'Lesser evil' Kerry is not the answer The worldwide movement against the war and occupation in Iraq has mobilised throughout the world. In the United States, demonstrators have demanded, 'Bring the troops home now!' Yet John Kerry, the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. president, has called for 40,000 more U.s. troops to be sent to Iraq. In this article, Dave Bernt, a national leader of Socialist Action and Youth for Socialist Action (US), explains how voting for the 'lesser evil' Kerry is no solution. Polls show that revulsion against the Iraq war is predominant among the U.S. population, even overshadowing the burning issues of unemployment, high health care costs. and massive cuts in education funding. President Bush's popularity plummeted earlier this year after the media coverage of his lies about the reasons for going to war and of the torture in Abu Ghraib prison. But the Democratic Party's policy on the war is little different from that of Bush and the Republicans. The Democrats' election programme gives major emphasis to the need to bolster 'security" and to 'modernize' U.S. making America military power, 'strong at home and respected in the world', while discussion of disengagement from Iraq is carefully avoided. Nevertheless, prominent U'.S. leftists and liberals and many opponents of the war have endorsed Kerry as an alternative to Bush. With no mass working-class electoral formation as an alternative, reformists - including many who claim to be socialists - hold their nose and vote for the Democrats. the party of big capital they perceive to be the lesser evil. The disease of lesser-evil politics has long undermined independent working-class political action and progressive social movements in the United States. Large segments of the population, especially youth and people in poorer communities, perceive that none of the major politicians and parties represents their interests. In 2000, half the adult population did not vote in the presidential election. John Kerry's record The anybody-but-Bush camp insists that, for all his faults, Kerry is not a war-mongering demagogue like Bush. Besides, they say, there are no 'third parties that can realistically win. It is true that Bush is a right-wing fanatic. Yet John Kerry supported the Senate resolution that gave the White House the authority to go to war against Iraq. More recently, Kerry has criticized Bush's claims that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and slammed Bush for lying about the issue. But last October Kerry stated that Bush had 'laid out a strong, comprehensive, and compelling argument' as to why Iraq had WMDs which posed an imminent threat. And during Clinton's presidency. Kerry supported the sanctions on Iraq. which the UN estimates killed a million and a half people. as well as the routine bombings that terrorized that country and laid the basis for the current invasion. Kerry is a Vietnam veteran who like thousands of his comrades participated in the mass antiwar movement. However, in a television interview on 18 April this year Kerry backed away from his own earlier antiwar statements. He said that his 1971 testimony before a Senate committee 'atrocities' (acknowledging that he had participated in like burning Vietnamese villages and characterizing these actions as contrary to the Geneva conventions) had been inappropriate and 'a little bit excessive.' Many have argued that unlike Bush, Kerry would at least seek UN approval before using cluster bombs and uranium-contaminated munitions against innocent people. Yet even this minor difference is fictional. In February Kerry announced, 'I will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders.' This quote could have come out of a Bush campaign speech. Kerry supported the invasions of Kosovo and Afghanistan. He has always voted for US aid to Israel. Kerry said in the 18 April interview that he agreed with President Bush that Israel should be allowed to keep settlements on the West Bank. He also reaffirmed his backing for the US embargo against Cuba. 17
Beyond the surface differences Noam Chomsky, the radical critic of US imperialism, admits that Kerry is 'Bush-Lite and supports most of the Bush agenda." But Chomsky has stated that he backs Kerry since even the small differences between Kerry and Bush can make a big impact on people's lives. It is true that there are differences on paper between the candidates, such as on the question of women's abortion rights, the environment and education. But for Kerry and the Democratic Party these social issues are subordinate to the needs and dictates of US capitalism. In the United States one per cent of the population controls as much wealth as the bottom seventy-five per cent. Wealth and power is highly concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. They control and fund the think tanks that write the legislation. They own the media that frames the debates. They fund the elections, funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars to both Republicans and Democrats. And in many cases, like the 2004 presidential elections. the candidates of the two major capitalist parties are members of the same wealthy class they represent. John Kerry is a billionaire. He attended Yale University and joined the same elite rich-kid club. the Skull and Bones Society, as George Bush did. Two look-alike parties Since the American Civil War of 1861-65. when slaveholding class was destroyed and the era of monopoly capitalism arose. the US political process has been totally controlled by the capitalist class. The Republicans have implemented programs. The two parties are distinguished from each other by little more than a division of labour. On the one hand are the Republicans, who are relatively open about their support for big business. They take pride in cutting taxes for the rich, giving away billions in corporate welfare. They preach free market principles and argue that what is good for the capitalist is good for all Americans. They also look for support from the more conservatized sectors of the working class. from whom they hope to gain a hearing by using racist, anti-women. homophobic. and Christian fundamentalist rhetoric. The Democratic Party, which originated in the mineteenth century as the party of the Southern slaveholders, plays a different kind of game to the Republicans. They take mass struggles for social change off the streets and into the sate confines of bourgeois politics. They use populist rhetoric and adopt some modest demands of the social movements Once the Democrats their offcial programme. demobilize these movements, they implement the same policies as the Republicans. This strategy often makes the Democrats even more effective at carrying through a reactionary agenda then the Republicans. 