San Francisco, Nov. 5.
The best thing that we can say about the mid-term election is that it’s over. That’s true of just about every election when you come down to it. As has often been said, virtually every election is a case of the working class going into the voting booth and voting for who will serve as our oppressors for the next two or four or six years. We as socialists call them the bourgeois or capitalist elections, not as an insulting or pejorative term but as an objective reality: No matter if it’s the Democrats or the Republicans who get the most votes, the capitalists win.
Despite the corrupt character of electoral politics in the U.S. today, we as a party participate where we can, not out of any illusions but to use every means to reach out to the working class, particularly at a time when politically minded people are drawn into the electoral process. We had three candidates in California who ran on the Peace and Freedom Party ballot, a socialist ballot line, in the races for governor, California secretary of state, and Congress, against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Our message is clear: that real change comes from the organized movements of the people.
Certainly the capitalist class views the elections as important. While the Democrats as well as Republicans are both capitalist parties, they are not identical nor do they draw equal support from the ruling class. That support shifts, depending on the circumstances. For example, in the 2008 presidential campaign 71 percent of campaign contributions from the big banks and other finance capitalists went to Obama. These interests, who sit at the very top of the pyramid of capitalist society, have traditionally tended to direct most of their contributions to the Republicans.
Why was it different in 2008? The deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression was just unfolding and there was the judgment by a majority of the ruling class that it would be better to have a popular Democrat, the first African American, the first non-white male, as president under those circumstances. That calculation, that a Democratic Party administration would serve as a better instrument for quelling rebellion by the masses, has proved correct.
Imagine if McCain/Palin had been elected—which would have been seen by most people as simply an extension of the increasingly hated Bush regime—at the onset of the crisis. The Democrats are inaccurately perceived by many as the “party of the people.” In fact, that is the real value, from the point of view of the capitalist ruling class, of having a two-party (but no more than two-party) system—it conveys the illusion of “democracy” and “choice” while serving to protect at all times the interests of those who hold the real power.
That is why the ruling class considers bourgeois democracy as the best system—except in times of great social crisis when it will quickly veer in the direction of naked repression, fascism and military rule.
This time around, in 2010, having gotten through two years of depression without mass rebellion, the giant banks and military-industrial and other corporations changed course, now throwing unprecedented gobs of cash to the Republicans. It was the most expensive mid-term election in history, costing over $4 billion. They were helped along by a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, the Citizens United case, in which the court ruled that banks and corporations have the same “free speech” rights as people.
In reality, they have far greater rights, given their vast resources, while facing almost none of the consequences for even the wildest criminal activity. No matter how many people they kill through pollution and unsafe jobs, no matter how many millions they’ve driven from their homes or robbed of their pension funds, no matter how often they have defrauded each other and the public, their executives almost always face civil not criminal charges for their behavior. If found guilty (or as is much more often the case, if they settle with the government), the corporations pay a fine, usually a small fraction of the extra profits made from their illegal activity.
We ask: If corporations have the same rights as people, how come they can’t go to jail?
The massive infusion of mostly undisclosed corporate campaign contributions paid for a flood of non-stop, fear-mongering and lying TV ads all across the country. This was one of the important factors behind the victory of the Republican Party in taking over control of the House of Representatives, many state legislatures and governorships and gaining seats, but not taking control of, the U.S. Senate.
It didn’t work everywhere. In California, billionaire former corporate executive Meg Whitman spent an incredible $140 million of her own money and lost—not that the winner, Jerry Brown, is really a “friend” of labor and the workers as he has often been mis-portrayed by some union leaders.
An even more important factor than money was the multiple economy-related crises of unemployment, foreclosures, loss of health and pension benefits—and what the administration and the Democrats did and, more importantly, didn’t do about it.
According to all the polls, the economic crisis was by far, by far the biggest issue for people who voted on November 2.
A key element in the Republican victory was that millions of people who voted for Obama in 2008 sat out this election—particularly from the African American and Latino communities and among younger people in general. Mid-term—that is, non-presidential—elections—generally see a lower voter turnout. But we all remember that on Jan. 20, 2009, the day that Obama took office, 2 to 3 million people filled the Mall in Washington. There was rapturous feeling of joy that the Bush years were over and real “change” was now going to come.
But instead of progressive change, we have seen nearly two years of deepening crisis that has cost many millions of people their jobs, homes and benefits. The failure of the Democrats to bring about any real relief while in control of the White House and both houses of Congress led to mass demoralization in the ranks of their voters.
Meanwhile, extreme right-wing and in some cases fascist elements went on the attack, using the wildest racist and reactionary rhetoric. Obama was a “Marxist Muslim,” a socialist, a communist, without a valid birth certificate—in other words, not really an “American”—who is trying to destroy the United States by running up the deficit, creating “death panels,” etc, etc. And while the Tea Party leaders deny it, a major element binding them together is racism.
