https://themilitant.com/2019/12/07/democrats-drive-to-oust-trump-targets-working-class/
Democrats’ drive to oust Trump targets working class
By Terry Evans
Vol. 83/No. 46
December 16, 2019
The Democratic Party is sharply divided, with its leaders panicking that
their drive to impeach and indict President Donald Trump — which began
the day he took office and has continued ever since — is failing to win
support. They fret that none of their myriad of presidential hopefuls
can defeat the president in 2020.
One of their responses is to step up efforts to keep working-class and
other third parties off the ballot, dealing blows to the political
rights of working people.
The ruling U.S. capitalist families maintain their hold on power through
their two-party system, convincing workers and others to vote for the
“lesser evil” of a Democrat or Republican, back and forth, in each
election. The fraying of this operation is one of the key things
revealed by the Trump victory in both the 2016 Republican primaries and
against Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.
Three smaller capitalist parties — Greens, Libertarian and Constitution
— “played a spoiler role in crucial states such as Wisconsin and
Michigan” in 2016, Michael Scherer claimed in the Washington Post Nov. 27.
Desperate to put the Clinton family back in the White House that year,
the New York Times ran an op-ed shortly before the vote urging its
readers not to vote for Alyson Kennedy, presidential candidate of the
Socialist Workers Party — a party the Times otherwise studiously refuses
to mention.
The Democrats’ solution? Make it even harder for other parties to run.
This fall New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo tasked the state’s
nonelected public financing commission with hiking petitioning
requirements for parties other than the Democrats and Republicans to get
on the ballot. The commission obliged Nov. 25, tripling the number of
signatures. And, if some third party manages to make it — like the
Working Families Party — the commission more than doubled the number of
votes they would have to get to stay on the ballot for the next election.
The Working Families Party was originally set up to corral workers
frustrated with the Democrats to vote for their candidates anyway by
putting them on an “independent” ballot line. But in the last couple
elections its leaders have occasionally chosen more radical-sounding
Democrats to run, including against the regular party leadership’s
offerings.
In the long run, the Democrats’ goal is to keep working-class parties
like the Socialist Workers Party from using ballot status to present an
independent revolutionary program of struggle, a road to fight for
workers and farmers to take political power into their own hands.
While the Democrats unanimously back trying to get Trump ousted — and
have a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec. 4 to consider articles
of impeachment — they fear they will not be able to get him. So far
working people have responded to their carefully stage-managed witch
hunt with growing disinterest. In fact, recent polls show opposition to
Trump’s ouster is growing.
Democratic Party crisis deepens
In response, the Democrats are split between one wing that believes they
have to find a way to win back workers who voted for former President
Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then switched to Trump in 2016, all in
search of some “change,” and another wing that writes off such workers
as reactionary and “irredeemable.” This wing’s strategy for 2020 is to
ignore the working class and try to seize the presidency by appealing to
a new “base” — Blacks, Latinos, women, immigrants and sophisticated
professional layers in the country’s metropolises.
Both wings of the Democratic Party, like other meritocrats and the
capitalist rulers they serve, fear the working class, sensing the crisis
of capitalism impacting on the livelihoods of working people will lead
to rising struggles.
On his side, Trump is campaigning for reelection by pointing to the fact
there are more jobs today, which gives workers more confidence to fight
for better wages and working conditions.
But the real beneficiary of the stock market boom today is the
capitalist class, whose growing wealth stands in stark contrast to what
workers face.
The crisis of the capitalist system continues to deepen — regardless of
modest cyclical ups and downs. Workers’ life expectancy is falling, the
U.S. rulers’ wars go on and on, bosses from Asarco copper mining to
Walmart are pushing for speedup with more hours and less safety, and
household debt is exploding.
Trump also brags he has “Made America Great Again” worldwide by
rebuilding Washington’s military might without committing more troops to
ground combat. The president flew to Afghanistan Nov. 28 and announced
his administration intends to reduce U.S. troop numbers there from
14,000 to 8,600 and resume talks with the Taliban. He said U.S. forces
would remain until “we have a deal or we have total victory.” Last year
Washington launched more airstrikes against the Afghan people than at
any time since the war began 18 years ago.
The reality is that the U.S. rulers’ strategy today is no different than
that under Obama. The best they hope for is to preserve the weak Afghan
government and contain the Taliban.
Both Republicans and Democrats — Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie
Sanders, Joe Biden, etc. — seek to protect the interests of the
capitalist ruling class.
Not one Democrat vying for the party’s presidential nomination proposes
U.S. forces get out of Afghanistan now.
In contrast to both the Democratic and Republican wings of the
capitalist two-party system, the Socialist Workers Party candidates in
2020 “demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S.
troops from Afghanistan and the Mideast,” Alyson Kennedy, the party’s
candidate for president in 2016, told the Militant Dec. 1.
“Washington’s wars abroad,” Kennedy said, “are fought in the interest of
the same capitalists who have for years held down wages and worsened the
conditions of working people at home.
“Party members organize together with co-workers and others to fight the
bosses’ attacks, build solidarity with workers’ battles from Asarco to
the Canadian National rail workers fighting for safety,” Kennedy said.
“We call for building a labor party based on these struggles — a party
that advances a break from the Democrats and Republicans and the fight
to establish a workers and farmers government.”
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Copper strikers fight Asarco union busting
•All out in solidarity with striking copper workers!
•Democrats’ drive to oust Trump targets working class
•SWP drive expands reach of ‘Militant,’ books, fund
•Protests in Chile demand end to attacks by gov’t, capitalist rulers
•Communist League in UK: ‘Jew-hatred is deadly threat to the working class’
•CN rail workers ‘strike for safety’ won broad backing
Feature Articles •French rulers expand military intervention into West
Africa
Also In This Issue •Australia: Women make gains in right to choose abortion
•‘The making of a union bureaucrat’
•Over 10,000 farmers in Germany protest against gov’t restrictions
•Iraq upsurge continues, prime minister to resign
•Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive Oct. 5 - Dec. 10 (Week 8)
•Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books Oct. 5 - Dec. 10
(Week 8)
On the Picket Line •New York labor rally supports Amazon warehouse workers
•Senior residence workers in Quebec strike for higher pay
Books of the Month •‘Peoples of Cuba and the US are fraternal and
invincible’
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Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
