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The twin party shell game: Bush trumps look-alike Kerry
by Jeff Mackler
Were the 2004 presidential elections rigged?
Absolutely! But rigged against whom? Against the
billionaire capitalist Democrat John Kerry, who all
agree lost the popular vote by 3.5 million votes, or
against the American people?
I think the latter were the victims. The machinations
against Kerry, in Ohio and elsewhere, are the coin of
the realm in capitalist elections. They are inherent
in the system of minority capitalist rule.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy's clan in Illinois and West
Virginia orchestrated the ballot fraud making Kennedy
president. Kennedy's boys stole the vote with the help
of the big city Richard Daley machine in Chicago while
Nixon's agents stuffed the ballot boxes in other parts
of the state.
Kennedy's major biographers, including Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, record the
graphic details. Neither party challenged the results.
Both understood that a real challenge would lead
serious investigators to every state in the union.
Capitalist elections are largely choreographed affair,
with adversaries pledged in advance to abide by the
result, essentially because neither one’s basic
interests are threatened.
Kerry conceded and pledged his faithful support to
Bush. Bill Clinton was joined on Nov. 22 at the
inauguration of his new library in Little Rock, Ark.,
by George Bush. Clinton declared that both Bush and
Kerry were his good friends and that they would work
together for the common good—that is, the common good
of the ruling rich.
Democrats, who spent millions keeping unwanted rivals
off the ballot, from liberal reformers like Ralph
Nader to socialists, are not newcomers to stealing
elections. They largely disenfranchised the Black
population in the Southern states starting with the
violent smashing of Reconstruction in the late 1870s,
not to mention decades before. They ruled the South
until 1964, when the Republican Barry Goldwater,
running on an anti-civil-rights "states rights"
platform, won most of those states.
The Republicans’ "Southern Strategy" represented a
realignment of the two-party capitalist system in the
Dixiecrat—that is, racist Democratic Party—South. This
was achieved when the bulk of the Democratic Party
hierarchy, the heirs of the Southern slavocracy,
switched ships for a better deal with the Republicans.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon's Republicans swept
the entire South, a feat that Reagan and George Bush
Sr. repeated in the 1980s.
Corporations back both candidates
It is estimated that President Bush and Senator Kerry
spent some $800 million out of their own pockets to
fund their election efforts. This figure excludes the
hundreds of millions, or billions, kicked in by
corporate America directly (that is, "legally") or by
other means.
Several of the biggest corporate contributors, "equal
opportunity" employers, so to speak, divided their
contributions between Bush and Kerry. Simply put, they
backed both sides. In the 1992 election, the majority
of corporate contributions went to Bill Clinton as
opposed to the Republican, George Bush Sr.
Then there were the additional billions in free
airtime kicked in by the corporate-owned media in the
name of "news coverage." These near institutions of
the capitalist state are also owned by the super rich
who run the country.
The media employ a variety of intellectual
specialists, talk-show impresarios, news "analysts"
and commentators, editorial writers and dirty trick
artists to lend credence to the electoral shell game.
They combine to try to convince a wary public that
real issues are at stake every four years. But they
have not been very successful, as we will demonstrate
below.
Finally, there are the two-bit players, the labor
lieutenants of capitalism, who pretend to influence
American politics by donating union members' dues
largely to the anti-labor and boss-run Democratic
Party.
Today's labor fakers shill for the Democrats during
election time and largely lie down before the bosses
and their capitalist political representative the rest
of the year. Worse still, when workers do take the
class-struggle road and confront the bosses, the
AFL-CIO is usually there to blunt their power and sell
out their battles, as was the case in the Southern
California grocery strike of 70,000 workers in
May-June 2004.
The AFL-CIO's well-heeled bureaucrats donated $35
million to Kerry and Co. while the SEIU coughed up $45
million in union dues to sit at the feet of the
corporate elite for an hour or so—paltry sums when
compared to what the ruling rich spent on the affair.
In return they got to select one or two officials to
speak for one or two minutes, far from television
prime time, at the Democratic Party National
Convention. Labor's top, John Sweeney, recently
pledged to up his federation's tithe at the altar of
labor's exploiters, come the next presidential
"contest."
