HOME
your socialist home on the internet
ABOUT US
who we are, what we do
NEWS & VIEWS
newspaper, articles, statements
THEORY
what is socialism, marxism
JOIN US!
joining, getting active
CONTACT US
branch directory
Y.S.A.
youth 4 socialist action
F.I.
socialists around the world
CULTURE
poetry, reviews, commentary
HISTORY
events & people from the past
SCIENCE
science, dialectics & more
LINKS
other important sites
WHAT'S NEW
listing of what's been recently added
By Socialist Action's Editors
"Pocketbook Issues at Top of Agenda as Democrats Swarm South Carolina," reads a Dec. 31 New York Times headline. Top Democratic Party contender Howard Dean is quoted as promoting his "universal health insurance plan" as his bread and butter issue.
"This is not some crackpot socialist idea from some liberal state up in the North," Dean assures his audiences. "I want more than anything to bring South Carolina back into its proud tradition of voting Democrat year after year after year."
Dean's choice of words is revealing, especially his mention of the way South Carolina used to vote Democrat "year after year." These are Dean's code words for the days when overtly racist Democrats headed virtually every state house in the South and when Democratic Party governors and senators wielded baseball bats to block access to public schools, as Black students attempted to attend under federal desegregation orders.
Those were the days when KKK and White Citizens Councils were the informal enforcement terror squads of racist Southern Democrats—the days when names like Eastland, Faubus, Talmidge, Wallace, and their ilk presided over lynch mob rule while Northern liberal Democrats courted their favor. Today, clever racist Republicans play the same role in modern dress, but not for long if today's Democrats have anything to say.
"I'm no 'liberal' from ‘up in the North,'" Dean tells his Southern friends. "Dr. Dean's strategy," says The Times, "seems more focused on uniting working-class Southerners for a November general election face-off with President Bush than attracting African American votes essential to winning the Democratic primary." Outreach to Blacks, said Dean, will be left to "Black legislators and ministers."
Democratic presidential wannabe General Wesley K. Clark has got the basic idea. Clark, says The Times, emphasizes his heritage of "Southern Values," including patriotism, faith, family, and inclusiveness. "At every stop, he recites a biographical sketch long on Southern symbols and short on the final ‘g’ in words like living, helping and raising."
"An’ my stepfather took me out; and wen’ huntin' an' fishin' every weekend," said Clark (I left out a few more final consonants for emphasis—S.F.). Not to be outdone, Joseph Lieberman chimed in, "I'm the man in the mainstream whose going to build from the mainstream values that are held so dearly in South Carolina." The New York Times writer covering the Democrats’ swarm over South Carolina, Jodi Wilgoren, didn't mention whether Lieberman also left out some final consonants!
One Texas Democratic Party congressman, 80-year-old Ralph M. Hall, indicated at the end of December that he didn't need to pretend to be a Democrat any longer. Hall announced that, based on his close ties to the Bush family, he was joining the Republican Party. Another "family values" man, I guess. The Times noted that "Mr. Hall, the oldest House member, almost always sides with the Republicans on important votes."
In the Dec. 31 New York Times, the first of a series of articles on the Democratic presidential nomination race graphically indicates, as the headline reads, "Democratic Hopefuls Differ on Economy, but the Distinctions Are Often Subtle."
On the recent Republican tax cuts approved by Congress with the support of the Democrats, for example, all nine Democrats campaigning for the presidency favor repeal of all or most of the tax cuts approved by their party, a curious convergence. These were the same Democrats who, when President Clinton occupied the White House, supported the largest tax cut for the rich in U.S. history, $1.3 trillion over the course of 10 years.
Similarly, almost all of the nine Democrats advocate health-care spending in amounts ranging from $53 billion annually to $400 billion. But when President Clinton held office virtually nothing was expended for health care, not to mention the fact that the Clinton presidency witnessed the most massive cuts in social spending of any president in history.
And the African American Democrats in the race, Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun? Like Jesse Jackson, they have a special role to play. In racist America they know full well that no Black will be elected to the nation's top office. Their role will be limited to registering Blacks into the party of the oppressor.
But Braun and Sharpton, pledged in advance to support whichever "lesser evil" Democrat wins the nomination, will expect some compensation for their services—maybe even a post in the Democratic Party. The presidential shell game is on, folks. Watch the bean carefully! What you see and hear is never what you get!
Subscribe to our weekly Resistance! ezine - which features an activist calendar, a compilation of current events as well as statements and analysis of national and international events from a Marxist perspective.
(415) 255-1080 -- socialistact@igc.org |
(715) 394-6660 -- mnsocialist@yahoo.com |