Life under Clinton, again
Four more years of bipartizan attacks on the poor by David Finkel and Dianne Feeley* THIS WAS AN ELECTION THAT DISGUSTED EVEN hardened commentators. "Mr. Clinton and Mr. Dole completely altered their political personas, embracing beliefs they had never before believed in...The press can only wonder at the cynicism of the people they cover, writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Ordinary people conveyed their sentiments with the lowest voter turnout in Presidential election history - less than 50%.
The United States now faces a peculiar period of political "cohabitation." To be sure, it is not unusual for government power to be divided. In recent U.S. history, Republican Presidents have typically faced Democratic Party majorities in one or both Houses of Congress, and since 1994 the Democratic President Bill Clinton has had to work with a Republican-controlled Congress. But the situation following the November 1996 election is rather different.
Firstly, President Clinton won an easy reelection victory, the first sitting Democratic President to accomplish this since 1964. He was aided in this by Bob Dole's clumsy and ineffectual campaign and by a period of sustained economic prosperity for much of the middle and professional classes.
At the same time, working class and African American votes, along with a majority of women, flowed overwhelmingly to Clinton for fear of the consequences of a right-wing takeover of the White House.
Yet the Republicans, for the first time since 1928, kept control of both Houses of Congress, even increasing their majority in the Senate. The union federation AFL-CIO committed $35 million to the declared goal of defeating Congressional Republicans, yet only 19 of the 72 first-term Republicans, highly vulnerable because of their association with the notorious House Speaker Newt Gingrich, were ultimately defeated. Union leaders get what they asked for
The labor leadership of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney can be expected to declare "victory" on the grounds of Clinton's reelection, although the same result would have happened even if labor had not spent a Alternative (?) votes •Green (Nader) 580,940 • Workers World 29,118 •Peace & Freedom 22,593 •Socialist Workers Party 11,513 •Socialist 3,376 Explicity socialist candidates polled about
70,000 votes nationally.
dime. In any case, Clinton owes the union leadership nothing: first, because he made no promises to them, and second, because they made no demands on him.
Indeed, the likely "reward" for organized labor's massive political expenditures will come in the guise of "campaign finance reform." When legislation to regulate political campaign spending is introduced, it will sharply restrict the right of unions to engage in funding party campaigns.
It is a commonplace that U.S. election campaigns have become obscene exercises in non-stop fundraising. In 1996 it cost the two parties $800 million apiece-or twice what they shelled out in 1992. Corporate interests vastly outspend unions (and needless to say, get far better value for money on their political investments), but union spending is labelled a "special interest" that needs to be curbed to preserve democracy.
Democrats (the beneficiaries of union campaign spending) will probably acquiesce to such restrictions, perhaps as part of a backroom deal to keep Democratic National Committee officers from going to jail for taking illegal campaign contributions from Third Party Candidates
The campaign to have consumer activist Ralph Nader run for President on the Green Party was launched less than a year ago. A campaign with no money, and a candidate who didn't spend much time campaigning, and was only able to secure ballot status in 22 of the 52 states. Nonetheless, Nader was credited with 580,940 votes, or about one percent of the popular vote.
USA *
In the capital, Washington DC., Nader got more votes than billionaire third candidate Ross Perot. But Nader's best score was in the state of Oregon, on the Pacific coast, where he received 4.1% of the vote.
One of Nader's campaign goals was making the Greens into a truely national organization. Thus it is important to note that his campaign was able to win ballot status for Green parties in Connecticut, Nevada, Vermont, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. Green Party candidates were elected to City Council offices in at least three California cities. Greens have won local office for School Board, City Council and County Commission seats in twelve states. Affirmative Action Defeated in California
California's Proposition 209 passed (54% in favor). Mistitled the California Civil Rights Initiative, this was an initiative seeking to outlaw all affirmative action based on race, ethnicity, gender or national origin. Part of the problem is that although California's population is at least 50% people of color, whites make up 77% of the voters. Three out of four African American voters rejected Prop. 209, as did 55% of California's voting Latinos. Fourty percent of white voters opposed the proposition (43% of white women and 36% of white men). *The authors are members of the editorial board of Against the Current magazine, and the US socialist organisation Solidarity.
December 1996 #283 23
* USA
A strong "No on 209!" campaign hammered away at the racism of the measure, pointing out that right-wing supremacists such as the Louisiana Republican David Duke supported it. When the day came, San Francisco voters rejected Prop 209 (71% against), as did Los Angeles (55%). The Value of "Bipartisanship"
Clinton and the Republican Congressional leadership have pledged themselves to
"bipartisanship" in government. "Bipartisanship" is a quality that 1s highly prized in the elite discourse of U.S. political commentary, precisely because it means government with no principles and with no need to respect popular opinion. The realities of "bipartisanship" have been illustrated in the passage of the most destructive single piece of social legislation of this century, the "welfare reform" bill.
From colonial times through the present, the state has identified two kinds of poorthose who are "deserving" (widows and children) and those who are not (those who never married, and their children). Benefits have always been stingy for the second category, although since the 1930s all the poor were entitled to some guaranteed aid. No longer! The undeserving poor are entitled to aid a mere five years per lifetime.