In truth, little or nothing is decided in capitalist
elections other than which wing or section of the
ruling elite will get the lion's share of booty that
comes with control of the government.
A case in point is the recent $388 billion "funding
bill" that caused a stir in mid-November when the
Republican leadership sought to slip in a rider that
would further restrict access to abortion facilities.
The present Hyde Amendment, in place for decades, and
supported by Democrats and Republicans alike,
drastically reduced access to abortion facilities. As
a result, in the United States today, roughly 90
percent of all counties have no such facilities.
The notion that Democrats support abortion rights is a
myth. As important as the defense of abortion rights
is against the ongoing and bipartisan assault, few
bothered to ask where the over one-third of a trillion
dollars incorporated in the 16-inch-high text of the
funding bill went. These are not the kind of issues
that are determined in the election process.
But few would maintain that former President Clinton's
historic $1.3 trillion tax cut, as well as President
Bush's $1.9 trillion in tax cuts, went to anyone but
the ruling rich. These measures too are not subject to
a decision of the electorate. And neither is the
waging of war against innocent people the world over
or the squandering of more than a half trillion
dollars annually to prop up the falling profit rates
of U.S. corporations involved in the production of the
world's most modern weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, the choice we are offered at election time is
between virtually identical representatives of the
twin parties of capital, whether their candidates be
the ignorant and crude sons of ruling-class families
or the fortunate few multi-millionaires who marry into
multi-billionaire ruling-class families.
The red and the blue states
Our nation is divided, say the media mythmakers,
between the red states and the blue, that is, those
with a slight majority voting Republican versus those
with a slight majority voting Democrat.
The resulting images are generally interpreted by the
media and what passes for liberal political opinion in
this country as meaning that the U.S. is divided
between a thin region of coastal states where
Democratic Party rationality prevails, the blue
states, and the vast heartland, the rest of the
nation, where conservatism is the dominant current.
The fact that Bush's red states, as with Kerry's blue,
contain some 45 percent of the eligible voters who
declined to participate in the electoral charade is
not registered in the red/blue scenario. Nor is the
fact that neither candidate received much more than
25-30 percent of those eligible to vote in any state.
The so-called liberal-conservative divide was also
absent in the election campaigns of Kerry and Bush.
The choice was between historic and massive tax cuts
for big-business capitalism, warmongering, attacks on
democratic and human rights, McCarthy-like
scapegoating in the name of national security, and
threats to invade Cuba on the one hand and the same on
the other.
Contrary to the red/blue scenario, however, it appears
that the views of the American people don't fit the
media image. A Nov. 23 New York Times/CBS poll on a
number of the major issues before the American people
presents another picture. The results are worth
noting:
• A plurality believe that it was a mistake to invade
Iraq in the first place. The percentage opposing the
war is increasing and today exceeds the percentage
that supports it.
• A majority disapprove of Bush's handling of foreign
affairs, the economy and the war in Iraq.
• A majority want abortion to remain legal.
• A majority oppose a Constitutional amendment to ban
same-sex marriage, while a majority continue to
support either same-sex marriage or legally recognized
domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians.
• Sixty percent favor higher tax rates for the
upper-income brackets, in contrast to Bush's proposal
to lower the tax rate for the rich.
• A majority has little confidence that Bush would
protect Social Security.
• When asked to rank their major concerns and given a
choice of nine issues, the top vote, 29 percent, went
to the economy. Moral values polled 9 percent.
• By 48-40 percent, those polled said that President
Bush would do more to divide the nation than unite it.
• Sixty-six percent affirmed that big business had too
much influence over the administration.
The poll results fly in the face of liberal analysts
who see the nation's people moving rapidly to the
right. Indeed, the ruling rich, ever more aware of the
declining power of American capitalism as compared to
its counterparts in Europe, Japan, and China, are
moving to the right in order to best defend their
corporate interests at home and abroad. But the
American people, working-class in their overwhelming
majority, understand that their fundamental class
interests are under increasing attack, that they have
no interest in murdering people anywhere in the world
and that the election process itself offers them few
real alternatives.