18 Former President Bill Clinton. for example. campaigned as a populist. He said that he wanted to end the pro-elite politics of Ronald Reagan and his successor: George Bush senior. He denounced the massive social cutbacks of Reagan and Bush and promised low-cost health care for all. He vowed to pass a law to defend the right to abortion. He promised to pass an anti-scab law and otherwise protect workers rights. He said he supported the rights of blacks. As a result. Clinton got the support of trade unions. the major black organizations. feminist groups. and other social movements. But after Clinton won he supported legislation attacking the interests of all of these supporters. He implemented more cuts in social services than the combined three Republican administrations that preceded him. He slashed health-care funding for the poor and elderly. He passed so-called 'welfare reform', which threw millions off public assistance and into the street and desperate poverty. Hillary: 'We didn't have to march' On April 25. the National Organization for Women (NOW). the largest feminist group in the United States, and other organizations supporting women's rights called the first major demonstration against the attacks on women since the presidency of George Bush senior. Over a million women and men mobilized to protest attempts to limit and eliminate women's right to abortion. However, these types of actions have been needed for over a decade, given the constant erosion of abortion rights nationwide. Unfortunately. NOW and the other major feminist groups place their hopes in the Democratic Party. When the Democrats are in power NOW stops mobilizing. Senator Hillary Clinton summed up NOW's position when she said from the speakers platform on April 25, 'We didn't
year, however. Nader lost the bid to be the Green candidate it with the rule of the majority. have to march for twelve long years because we had a government that respected the rights of women. The only way we are going to be able to avoid having to march again and again and again is to elect John Kerry president.' Yet under Bill Clinton access to abortion declined. Eighty- seven per cent of the counties in the US have no abortion clinics. Cinton never challenged the Hyde Amendment (signed into law by Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1977), which banned government funding of any institution that provides abortion services. He never even proposed the abortion rights law he had promised. Clinton did nothing to stop the anti-abortion fanatics who harass and terrorize women and abortion providers. And during all of this, NOW and other major feminist groups organized not one major protest. Clinton also rolled back many of the gains won by blacks in the US. He strengthened the death penalty by signing a law that made it more difficult for death row inmates, mostly Black and Latino, to appeal their cases. Clinton did not pass the anti-scab law, in fact he used his powers as president to break strikes. He was a strong supporter of the anti-labour North American Free Trade Agreement and other neo-liberal accords designed to bolster US economic domination of the third world and weaken trade unions in the United States. After the Teamsters" Union won their historic strike against United Parcel Service in 1997, the Clinton administration framed up and removed the democratically elected militant leader of the Teamsters. Meanwhile, the trade unions did nothing. No major protests, no mass strikes. Instead, they waited for their so-called friends in the Democratic Party to bail them out. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, was the 'lesser evil' to the war-mongering reactionary Republican. Barry Goldwater: The same forces that support Kerry today backed Johnson in the election, who rapidly escalated US involvement in Vietnam. Today the US antiwar movement has also been undermined by co-option into the Democrats. A recent poll showed that ninety per cent of the delegates who attended the Democratic Party convention are against the occupation of Iraq. Yet these anti-occupation delegates went to Boston and nominated pro-occupation John Kerry. Instead of building demonstrations in the streets or an antiwar, working-class party as an electoral alternative, these activists are stuck campaigning for a candidate and a party that does not share their own views. Nader and the Greens Ralph Nader, a well-known consumer advocate and the 2000 candidate of the Green Party, is running again in 2004. This to a little known attorney named David Cobb. Nader in the meantime has made an electoral bloc with the right-wing super-patriotic Reform Party. Cobb's Green Party candidac! openly supports the Kerry campaign and has vowed to hell 'defeat Bush'. Cobb has vowed not to have his name placed on the ballot in states where the Bush-Kerry race is close. so as to not undermine Kerry's election effort. Nader and his vice-presidential candidate, California Green Party leader Peter Camejo (a former Trotskyist and the 19-6 presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers' Party), have rejected Cobb's 'safe states' strategy. At the same time. however, Nader has declared that 'Kerry is certainly better than Bush.' While Nader says that he will contest Kerry in key states, he has made it clear that his intention is not to build a political alternative to the Democrats but to apply pressure on the Democrats from the left. Nader has stated that his supporters would want to vote for 'more deserving [Democratic Party] members of the House and Senate who are engaged in close races.' Neither the Greens nor Nader have broken out of the two- party game. They both have a strategy of reforming the Democrats into a party that is friendlier to workers and The illusion they promote, that a party the environment. representing big capital can become more favourable to the class it exploits, undermines the movements and social issues that Nader and the Greens identify with. Instead of the lesser-evil politics of the Democrats and left/ liberal reform program of Nader and the Greens, the US left must organize a complete break from the two-party system and form a new party directly representing the workers and the oppressed. A mass workers' party would open the door to mobilizing the working class in accordance with a program for revolutionary change, one that would fight to put control of the economy and society in the hands of working people instead of the ruling rich. In the meantime, the US left must continue registering its protests by building the mass demonstrations against major social struggles. Fourth Internationalists in the United States organized in Socialist Action are raising the slogan, 'Vote Socialist', and calling for a vote for any one of several socialist parties that will be on the ballot in various states. History shows that all the major gains that benefit the majority have been won through mass struggle. If we are going to stop the occupation of Iraq. end racism and poverty, and build a new society we need to continue the struggle in the streets. Electing a lesser evil in the United States will only bring workers there and around the world more evil. The future of humanity depends on building a movement that once and for all ends the rule of a tiny elite and replaces 19