When I was a kid, everybody had these poppa-pants. Don’t laugh; they were the height of fashion in Salford when I was 13. For those of you who don’t know, poppa-pants had poppers (not that kind) down the sides of the legs, which popped open and split the leg open when released. When my mum finally bought me some, the first thing the other kids did was to repeatedly open then up. I learned a valuable lesson because of those pants.
These days, I don’t get pressured to buy what were (when I look back on it) stupid pants, but, in entering 2008, I am getting pressured into choosing a Democratic candidate for US President.
It seems that everyone has their man (or woman). Voltaire’s Priest over at Shiraz Socialist chooses John Edwards, and a Labour friend of mine is torn between Edwards and Obama. Harry’s Playground completely misses the point as usual and says we should vote for Obama because he’s the most American (which is like saying we should have Boris Johnson for Prime Minister because, as an imperialist, racist eccentric buffoon who went to Eton, he is the epitome of Britishness).
Edwards, Clinton and Obama are the Democratic frontrunners at the moment. Would I choose one?
Their programme – which will be decided at the Democratic Convention anyway, so it’s somewhat beyond the candidates – will no doubt be the same neo-liberal gubbins, with some reigning in of NAFTA as a concession to the unions, but where is the accountability? How is the Democratic Party supposed to hold their candidate to account?
The Brownite leadership of the Labour Party in Britain may be a sleaze-ridden and capitalist bought machine serving the interests of the rich, but the structure of the union affiliations make it possible for the union leaders to put some pressure on them, so long as rank & file workers put pressure on them.
The Democratic Party is not a socialist party, or even a workers’ party – just because workers and unions vote for it, doesn’t make it a workers’ party in any meaningful sense. The air traffic controllers union in the USA supported Regan and union leaders have been known to fund Republicans.
What is needed in the US is a workers’ party, or as they might call it, a labor party. Such a party would be a limited step forward, but a step forward nonetheless.
If it’s any help, my wife will be voting for Kucinich when the primaries reach New York. Being the ardent SPGBer that I am, I’ll be whispering ‘a plague on all your houses.’
Surely it’s a great soap-opera though, seeing as there will be no election round these parts until maybe 2010 and ordinary folk don’t get a choice of leader to this degree in blighty (well Labour members anyway)…
Comrade Kit,
Let me explain American politics as best I can.
No, the Democratic Party is not a workers’ party — it’s not really a party at all in the usual sense. The U.S. effectively has 435 separate parties, corresponding to each electoral district, loosely affiliated, but with no party discipline. British parties, being private organizations, have at least some discipline — they can kick members out for breaking discipline (cf. Ken Livingstone).
While it may be true that Republican and Democratic Party clubs, wards, etc., can throw people out, the “members” they toss out can still run in Party primaries for Party positions. The state, not the parties, controls who can join (anyone who registers); the parties have no control over who registers, runs in their primaries, or holds office under their name. The national parties may help but they are usually do not contribute a significant portion of any candidate’s funding. No one writes checks to “the Democratic Party”; they write them, usually, for individual politicians. This is why Hilary Clinton is up to her ears in corporate cash while Dennis Kucinich is — to put it mildly — not.
The way the electoral rules are set up in the U.S, leftists have little choice but to run as Democrats if they want to have even a shot at winning a major election (Congressional office, let alone president). At this point the U.S. labor movement is so weak that if even the whole of the AFL-CIO and Change To Win created a labor party, that party would accomplish little but the throwing of elections to thoroughly anti-labor Republicans. It would win few elections. I wish it was otherwise.
I would hardly call Edwards a real leftist but he’s the only major candidate openly attacking corporate power; a win for him would be seen as a clear win for the left and provide a great opportunity for building a real left in the U.S.
Great post. On the air traffic controllers: they did indeed endorse Reagan in 1980 (as did the Teamsters), but then he turned around and broke them completely after their 1981 strike: a blow to organised labour in the States symbolically comparable to Thatcher’s assault on the miners shortly afterwards.