The New York Times poll surveyed almost 900 people
randomly selected by a computer from a list of 42,000
randomly selected residential phone numbers across the
country. Unlike the several polls taken prior to the
election, or the exit polls that were largely limited
to registered voters, The Times poll surveyed a
broader section of the population, one that obviously
included many who were among the 45 percent who
declined to vote in 2004.
The Times results bear a closer resemblance to the
views of Americans than the corporate-influenced
pre-election polls designed to predict election
results and the "political views," of working people.
The results also fly in the face of the largely
demoralized liberal-led antiwar and other social
movement leaders who very mistakenly see Bush's
election as tantamount to a U.S. mandate for war, if
not a turn toward fascism.
Social movements collapse
For the past nine months or so the major antiwar
organizations have largely dropped from sight. It
would be more accurate to say that the central leaders
of the previous mass mobilizations against the U.S.
slaughter in Iraq, specifically United for Peace and
Justice, campaigned for pro-war John Kerry.
This was despite the fact that Kerry insisted that had
he known that there were no weapons of mass
destruction and that the Saddam Hussein regime had no
connections with Al Qaeda, he still would have not
have differed with George Bush's war policy. To be
more precise, Kerry stated that he would have pushed
for more money than Bush to pursue the war, that he
would have sent more troops, and that he would have
shared the killing with American imperialism's allies.
UFPJ was joined in its support for Kerry, voiced in
the name of "Anybody But Bush!" (ABB), by virtually
the entire spectrum of American liberalism as well as
a broad range of those who see themselves as radical,
if not "socialist," critics of U.S. policy.
The pressure to conform to the ABB scenario penetrated
deep into liberal-left consciousness. David Cobb's
Green Party and Cobb himself urged support for Kerry
in all contested states. Ralph Nader, who accepted
ballot status and support from the reactionary Reform
Party, openly expressed his preference for Kerry
during the course of his campaign. Instead of
endorsing the demand for the immediate withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq, Nader insisted that he was for
U.S. withdrawal in six months, following
“internationally supervised elections" in Iraq.
Nader's website featured statements of "support" to
his campaign from left intellectuals Noam Chomsky and
Howard Zinn—who made it clear in their endorsement,
however, that their support to Nader was limited to
"safe states" only. A vote for Kerry was the only
choice, they stated, everywhere else.
Nader's entire campaign was predicated on the notion
that he could push the Democratic Party to the
left—that is, force it to mouth a few more platitudes
designed to placate left-oriented voters. In a press
release immediately after the election, Nader urged
the Democrats to "become as tough an opposition party
as the forthcoming Republican efforts to crush them
and stand up for peace and justice at home and
abroad."
Nader seeks a kinder, gentler, less crude Democratic
Party at a time when concessions from any wing of the
ruling elite would run directly counter to their
material interests. Both wings of American capitalism,
in order to remain competitive in the international
marketplace, are compelled to pursue the same
offensive against working people and the oppressed as
their ruling-class counterparts the world over.
Nader's supporters in the International Socialist
Organization (ISO) ignored his "minor flaws" and class
transgressions. They even quoted Lenin's pamphlet,
"Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder," in their
magazine, International Socialist Review, to try to
demonstrate why socialists should support Nader.
Poor Lenin would have been perturbed, to say the
least. His pamphlet advocated support for candidates
of mass reformist working-class or socialist parties
in some circumstances; he never supported capitalist
parties or pro-capitalist candidacies of isolated
individuals.
The fact that Nader proclaimed his intention to reform
capitalism and rejected socialism, while supporting,
albeit in a backhanded manner, John Kerry, was
apparently a matter of little import to the ISO.
Noam Chomsky's support to Kerry was significant. While
he insisted that the election itself was little more
than a corporate ritual, he formally advised left
political activists to spend little more than a few
seconds to register their vote for Kerry while
continuing to build the various social movements.
But Chomsky said and did more. He actively engaged in
harsh polemics against those who objected to his
support to Kerry, accusing them, socialists included,
of engaging in empty political rhetoric in the face of
a George Bush, who he denounced as "arguably the most
reactionary president ever."
