2008 Elections
More and more the elections are taking up most of the oxygen in the room. By early next year they will become the center of political gravity and nearly everything else will revolve around them.
Why do I say this? Because the elections are the main arena where a fundamental and necessary realignment in the balance of forces can be effected. Other struggles can weaken the Bush administration and the extreme right, but none of them, even taken together, have the same potential to inflict a deadly body blow to the far-right and shift the balance of power in a qualitative way in a progressive direction.
The aim of the labor-led movement is to elect a Democratic President and larger Democratic majorities in the Congress. Not since the landslide victory in the 1964 election has the broader movement had the opportunity to make such sweeping changes in the political landscape. Unfortunately, the full promise of that election never materialized, dying a premature death in Vietnam and along the new fault lines of racism that fractured the coalition that elected President Johnson.
I have heard some people say that the main task in 2008 is to elect a majority of progressive Democrats to Congress. At first glance, it sounds good, but I think that we have to question this a bit more before we uncritically embrace it.
First of all, I am for electing as many progressives as is possible. The expansion of the Progressive Caucus in 2008 would make a major difference in the legislative battles in 2009. But realistically speaking, a larger Democratic majority in Congress will inevitably include Democrats of varied political stripes. There will be progressives to be sure, and hopefully many more of them, but it will also include centrists and moderates, in fact they will likely be the majority. Thus the tactical approach of the broader movement has go beyond simply electing progressives to include the election of other Congressional Democratic candidates as well.
Moreover, the struggle to increase the number of progressives in Congress will take place in the primaries as much as in the general elections. The primaries will decide which candidates the Democratic Party fields in the general elections. Too often in the past, the labor-led people’s movement wasn’t integrally enough involved in this important phase of the election process. The selection of candidates was the property of the Democratic Party’s leadership, but this is changing.
But once the primaries are done, the movement, while continuing to press Democratic candidates on the issues, will fight to elect a larger Democratic majority to Congress. That may entail working for progressive candidates, but it may also entail assisting centrist Democrats in a traditionally Republican districts.
The other reason why I question making the election of a majority of progressive Democrats the singular task is that it doesn’t attach proper weight to the strategic importance of a Democrat winning the White House. That’s a big mistake. After all, winning the Presidency is crucial to shifting the political balance of power and terrain of struggle. No significant turnaround of the political direction of the country is conceivable without capturing the Presidency.
Or to say it differently, a landslide Democratic victory – taking the Presidency and the Congress by substantial margins – will create the best conditions for progressive change. It will reframe every question. It will strengthen the hands of progressive Congress people, while nudging the slow moving and cautious to take better positions. And it will constitute a political turnaround after almost three decades of right-wing Republican rule.
As for the presidential candidates, we aren’t going to endorse one either now or later; although we should note that unlike in previous campaigns extending back nearly 30 years, the front-runners are cleaving in a progressive direction, including Clinton.
Of the front-runners, Edwards offers the most programmatically, but at the same time, neither is he light years ahead of Obama or Clinton.
We have to acknowledge the historic nature of Obama, Clinton and Richardson’s campaigns. A victory by any one of them – and I believe every one of them could win – would be historic. Furthermore, I believe that the country is ready to elect an African American or a woman or Mexican American to the Presidency.
I don’t accept (and I don’t think that we should accept) the conventional wisdom or grapevine talk that a Black American is unelectable, that the American people are not ready for it. What is the basis for such a claim? We do know that Massachusetts elected an African American governor in 2006, that Illinois a U.S. Senator in 2004, and Tennessee nearly an African American Senator in 2006.
Finally, we should have a positive attitude toward the candidacy of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Despite the efforts of the media to sideline him, Kucinich is emerging as a leading voice of the broad people’s coalition. He brings consistent anti-right, anti-corporate, pro-peace positions to the presidential primaries and debates. None of the other candidates can make the same claim. The more he speaks to audiences of the core forces, the better positioned the movement will be to win in 2008 and to fight the good fight in 2009.
As for the Republicans, aren’t they a sorry reactionary bunch? Their battle is uphill, especially given the fact that Bush isn’t bouncing back in the public opinion polls. Like it or not, they are tethered to a very unpopular presidency. Moreover, none of them has a program that matches the shifts in mass thinking that have been taking place.
In a sense they espouse the politics of yesterday. They fail to realize that a paradigm shift in the structure of thinking and feeling across the country has occurred in recent years. The exact nature of it and its sweep still needs to be analyzed, but I do feel that sentiments, moods, feelings, and understandings of millions have changed to the disadvantage of the Republican candidates.
Hanging your candidacy on “the War on Terror” or “small government and tax cuts” or “cultural issues” like the Republicans have been doing for years is no longer a winning proposition. It will resonate among some sections of the voters to be sure, but so much has happened in a short space of time that these issues don’t have the same bite or mobilizing power that they once did.
As for independent candidacies, New York’s mayor Bloomberg appears to be putting up trial balloons. He claims that both parties retreat from addressing big problems and are too eager to engage in partisan bickering. Bloomberg likes to give the impression that he is a no-nonsense guy who gets things done. Don’t be fooled! He is a billionaire and did he ever show his class loyalties during the transit strike. He had nothing but venom to offer the transit workers and called them – this largely African American, Afro Caribbean and Latino union – “thugs.”
As we edge closer to 2008, our role is to be a part of and help to unite a movement that has its sights set on the 2008 elections. Our role is to bring the most burning issues facing our nation into the 2008 elections. Our role is to expose the Republican Party’s candidates, while pressuring, cajoling, nudging, and, if need be, taking strong issue with the candidates of the Democratic Party.
Our role is also to continue to participate in the struggles in the legislative and collective bargaining arenas, in struggles around jobs, wages, housing, healthcare, affirmative action, reproductive rights, and ending the war.
Our strategic goal hasn’t changed yet. And it won’t until a major victory is won in November 2008. If that happens, then we will take a fresh look at our strategic and tactical policies. But for now the defeat of the right will take the broad unity of an array of forces, some reliable and permanent, others inconsistent and temporary.
