by John Haylett
WHAT a difference a period of four years makes. Barack Obama’s initial presidential victory in 2008 sparked hope and expectation across the globe.
This time round expectations were muted and the overwhelming feeling is one of relief that his opponent did not carry the day.
Many commentators have pointed to the litany of political letdowns that Obama has perpetrated, from his failure to confront vested private health interests over universal healthcare provision to his personal involvement in choosing targets for the assassination-by-drone campaign.
The sense of disappointment is palpable, but it was still correct to advocate, as US labour did, another four years for Obama.
Yes, he is a creature of Wall Street, committed to monopoly capitalism and US imperialism, but neither socialism nor working class international solidarity was on the ballot paper.
Nor was it possible to state that there were no qualitative differences between the candidates of the two big business parties.
While Obama opted for the Keynesian approach of investing for growth to deal with the crisis unleashed by the banks, Mitt Romney remained hooked on his small-state austerity agenda.
Given the state of the US economy in the wake of the subprime mortgage scandal and the banking fiasco, which have delivered homelessness and unemployment, conventional wisdom dictates that he ought to have picked up his cards yesterday.
But his response to the hurricane Sandy emergency, mobilising federal resources to save lives and property while his opponent lost his tongue, reversed the tide of opinion and carried him over the finish line.
There are lessons for Labour politicians to be learned from Obama’s success in plucking victory from the jaws of defeat.
The first is that there is no future in echoing the Mitt Romney-David Cameron line that deficit reduction is the priority.
Investing in economic expansion, through manufacturing and public services, can reverse rising unemployment, poverty and slashed welfare entitlements.
Increased government tax revenues by dint of enhanced economic activity and higher employment rates will be more effective in trimming government debt than the Romney-Cameron slash-and-burn formula.
US elections are not just about who sits in the White House for the next four years.
As well as deciding which party controls the two houses of Congress, citizens in individual states have the right to tender propositions on specific policies, two of which in California merit comment.
Proposition 30, advanced by Governor Jerry Brown won popular support for his demand to increase income tax on those paid over $250,000 a year and to raise sales tax by 0.25 per cent to fund online education programmes.
Trade unionists were successful in leading a popular alliance to defeat Proposition 32, put forward by business and bankrolled by a secretive $11 million contribution, aimed at restricting unions’ capacity to fund political campaigns.
Similar grassroots work will be essential to deciding how far Obama departs from the disappointing fare of its first term.
Apart from domestic economic issues, the president could make a positive regional impact by building bridges with Venezuela’s recently re-elected president and lifting the blockade — even temporarily — of Cuba in the wake of Sandy’s widespread destruction.
Whatever the problems associated with a Republican House of Representatives, Obama has the chance to confront the defenders of privilege and mark his period in office as historic in a way that many supporters dreamed of in 2008.
ex-Labour voter on said:
In California, proposition 34 (Abolish the death penalty) failed by about 6%.
I am sad about this.What may have defeated it was the fact that it sought to commute existing death sentences. I thought that was a bad idea at the time and felt that it would make it more controversial. It looks like I was right.
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ex-Labour voter on said:
Oh, and one further thing.
US progressives need to get out and vote and campaign in mid-term elections as well as in presidential elections. Michael Moore once showed in one of his books how the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 could have been prevented if about 26,000 more people had voted.
The Republican victory in 1946 also helped very considerably to move America to the right.
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Zaid on said:
Sorry John, but I’m constantly amazed at the ability of many on the left to draw such fine distinctions between one warmonger and an other.
When you say “There are lessons for Labour politicians to be learned from Obama’s success in plucking victory from the jaws of defeat” you are saying warmongers can learn how to win electoral contests against other warmongers from the way this warmonger narrowly beat that one. Do you really think that families of children blown up by drones in Pakistan care that Obama advocates a more Keynsian approach than Romney?