"If you live in the real world," said an irritated
Chomsky to dismiss his critics, there is no
alternative to Kerry. Chomsky argued that however bad
the Democrats and Kerry were, "the small differences
between the two parties, could affect millions of
people."
In truth, the differences between Bush and Kerry
reflected only the minor differences between competing
sections of corporate America, neither of which has
ever demonstrated an inclination to resolve their
declining influence in world markets by improving the
living standard of U.S. workers, rhetoric aside.
George Bush's predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton,
bombed Iraq almost daily while enforcing U.S.
imperialism's no-fly zones in Iraq or otherwise
destroying the nation's infrastructure. Clinton
inflicted a merciless blockade on Iraq that took the
lives of an estimated two million civilians. He cut
more U.S. social services than the combined cuts of
the three previous Republican administrations.
But in the minds of America's liberals and far too
many of those who consider themselves radical critics
of corporate capitalist America, the Kerry campaign
was the only alternative.
In 2004 we witnessed the "lesser evil" argument taken
to its most extreme form, with virtually all of the
700 organizations claimed as affiliates of the United
for Peace and Justice coalition joining to support a
pro-war candidate.
The lemming-like charge to Kerry exceeded in its
intensity the 1964 liberal/left capitulation to Lyndon
Johnson's presidential campaign against Republican
conservative Barry Goldwater. Johnson insisted at that
time that he "would never send U.S. boys to die in
Vietnam." But he did it, of course, and 58,000
American youth died there, not to mention the four
million Vietnamese who were slaughtered while their
country was laid to ruin.
Unlike Johnson, however, Kerry stated that he not only
supports Bush's war in Iraq, which has already taken
the lives of 100,000 Iraqis, but he would up Bush's
general war effort by sending an additional 40,000
U.S. troops to fight abroad.
Is fascism near?
Some "leftists" justified their support for Kerry on
the grounds that George Bush and Co. represented a
move to impose the modern-day incarnation of Hitler's
fascist regime.
Raising the "fascist" threat has long been one of the
chief weapons wielded by left Democrats, Stalinists,
and others in the reformist camp who believe that
there is a solution to capitalist society's inherent
flaws (war, racism, poverty, environmental
destruction, sexism and homophobia, etc.) in the
framework of the capitalist Democratic Party.
The Democrats, the effective graveyard of social
movements, have certainly served capitalism
well—often, but not always, seeking to siphon off
mounting social discontent and resistance into its
safe channels. But there is no real fascist threat
today, and even if there were, the Democrats would
offer no defense against it.
The capitalist class has resorted to fascism when
society became highly polarized, and was marked by a
rising and well-organized working class capable of
challenging the capitalists for power.
Under these conditions, a severely crisis-ridden
capitalism—as in pre-World War II Germany, Italy, and
Spain—has few options other than to violently crush
all workers’ organizations and to install a regime not
bound by the formalities of bourgeois democracy.
Towards this purpose, the capitalist class will give
its backing to lynch mobs and para-military
death-squads (like Hitler’s Nazi “storm troopers”),
generally made up of disaffected and impoverished
middle-class elements. But U.S. capitalism today has
not reached that point of desperation.
For those who believe that working people and their
allies among the oppressed are incapable of
championing a new world free from the degradation of
society by capitalism, and fully capable of meeting
any challenge to achieve it—fascism included—the
Democrats are indeed the only alternative. But for
those who know now or are learning rapidly that
neither party of the ruling rich is capable of
representing the interests of the mass of humanity,
the class-struggle road is the only way forward.
Independent mass action by the majority of the
population, organized to defend their own interests
against all comers, and acting through their own
organizations, has proven to be the only way to blunt
the oppressors’ onslaught and win.
It is time to rebuild the wounded—but far from
defeated—antiwar movement and all other social and
political struggles in which working people seek a
better life for themselves and the oppressed
everywhere. These are the building blocks of the
future challenge to the capitalist system itself.
In time a resurgent workers movement in the United
States will also free itself from its retrograde and
stifling misleaders and once again take on the bosses
at every level. This movement will combine militant
activity in the economic arena with the formation of a
mass democratic labor party, which will challenge
capitalism's parties and pose a real alternative for
the vast majority.
This article first appeared in the December 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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