The Four Year Farce
“Methinks the Democrat doth protest too much”

By Matt Siegfried
February, 2004

Every four years we suffer through a farce of a national election. The
current caucuses and primaries to determine the candidates of the two
(though Bush is unopposed) perennial parties in the United States have long
ceased to be places of democratic selection. These primaries have become
institutionalized venues to discard candidates of an independent base (like
Dean) or ideas contrary to the party leaderships’ (like Kucinich and
Sharpton) and the business interests that back them.
This is done through a partnership with the media where candidates are
divided, at every opportunity, between “serious” candidates and “issue”
candidates. By this they mean that candidates with “issues” do not seek to
win themselves, but that they wish the serious candidates to take on their
issues. By “serious” candidates they mean those that have proven their
allegiance to the policies of the ruling elite of their respective party.
It is not the candidate that is serious, but the party bureaucracy that is
serious about the candidate.
Ideas are secondary to who the party leadership thinks can win. Those who
the party thinks can win are determined not by their ability to mobilize and
expand their constituency, but by abandoning their constituency in an appeal
to the “undecided”, “middle America” and the “centrist majority” (read
white, well paid workers and the white middle class). It is testimony to
the remarkable lack of difference between the two parties that the folks in
the so-called middle are so readily appealed to by either party.
:
The Occupation of Iraq and the War on Terrorism
 The leading candidates are enthusiastic supporters of the unending
“War on Terrorism”. They supported the invasion and continued occupation of
Afghanistan and support the “right” to use force of prevention (semantically
different from “preemption”) against future “terrorist attacks”.
 The leading Democratic candidates voted for the Patriot Act and its
equally draconian successors. Though some have expressed concerns after the
fact, they are directly complicit in the erosion of civil rights.
 The leading Democrats saw intelligence with Bush on Iraq and voted
for the war. They are directly complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands
of Iraqis, Americans and others. All based on the lie of Weapons of Mass
Destruction.
 All candidates would like the United Nations to give cover to
America by shifting the responsibility from the US. The political
reconstruction of Iraq would fall to the UN while keeping, indeed expanding,
the illegal occupation forces and economic penetration of Iraq by the United
States. No genuinely anti-occupation nominee is possible from the patriotic
swindlers of the two parties.
 The biggest complaint is not the war itself, but that the Bush
administration was so inept in diplomacy that they couldn’t convince other
countries to join, and give cover, to the criminal American assault on Iraq.
Thus making the US look bad and making further adventures more difficult.
Israel and Palestine
 The Democrats have been more stable supporters of Israel than the
Republicans have. Kerry has waxed poetic over Israel as the only democracy
in the Middle East where “the interests of Israel are the interests of the
United States”. If by that he means that they are both interested in
crushing Palestinian resistance and thwarting Arab self-determination than
he is correct. On this, though for different reason, the two parties are in
absolute accord.
 Whoever is elected billions will continue to flow to Israel while
they engage in a protracted genocide. Humanity, collectively wringing its
hands, wishes for “peace”.
Trade and Globalization
 There is no difference between the two parties in their majorities.
The right of the republicans, representing certain agricultural sectors
favors nationalist protectionism. The “left” of the Democratic Party
representing the labor bueracracy and certain small businesses favors….
nationalist protectionism. Both parties in their majority support NAFTA,
the FTAA, GATT and neo-liberalism in its myriad of forms and institutions.
 Both parties have refused to repeal the reactionary anti-union
Taft-Hartley Act. In the name of “Anybody But Bush” the AFL-CIO has
endorsed John Kerry: vociferous champion of NAFTA, the FTAA and neo-liberal
“free trade” that have decimated the very unions supporting him. Truly,
labor needs its own voice, its own party.
Civil Rights, Human Rights the Environment
 Both parties oppose gay marriage, a fundamental right of equality.
Bush will use the issue to gay bash, energizing his evangelical base. The
Democratic establishment will not support full rights or marriage but will
find meaningless phrases of tolerance to deflect criticisms of their own gay
bashing.
 Black people, in their majority, have historically voted for
Democrats. The deserved reputation of the Republicans for open racism and
the lack of a viable working class or community based alternative has
allowed the Democrats to do absolutely nothing for black folks, taking their
support entirely for granted. The profound respect they show the African
American community can be summed up as: “Hey, it could be worse!”
 There is a clear difference between the two parties over the right
to an abortion, which must weigh heavily on all of us. Though the
Democrats, through devolving the issue to states, attacking welfare and
medical coverage have done enormous damage to the ability of women to
control their own bodies. This is an essential right of women’s equality
and emancipation. Any return to the days before legality would be an
enormous retreat for women in this country, as for all those opposed to the
moralism of priests combined with the fist of the law. But right without
access is meaningless and for this universal, socialized health care is
necessary to ensure all women have access to health care. No candidate, of
course, proposes that.
 The differences on the environment are not fundamental. A dramatic
change in the way we produce, distribute and consume goods is required to
even come to grips with the scale of the environmental crisis. The
“solutions” offered by both parties ensure further environmental
degradation. A real ecological plan is utterly at odds with the “free
market”. Environmental sustainability, necessarily planned, cooperative and
long term is incompatible with capitalism’s extremely shortsighted anarchic
drive for profit. At their best, both parties seek to rely on “market
forces” to protect the environment (!).

Never was a genuine alternative to the politics of the status quo so needed.
Lay-offs and war, health care for profit, racial injustice, and the
anti-women, anti-gay assaults are not the property of a single party. The
mad dash to the bottom of the social ladder in the name of “free trade” is
systematically destroying the living standards of a whole layer of American
workers.
America is now a country where 98% of all incumbent politicians are
reelected, most unopposed. Our elections turn out and rates of return would
make most despots blush.
The history of struggles around these and other issues of importance to
workers and women, gays, African Americans, Latinos and other minorities
proves that rights were never won or secured through elections alone. By
ceding the struggle to those who do not share our commitments we settle for
their commitments. Is it really better to vote for what you do not want and
to get it?
Those of us in the United States who are serious about beating the Bush
agenda should recognize that the surest, not the quickest, not the easiest,
but the surest way is to build an independent political movement. One that
comprises the emerging and growing social movements with at its base a deep
and lasting social and political force; the American working class in all
its diversity, potential militancy and democratic traditions. A political
party that identifies with and has as its base the working class majority of
this country is not just a desire of many leftists, but an essential tool in
the organization of the working class in it’s own interests. How this will
come about is for the future to decide. It is for us to decide now to
continue that process
Whoever seeks to administer a system of exploitation and war does not seek
to fundamentally alter that system. The real question is; can we build an
alternative to that system? Can we put aside secondary difference and unite
around the urgent needs of our time: against war, support of workers
organization, for social health care, against racism, for women and gays and
opposition to an economic system whose logic is profit, not human need.
We are in real need of a genuine democracy, one practiced from the ground up
with economic democracy at its core. Socialism is routinely dismissed in
the most ardent terms by the hacks of both parties and beyond time.
Socialism; the democratic, planned and free association of those who produce
the wealth the capitalists horde and the politicians throw away on illegal
wars, has for 150 years and more, continued to be a solution that has and
can capture the imagination of our and successive generations.

Matt Siegfried writes for the Irish Journal Fourthwrite
 http://www.fourthwrite.ie