USA: Rightward moving Obama in McCain’s sights

Biden is a supposed blue collar Democrat, the “poorest” member of what is tantamount to an elected club of multi-millionaires, who they hope will be capable of addressing the white working class components of the Party’s electoral base in a way that has eluded Obama. Most pundits consider him a wise choice, replete with the foreign policy experience (i.e. proven willingness to preside over US military ventures overseas) that Obama lacks. The convention itself went off without a major hitch, as Hillary Clinton dutifully played her part and made an unambiguous call to her disgruntled supporters to rally to Obama, while husband Bill made no attempt to upstage the nominee.

Outside the convention centre there was a brief flurry of anxiety over an alleged plot to assassinate Obama involving a hapless looking crew of booze and drug-addled racists. There were anti-war and other protests amid tight security, but no violent images to detract from the triumph unfolding inside. The convention reached its climax on the final night as Obama delivered his acceptance speech.

Much of the mainstream media had concluded that “Team Obama” had staged an almost flawless performance, placing the Democratic candidate into pole position for the remaining two months of the presidential contest. But then with the Democrats on their way out of Denver, the John McCain campaign unleashed “Sarah Barracuda” – otherwise known as Sarah Palin, a little known politician from the sparsely populated state of Alaska, who had acquired the nickname for her aggressive style on the basketball court.

Up to that point the Republicans had appeared in disarray, with their convention in St Paul, Minnesota curtailed in response to the threat posed by Hurricane Gustav. But then 72-year-old McCain pulled off a media coup with the selection of a woman, 28 years his junior, as his running mate.

In contrast to Biden, the image of Sarah Palin was suddenly plastered on papers and magazines sold at supermarket checkout counters across the US. Whether the choice of Palin proves such a populist masterstroke come November remains to be seen, but for the time being the nomination of a fundamentalist Christian, who has suddenly become the archetype of the “working mom”, has helped propel McCain into a modest opinion poll lead, and energised the socially reactionary base of Republican activists.

Outside the Republican convention 10,000 anti-war demonstrators had gathered only to face brutal police repression. Hundreds of arrests took place during the convention itself, with hundreds more in its aftermath. Even the widely respected left-leaning journalist, Amy Goodman, was arrested.

The mainstream media barely mentioned the use of pepper gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades against unarmed, overwhelmingly non-violent demonstrators, so the spectacle of the McCain/Palin coronation was virtually untarnished.

There are good reasons to believe that Obama’s setback is merely temporary and that he will still become the first African-American to capture the US presidency. But the fact that the Palin vice-presidential nomination has so altered the trajectory of the campaign speaks volumes about the marginalised role of real political issues in the contest.

Supporters of the supposedly “liberal” Hillary Clinton suddenly switched allegiance to the Republicans on the basis of John McCain selecting a woman, despite the fact that she is a virulent opponent of abortion, champions the teaching of “creationism” in state schools and expressed an interest in banning certain books from her town’s library.

Obama’s skin colour is an undeniable factor in the campaign, and deeply ingrained racist attitudes may still cost the Democrats the White House come November. On the other hand, the Obama candidacy has spurred unprecedented levels of voter registration, not least among African Americans, who just might tip the balance in such “swing” states as Ohio and Pennsylvania. There is both anecdotal and statistical evidence to suggest that Obama’s campaign has energised sections of the inner city black population, which have largely abstained from recent elections.

Leaving aside some important but still superficial differences between McCain and Obama, would an Obama victory really make a substantive difference to US workers and the poor, or to those who have been at the sharp end of the Bush administration’s global “war on terror” since 2001?

As the campaign has progressed, Obama’s talk of change has become all the more vacuous as he has moved ever rightwards over a wide range of issues, not least US imperialism’s foreign policy. On the Iraq war there is still some semblance of a pledge to withdraw all US combat troops within 16 months of taking office – roughly by May 2010.

However, Obama has no intention of bringing tens of thousands of US soldiers “home”. His clear pledge has been to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan and he has effectively endorsed the sort of special forces operations which have already been authorised by George Bush in the border areas of Pakistan.

The Democrats under Obama are now committed to increasing US military spending still further, while candidate Obama joined candidate McCain on a Columbia University platform marking the anniversary of 9/11, to lament the college’s current campus ban on the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

On Israel the Democrats have often been more unequivocally pro-Zionist than the Bush administration, but Obama was accused of being soft in his support for Israel while contesting the nomination against Hillary Clinton. In his speech to the American Israel Political Action Committee he went even further than either Clinton or Bush, pledging support for Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and giving the green light to Israel to act against a perceived Iranian threat, though Obama has been less bellicose towards Iran than McCain.

As for domestic policies, his economic programme offers nothing for US workers who are facing rising unemployment and falling living standards. US leftist Barry Sheppard recently wrote a damning critique:

“Obama referred to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his [Democratic convention] speech. But he is staying clear of proposing any programs and reforms of the type FDR was compelled to implement during the 1930s Great Depression and labour radicalisation. Obama has no plan to help families facing home foreclosures. He is silent on the burning need to launch a massive public works program to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and provide work for the unemployed. He is against raising the minimum wage to where it was in 1970 – $10 an hour in today’s dollars from the present $6.25.” (See http://directaction.org.au/issue4/ obama_means_more_war)

For now, however, Obama remains the candidate with the backing of virtually the whole of the trade union bureaucracy. He is the candidate whom the mass of African Americans are likely to support in unprecedented numbers and he will almost certainly win a sizeable majority of the Latino vote across the country as a whole.

If only on the basis of “lesser evilism”, he remains the choice of many who are adamantly against both the Iraq and Afghan wars, and would desperately like to see a comprehensive programme of free healthcare for the whole population.

The votes for the likes of Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are sure to be derisory. And so the long-standing US version of the crisis of political representation for the working class and oppressed goes on through 2008.

Whether an Obama victory, still anything but a foregone conclusion, and the subsequent disillusionment with the reality of his administration proves a catalyst to a much more profound radicalisation will prove a crucial challenge to the ranks of US leftists over the next four years. 

Tue 02, December 2008 @ 18:03