You say “Obama has the chance to confront the defenders of privilege and mark his period in office as historic in a way that many supporters dreamed of in 2008″. In a certain sense he has such a “chance” to do all kinds of things. But Romney would have had exactly the same “chance” to do exactly the same things. In Britain, Cameron has a similar “chance”. The point is this: is there any possibility of Obama doing it any more than the others? If not, why waste time fantasising about it?
Honestly John, taking sides between different wings of the bourgeoisie who may have slightly different emphases on some specific issues, is the road to nowhere for communists. I suggest you turn back.
Neither does it make sense with the general public. If you say to people “I am a communist. I am in favour of a society with no classes and no state, in which things are produced for use not profit. Therefore I do not advocate a vote for either candidate”, people may think you are being unrealistic but it would sound consistent. If, on the other hand, you say “I am a communist. I am in favour of a society with no classes and no state, in which things are produced for use not profit. Therefore I will be voting for the Labour Party in Britain, and I urge people to vote for Obama in the US”, people will (and do) conclude you don’t know what you are talking about.
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John Grimshaw on said:
if my response to ytour comment is a a bit sparse, Zaid<, I appologise. I have a broken shoulder which makes typing difficult. The point I wished to raise in response to yours is that I am not sure the A,merican Democrat party is the same as the British Labour party.
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Feodor on said:
I know this will sound horribly callous, and don’t mistake me saying this as an endorsement of it, but do you really think that most poor families in America care one iota about drone strikes in Pakistan?
For such families, there were real issues at stake here to do with their own standard of living. Granted, it’s obvious ‘lesser evilism’, but the choice wasn’t between being kicked in the balls or punched in the face, it was between being slapped and being shot. And when all is said and done, that’s a pretty meaningful choice.
Moreover, while Pakistanis likely won’t benefit from Obama’s re-election, Iranians (and possibly Palestinians) probably will. (Does anyone doubt there would have been war with Iran if Romney won? Although, unfortunately, it might happen even under Obama.)
Further, on the subject of propositions, Colorado’s decision to (semi-?)legalise cannabis use is noteworthy. Not many people on the traditional left take an interest in drug legalisation, but this is another (albeit small) step in the right direction; i.e., towards ending the absolutely disastrous ‘war on drugs’.
And for anyone who thinks such things are peripheral, it should be noted that much of the expansion and militarisation of police forces that has occurred since the 1980s is built upon the ‘war on drugs’ rationale.
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CJB on said:
The vast majority of Americans rich or poor don’t give a monkey’s about their government foreign policies and that is due to the self-righteous ignorance of the country as a whole, you state things would be worse under Romney a slap instead of shot, complete bollocks, although I detest everything Romney stands for at least he had the balls or stupidity to admit he was going after Iran with the might of the military, where as Obama is going to do the same thing but just more deviously, they are all full of shite, same as our own disgusting government, they will plough ahead regardless of what the public want, spouting more black propaganda and nonsense until they get what they want, heaven forbid anyone says no to America because when they do they get overthrown…
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Jellytot on said:
Yes, he is a creature of Wall Street
True but Wall Street much prefered the other creature and it should be noted that yesterday (the first full day of trading after Obama’s win) the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 313 points, or 2.4%, logging its worst daily decline since November 2011…..go figure.
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Feodor on said:
So, e.g., there is no difference between having a Commander-in-Chief who was willing to bail-out the auto-industry, thus saving hundreds of thousands of jobs, and one who would have let it fall apart?
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CJB on said:
Yes bravo! He bailed out the auto-industry and saved those jobs, Now watch as he systematically goes after the working class for his second term, attacking the employment rights that have been fought for years, all the while increasing the military budget and lining the pockets of the warmonger elite of America, Feodor you might want to get your information from something other than mainstream media, the man is a puppet and he will do the bidding of the powers that be, same as that other bell-end Cameron, off flogging his war toys in the middle east, grow up…
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Vanya on said:
#4 Hi John. I agree they’re not the same.