Without creating any jobs or expanding child care, and while decreeing most job training programs off limits, the federal government now demands that women with children over three years of age work at least twenty hours a week. Perhaps the most outrageous provision in the new set-up is the allocation of $250 million (over five years) "to provide education... mentoring, counselling, and adult supervision to promote abstinence from sexual activity...
An equally delicious fruit of "bipartisan" rule is the passage of Clinton's anti-crime and anti-terrorism bill, whose assault on basic rights of legal appeal and due process exceeds the fantasies of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush regimes. On to the Second Term
In Clinton's second term, the U.S. ruling class looks toward an era of "bipartisan government to carry out several urgent tasks. These include, especially, the restructuring of old-age pension and medical benefits (social security and Medicare/Medicaid).
Ostensibly these funds need to be "saved from bankruptcy" to ensure benefits for future generations. In fact, they will be sharply slashed and, quite possibly, changed from universal social entitlements to means-tested welfare programs, in order to avoid a possibility too ghastly to contemplate: the need for slightly higher corporate taxation to pay for them.
Cuts in social benefits, of course, are familiar recent phenomena in Germany, 24 International Viewpoint
France and other countries. But social protection is much weaker in the United States, as has been the resistance to demolishing it. Social security used to be politically invulnerable, precisely because it is a universal entitlement rather than a means-tested welfare program. Not now. "Bipartisan" government affords a unique opportunity to attack it.
Despite its many attractive features for government does not necessarily mean political stability. There are a number of storm clouds on the horizon although, tragically enough, the threat of insurgency from below does not immediately appear to be one of them.
Precisely because the differences between the capitalist parties in central matters of economic policy have largely evaporated (Clinton having reinvented himself as a Republican), the level of personal viciousness has expanded to fill the vacuum of substantive debate. It's true that there is plenty of ammunition, inasmuch as Bill and Hilary Clinton and a number of their associates are undoubtedly indictable and/or impeachable in assorted sleazy financial and political manipulations, as is their nemesis Newt Gingrich for his own misuse of "edufunds for partisan political
One possibility, then, is political negotiation through overt or covert blackmail and counter-blackmail, which is likely to result in an even more alienated and depoliticized electorate. Cloud Two
Second, the consensus (or armed political truce) between the parties on budgetary policies, with the agreement to balance the budget at least on paper by the year 2002, could be severely disrupted by an ordinary cyclical economic downturn. This crisis could be made worse since the federal
"off-loaded" so many of its own traditional responsibilities onto state governments that some of the latter might face bankruptcy in a recession. Cloud Three
Third, parts of the world that are of crucial strategic importance to U.S. capital may be very difficult to police in the next few years. Look next door. Mexico faces the acute danger of social disintegration, while the chances are at least even that the Canadian state will fragment after the next referendum on Quebec independence.
Further afield, Clinton's big successes, the imperialist "peace process" in the Middle East and the carve-up of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are severely strained. It now seems clear that U.S. troops will remain in the former Yugoslavia long past the date promised for their withdrawal, a prospect for which there is no public support in the USA.
Clinton will also be under right-wing domestic pressure to implement all the absurdist features of the Helms-Burton bill against Cuba, a course of action that will encounter resistance and even retaliation from America's European partners. Even "bipartisan" government may not save Clinton from reaping the whirlwind of this particular piece of malicious electoral opportunism.
In short, corporate capital enjoys unchallenged political ascendancy and, for the moment, virtually complete hegemony in U.S. political debate. But it remains to be seen whether the consolidated centercenter" coalition will be able to effectively govern or whether it will crash on the rocks of self-inflicted petty scandals. Let alone whether it can respond to any real crisis which develops. *
Robert D. Dullea "Bob" Dullea was born on July 16, 1901 in a rura community in northern New York, the youngest of three children. At the age of 26 he married Margaret, and they toued Europe. By 1931, he was working as a bond salesman. Like others of his generation, he was radicalised by the great depression. He joined the Socialist Party in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932. In 1936, Bob and Margaret were won over by the ideas of Trotskyism. Two years later, they were among the founding members of the Socialist Workers Party. Bob was a delegate to the first convention of the SWP, where he, and the other delegates, voted to assist Leon Trotsky in the call for the establishment of the Fourth International. In 1940, Margaret and Bob opened a radical bookstore in lower Manhattan, near the SWP headquarters. Unfortunately, it did not thrive. They remained active members of the SWP until 1953, when they left with Bert Cochrane. Bob and Margaret remained sympathizers of the Fourth International. As long as their health permitted, they attended the public meetings of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency and Socialist Action, subscribed to our press, and contributed as best they could to our fund-raising drives. Bob died on August 22. We will miss his cheery voice answering the phone. Successive leg operations had confined him to a wheelchair. But until a month before his death, he visited the local "Y" five days a week to play bridge. Bob's lifelong commitment to the Fourth International closed with a generous bequest to the organisation. We will remember him. Our deepest commiserations to Margaret, his wife, comrade and companion of seventy years. Dorothea Breitman