Who this has most resonated with is the movement known as the “Tea Party.” What is the social base of this right-wing movement that played an important role in the Republican victory? At the Glenn Beck-sponsored rally in Washington a couple of months ago, that social base was quite clear: middle-aged, relatively well-off and virtually all white. A group that would like to turn back the clock to the 1950s, to the days when Leave It to Beaver (always a false representation) was a dominant cultural icon, and when it was very rare to see any but white faces on TV or in any political office, much less the White House.
But the victory of the Republicans was not inevitable. More important than any of the above was the failure of the Democrats to do anything to relieve the suffering of so many people. Even their so-called “progressive” legislation actually helped the other side.
‘Obamacare’ and right’s victory
One of the issues that the “Tea Party” and the Republicans in general most effectively used to mobilize support for their reactionary program, was the recently enacted “Affordable Health Care” law, what they call “Obamacare.” Nothing helped their cause more than the provisions of the law and, particularly, the way it is being implemented.
Instead of a single-payer health system, which a majority of people in the U.S. favored, the new law was designed to protect first and foremost the “health” of insurance, pharmaceutical and medical equipment corporate profits. Under a single-payer system, the government is the payee for all medical expenses. That would have eliminated the parasitic insurance companies, whose “administrative” costs consume more than 13 percent of all health care expenditures, which now total more than $2 trillion annually—the insurers’ cut comes to an amazing $260 billion or more.
But the Obama administration took “single-payer” off the table at the beginning of the legislative process in 2009. The administration assured the big health-related capitalists that their profits would not only be safeguarded under the proposed plan but expanded by billions of dollars annually. This was particularly true for the insurance companies—millions of people who don’t have health care now will be forced to buy it or pay penalties of 2 percent of their income. Some partial subsidies will exist for low-income people, but everyone will have to buy health insurance from the private insurance companies, because the so-called “public option,” a government-sponsored insurance option, was removed from the bill as “unfair” to the private insurers!
The right-wing, meanwhile, went right on cranking out the propaganda that people would be denied the right to choose their doctors, that there would be “death panels” deciding when older people would supposedly have to die, that the bill would bankrupt the country, etc, etc.
Probably the biggest gift to the rightwing is the fact that most of the bill doesn’t take effect until 2014. On the one hand, that gives the insurance companies and other health care capitalists nearly four years to raise rates and costs of all kinds, which they are most definitely doing in anticipation of any restrictions in the future. On the other hand, there has been no discernible improvement—in fact, things are getting worse, not better in regard to health care for the great majority of people.
While Obama proclaimed when signing the bill that it would provide health care for all, at least 23 million people will remain without coverage. All undocumented people are excluded, prohibited from even buying health care under the new plan with their own money, no subsidies.
At least 4 million more people are without health coverage due to loss of jobs. The official number is now 50.7 million people who have no coverage, but if you include those whose coverage is so bad it’s almost useless, the real number is probably twice that.
To summarize: There have been two years of non-stop right-wing propaganda against health care reform. During that time, while a bill has been passed, the health care situation for the people has gotten much worse, more costly, with more people without coverage. And while a few provisions of the bill will start to take effect after Jan. 1, 2011, most of this highly inadequate law will not begin to be implemented for another three years. Could we imagine a better scenario for the right?
You may have heard Alan Grayson on Democracy Now. Grayson was a first-term Congressperson from Florida, a member of the Progressive Caucus of Democrats in Congress who lost on Tuesday. His line is that the Democrats lost because they tried too hard to appease the Republicans. He points out that the Democrats allowed 100 Republican amendments to the bill—just about every single one to benefit the health care capitalists—but then almost no Republicans voted for the final bill.
Grayson is right—in one respect—about the appeasement approach. If Obama and the Democrats had called on their supporters, especially in the early months after the 2008 election, to, say, march on Washington for jobs, health care and an end to foreclosures, millions of people would have come out. But that would have been a violation of the rules of bourgeois politics in the U.S. They would have been accused of waging “class war.” (It’s okay for the rich to wage class war against the workers and poor every single day, but the other way around is strictly prohibited according to the rules of capitalist politics.) This is clearly understood by Obama and the other Democratic Party leaders. And Obama, despite the historic character of his victory in breaking the 220-year streak of only white, northern European-descended males being president, took over a job with a very clear job description: CEO of the empire and chairperson of the executive committee of the capitalist ruling class.
Grayson is correct that if Obama and the Democrats had really challenged the capitalist establishment it would have been very popular. But then they wouldn’t have been the Democratic Party, co-defender of the capitalist system.
We in the Party for Socialism and Liberation are dedicated to building a movement and party that truly stands for the interests of working class. Our conference next week will be our next big step forward and we hope you can all join us in Los Angeles.