As an aside can I just mention Europe to you? And I don’t mean the EU
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Nick Fredman on said:
>>The sense of disappointment is palpable, but it was still correct to advocate, as US labour did, another four years for Obama.<<
Yeah maybe, but that's far from all there is to it: as I've heard the astute Doug Henwood point out even as he without enthusiasm advocates a vote for Democrats, if the US unions had spent even a small fraction of the time, money and energy on campaigning on such a vital reform in the US as single-payer public medical insurance as they pour into uncritically supporting Democrats, there might be a considerably better outcome for working people. There's a difference between supporting a lesser evil in the absence of anything better, to surrendering all political independence to somewhat more liberal bourgeois politicians as too many unions in the US, UK and Australia do.
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Funky Joe Stalin on said:
As it happens the tax cuts for the rich will expire soon and also trigger massive cuts in defence spending.
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John Grimshaw on said:
Sorry Vanya perhaps I’m being tick here. Europe? Care to elaborate.
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Vanya on said:
#13 I was making a snide reference to football. Sorry.
And I hope you get well soon
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Nasir Khan on said:
The Re-Election of Barack Obama
Those left-of-the-centre Americans who had opted to vote for a lesser evil than the bigger evil in the shape of Mitt Romney have some ground to celebrate. In fact, anything was possible; Romney could have also found his way to the White House. American political system is deeply flawed and has become more mouldy and outdated. It does not represent the hopes and aspirations of the American people any longer.
The presidential election itself is a contest in which big money talks and imposes its decisions on the masses. Actual problems facing the superpower that has hegemony over a large part of humanity and regions of the world are brushed aside and a diversionary picture put before the electorate that produces much sound but signifies nothing. Big gala shows and rallies make the whole thing look comical and cheap advertisement. That’s not what the democracy is about or can ever be justified for hiding the concerns of millions of ordinary men and women and their economic and social hardships.
President Obama in his first term proved to be a true representative of American military-industrial complex. He carried out where Bush had left. He also extended the Afghan war of aggression into Pakistan and in most cowardly fashion has been conducting the killings of Pakistani ‘militants’ in Pakistan by his drone attacks. The people of Pakistan and other places who become victims of such assassinations have no means at their disposal to combat the advanced technological robots that kill them at his orders.
Now the question is: Will he continue his policy of such killings and disregard international law and the Geneva Conventions? Like Bush and Condi Rice, his foreign policy in the Middle East has been a total charade. Has he any sense of moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people who are still under occupation of Israel and its cruel policies? Without American military and financial support, Israel couldn’t have carried out the occupation or oppression of a captive population.
These things are not a secret and certainly President Obama is well aware of all these things. Now he has a new four-year term of office. Will he be able to change the course of his foreign policy or will he continue what he did during the last four years? Only the time will tell. But he has some opportunity to show respect to international law, the Geneva Conventions and stop the illegal killing of people in foreign countries. He can also advance the cause of peace in the Middle East, not by reiterating the American mantra of the ‘security of Israel’ but stand for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and oppression.
People will judge President for his actions, not his words. Let’s hope his words and actions match from now on. The oppressed and victimised people and nations at the hands of US imperialism and its allies will be truly glad if he shows resolute courage to stand for what is right and not military might.
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Mark Victorystooge on said:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/nati-n09.shtml
A good analysis of how identity politics warp the “left’s” perceptions.
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John Grimshaw on said:
Ahhh! Now i get it. Should we leave Europe thgus not having to worry about the impact of competition across the continent on our largely c2 and lower support, or should we try ha rder to build up; our European experience in order that we might keep our B’s happier liuke , say, Arsenal?
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Nick Parker on said:
Openly socialist candidate, Kshama Sawant, scored a whopping 27% against the pro-cuts Democrat House Speaker in Washington State.
http://www.socialistalternative.org
http://www.votesawant.org
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Entdinglichung on said:
Socialist wins local election with 54% in NJ: http://patnoble2012.org/2012/11/07/we-did-it/
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