Clinton & the Shame of the Left reminds us of Bill Clinton's recent initiatives. And exposes the sorry response of America'sleft and labor movement
David Finkel CLINTON'S DRAFT "ANTI-TERRORISM" BILL authorized such sweeping surveillance that the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association joined forces to modify it. Even so, the new bill enables the deportation of non-citizens suspected of "terrorism" on the basis of secret "evidence" which they will not be allowed to scrutinize.
It also sharply curtails federal appeals for death-row prisoners, ensuring accelerated death schedules, including the executions of some falsely convicted.
"Line-item veto" legislation will vastly expand the powers of an already imperial Presidency. This is truly one of the few ref-
U.S economic terrorism is now not only a presidential order, but the law of the land. By imposing penalties on non-U.S. corporations doing business with Cuba, the Helms-Burton bill seeks to turn the clock back to the turnof-the-century Platt Amendment.
Because the legislation was so purely opportunist (essentially a rush to win the Florida vote in response to a manufactured crisis), countervailing political pressure could have stopped Clinton. There was none, in part because virtually all of what passes for the broad U.S. left is committed not to push the President on anything.
Clinton has consolidated wing to amalgamate Clinton with the "left." Small wonder then that popular anger over corporate destruction of working people's lives tends to flow toward the likes of Patrick Buchanan rather than independent movements of resistance. And even smaller wonder that corporate capital itself looks favorably on the prospects of a second Clinton term.
All this goes to show how far back the left has fallen and how vast our task of rebuiIding is. It would a welcome change if the major institutions of labor and the left in the United States could demonstrate the independence and political backbone of Ralph Nader. In U.S. journalism, Ralph Nader's name is always prefaced by his semi-official title
"consumer advocate." Since the mid-1960s, working through orms that could make a badly run system I'll keep squeezing until even worse. In the name of budgetary res- you give me everything! ponsibility and eliminating Congressional pork-barreling, future Presidents will have nearly unlimited powers to blackmail legislators, further breaking down what remains of representative democracy at the federal level.
"Welfare reform" is forcing recipients of cash assistance into Work First" programs Under the guise of promoting *dignity and "ending welfare dependency," many of these programs aggressively force people out of educational programs and into dead-end minimum-wage jobs, for which they must compete with the already desperately hard-pressed working poor.
Clinton did veto the monstrous "partial birth abortion" bill. But only after women's groups mobilized to present testimony of patients whose lives had been saved by a procedure which the bill would have specifically outlawed. This kind of pressure was been missing when it came to death-row appeals or the rights of those subject to deportation without due process.
Surely Clinton is under no pressure from the new leadership of the labor movement. which has given away its endorsement without any conditions or demands at all. The executive council of the AFL-CIO labor federation was virtually unanimous in its carly backing of Clinton.! One United Auto Workers (UAW) regional officer in Missouri even circulated a memorandum instructing locals throughout the Southwest not to support state ballot propositions to raise the minimum wage, since this could damage Clinton's reelection!?
Until the downing of the "Brothers to the Rescue" adventurers, the U.S. embargo against Cuba appeared to be on its way out.
his great
"foreign policy success," the military political intervention in
Haiti, by cutting off desperately needed assistance to the post-
Aristide government This action has been taken to punish
Aristide's successor Preval for failing to
"privatize"
rapidly enough
- that is, failing to sell off all of Haiti's state property at flea market prices to local and transnational elites in proper neoliberal fashion. The resulting misery is of small importance to Clinton since it has no material impact on the U.S. election.
Finally, the left in this country has disgraced itself by the lack of protest against
Israel's murderous bombing of Lebanon.
Perhaps no protest movement could have forced Washington to reverse its all-out support for Israeli terror. But the moral fiber of the U.S. peace movement has been tested and found wanting. A deeply depressing indicator of how much of the lifeblood of the peace movement has been sucked dry during the Clinton years.
Not the least of Bill Clinton's contributions to ruling class America has been his administration's success in stilling most criticisms from liberals and much of the left.
Those critical voices were already weak, but their yawning silence now allows the right numerous organizations and campaigns, Nader has targeted corporations for deadly defects in automobile designs and other products, false packaging and lying advertising, forcing new regulations and winning lawsuits that have probably saved several million lives. To most people, until accepting the invitation of Green party activists to seek their party's presidential nomination Nader has not been known as a political figure in the electoral arena. He has now emerged as a left-wing populist, with more political backbone than 99% of American liberals. In a meeting in Rhode Island on April 29, when Nader was asked to respond to the argument that he could only be a "spoiler" of Clinton's reelection, Nader repeated his now familiar observation that it's difficult to spoil a system that's "already spoiled rotten."
Nader's eritique of corporate greed and the political disenfranchisement of ordinary people may attract voters away from both establishment parties, Some feminist and antiracist activists are disturbed by Nader's early reluctance to address controversial social issues like reproductive freedom. But he has now accepted a dialogue, which may resolve these tensions. * Notes
Ron Carey (Teamsters) called the endorsement as premature; Bob Wages of OCAW (the main union backing Labor Party Advocates left the room during the vote 2. Peter Downs, *How Labor Loses When It Wins. * Against the Current, May 1996. Reprinted from New Politics, P.O. box 98. Brooklyn, NY 11231. 1 yr. S20 (USA), S24 (world). Pay by US cheque/Visa/MC/Amex