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Vol. 79/No. 40 November 9, 2015
Trump, Sanders, turmoil
mark 2016 campaign
BY NAOMI CRAINE
A year away from the 2016 presidential election, the campaign is in full
swing and the two main parties of U.S. capitalism are in disarray.
Republicans in Congress are having difficulty picking a Speaker of the
House. Donald Trump remains in front of the crowded Republican primary
race, to the consternation of the party “establishment.” While Hillary
Clinton remains the most likely Democratic nominee, large numbers of
people say they don’t like her and Bernie Sanders continues to garner
more enthusiasm and larger crowds.
Battered by the slow-burning capitalist depression that has led to
stagnant wages and employment, worsening conditions on the job, and
spreading conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, workers want to
know why the crisis continues and are looking for a political road to
defend themselves and others. Many are attracted in particular to those
candidates who say they speak for working people and come from outside
the bourgeois political norm — most notably Trump and Sanders.
These conditions have also increased receptivity to the Socialist
Workers Party, which puts forward the only working-class voice and
program in the campaign.
John Boehner announced Sept. 25 he would resign as Speaker, setting off
weeks of contentious debate among Republican House members. Boehner quit
under pressure from a vocal minority of Tea Party-backed congressmen who
had been pushing for a “government shut down” — a course most
Republicans see as damaging to the party’s prospects.
There are 15 candidates contending for the Republican presidential
nomination. Despite months of predictions by traditional Republican
politicians and pundits in the bourgeois press of his imminent demise,
billionaire real estate mogul Trump has stayed in front. The only
candidate close to him in the polls is Ben Carson, a former surgeon and
political novice especially popular with evangelical Christians.
Trump draws working-class crowd
Trump draws a largely working-class crowd, including unionists, Blacks
and Latinos, and rural toilers. Some are enthusiastic supporters, others
say they come because working people face a growing crisis and they are
looking for new answers.
Some liberals and the petty-bourgeois left say Trump is a fascist,
pointing especially to his right-wing demagogy against undocumented
immigrants, including calls for building a wall along the Mexican
border. When 30,000 turned out for a Trump rally in Mobile, Alabama,
Aug. 21, Chris Matthews of MSNBC referred to the area as the “Redneck
Riviera.”
What’s drawing the large crowds to Trump’s rallies is not racism, but
rather his insistence that a sharply different course is needed for
workers and his disdain for establishment candidates and politics as
usual. He says he’s a successful businessman and tough negotiator who
will get things done, especially getting people working. Trump talks
about rebuilding infrastructure and promoting trade policies he claims
will “bring jobs back to America.”
He says all the other candidates, of both parties, have created a mess
for working people. Speaking to thousands in Jacksonville, Florida, Oct.
24, he declared, “We don’t need nice, we need competent.”
Asked about foreign policy on “Face the Nation” Oct. 11, Trump said, “I
want to have a much stronger military. I want it to be so strong that
nobody is going to mess with us.” He argued against deeper U.S. military
involvement in Syria, saying, “What, are we going to start World War III
over Syria?”
And he pledged to take care of workers who have served in the military,
who he notes “are treated terribly.” Instead of calling for greater
conflict with Moscow, as most other candidates do, Trump says when Putin
attacks Islamic State in Syria, “I’m all for it.”
Socialist Workers Party members have set up tables outside Trump events,
including at his Oct. 21 rally in Burlington, Iowa, discussing politics
and selling the Militant and Pathfinder Press books on revolutionary
working-class politics. While some say they aren’t interested, many
welcome discussion on the party’s proposals to defend working-class
interests.
In the Democratic primary, Sanders presents himself as the most anti-war
candidate and, like Trump, rails against the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and previous trade pacts, such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement, from a nationalist framework. In an Oct. 24 speech he said it
was not right “that American workers should compete with people making a
fraction of our wages.”
Unlike almost all other bourgeois candidates, he backs President Barack
Obama’s Iran deal as a help to stability in the Mideast.
Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, is generating
more enthusiasm than Hillary Clinton for some of the same reasons Trump
gets a big hearing — he appeals to those who are looking for change.
In an Oct. 13 Democratic primary debate CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked
Sanders if he was a capitalist. “Do I consider myself part of the casino
capitalist process by which … Wall Street’s greed and recklessness
wrecked this economy?” Sanders replied. “No, I don’t.” He pointed to
Denmark, Sweden and Norway — all capitalist countries that have often
been run by social democrats — as models.
He presses Clinton to the left. She said she was for reining in “the
excesses of capitalism so it doesn’t run amok.” In fact Sanders’ main
proposals amount to quite modest reforms of the capitalist system,
including increasing banking regulations and raising taxes on “Wall
Street speculation” to provide free tuition at public universities.
SWP supporters campaigning outside Sanders’ meetings find interest and
good sales of party literature. Stay tuned for the Socialist Workers
Party’s 2016 campaign.
Related articles:
‘Workers need our own party, a labor party’
Socialist Workers Party campaigns in Phila.
Phila. SWP candidate: ‘New wind is blowing’
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