The final result of the US presidential election remains uncertain as IV goes to press; we print below excerpts from a statement by the US socialist organization 'Solidarity'.
THE ELECTION OF 2000 has produced a virtual deadlock between the two bourgeois parties—a probable Electoral College victory for Bush (pending the Florida recounts and lawsuits), a tiny popular vote margin for Gore, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress shrunken to near zero. For the capitalist ruling class of America, of course, "divided government" is no fundamental threat when both parties are firmly right-of-center corporate-dominated organisms, especially when profits are high at home and there is no huge crisis for imperial global management. While there will be plenty of bitter partisan rhetoric—over the size of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the pace and degree of social security privatization, campaign finances etc.—the bipartisan consensus on the program of corporate neoliberalism at home and abroad will ensure that U.S. politics stay the course set by the ruling class. Should the Democrats or Republicans stray from that program, unelected bodies like the Federal Reserve will impose the necessary discipline to guarantee fiscal austerity and deregulation, and to prevent restoration of social programs. What does unsettle the elites is the prospect of a drawn-out struggle over who actually won the presidential election, resulting in a new administration with gravely weakened legitimacy. The longer the dispute continues, the more time for bigger questions to be raised—the role of money, of the corporate media, of the rigged "debates" in choking off alternative voices and closing rather than opening up discussion of issues. That is why the system needs to preserve the reputation of "the process" more than the actual result. In a closely divided Congress, for example, it is unlikely that a Bush administration would undertake initiatives, such as banning union campaign contributions or imposing abortion rights restrictions, that would enrage key sectors of an electorate when the next Congressional elections are only two years away. At the same time, whether Bush or Gore are eventually declared the winner, there will be no meaningful debate on fundamental structural questions.
For Solidarity and other socialists and radical activists in the labor and social movements, the results of this election are a mixed bag. We are proud to have supported a candidate, Ralph Nader of the Green Party, who told the truth—the truth about corporate power and a political system purchased by corporate lobbies, about human rights and workers' rights, about the basic causes of environmental degradation. We do not regret in the slightest that Ralph Nader's vote exceeds the slim margins of difference between the bourgeois parties in several states, notably Florida. We congratulate the Green activists and the nearly three million Nader voters who stood firm in the face of the repulsive scare tactics of "liberal" Democratic party hacks. We are delighted that in a number of states the Nader campaign has solidified ballot status for the Green party. On the other hand, we are of course disappointed that Nader's vote fell considerably short of the 5% national threshold (even though we don't know how much of the vote for him was actually counted). It has never been clearer how urgently needed is a big break from the Democratic Party—a deep, decisive and permanent break that will be seen as serious by those crucial sectors who have been rightly cynical about the whole system but who equally justly feel genuinely threatened in their own lives by right-wing Republican policies. Did the Ralph Nader/Green 2000 campaign contribute to such a break? Time will tell. For the first time since the mid-1960s, a social movement may be producing a generation of activists prepared to move to independent politics. For us, as socialists and as activists, the struggle continues—the struggle to build both independent politics and most important, the social movements that give those politics energy, momentum and hope. For the bourgeois parties, this election is a dead beat and the result will be more politics of a "dead center." For those with a pro-working class agenda, especially those with a perspective for abolishing corporate power instead of tinkering with it, the job has just begun.