"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right" -- H. L. Mencken
I'm not really the voting kind; but here's my nickel's worth as the US election race intensifies. As a recent International Communist Current article points out, Barack Obama was in 2008 (and remains in 2012) the US ruling class's 'preferred' candidate - Wall Street's man, as it were. Needless to say, Obama's presidency has not improved the lot of ordinary Americans and it has been a disaster for the people of the world and for the environment, as Matt Stoller makes clear in a recent article in Salon. Whatever claims may be made for Obama's supposed liberalism at home, there can be no doubt that if Obama is re-elected, the US will continue to spread death and destruction to every corner of the globe [edit: we haven't had to wait long to see evidence of this - one of the Nobel Peace Prize winner's first actions has been to give Israel the green light to launch a devastating assault on Gaza]. Indeed, the Obama administration has hitherto replaced the renditions and tortures of the Bush years with a policy of political murder, as last year's execution of Osama bin Laden and the ongoing drone attacks across the Middle East attest. This is not to say, of course, that a Romney win would be preferable. Although a Romney victory would likely pose some minor adjustment problems for the US ruling class, the Republican party offers no alternative to austerity and crisis for US workers and imperialist violence overseas. There is no lesser evil here: the US is essentially governed by a one party machine constituted by two virtually interchangeable factions, neither of which constitutes a 'progressive' option.
I'm not really the voting kind; but here's my nickel's worth as the US election race intensifies. As a recent International Communist Current article points out, Barack Obama was in 2008 (and remains in 2012) the US ruling class's 'preferred' candidate - Wall Street's man, as it were. Needless to say, Obama's presidency has not improved the lot of ordinary Americans and it has been a disaster for the people of the world and for the environment, as Matt Stoller makes clear in a recent article in Salon. Whatever claims may be made for Obama's supposed liberalism at home, there can be no doubt that if Obama is re-elected, the US will continue to spread death and destruction to every corner of the globe [edit: we haven't had to wait long to see evidence of this - one of the Nobel Peace Prize winner's first actions has been to give Israel the green light to launch a devastating assault on Gaza]. Indeed, the Obama administration has hitherto replaced the renditions and tortures of the Bush years with a policy of political murder, as last year's execution of Osama bin Laden and the ongoing drone attacks across the Middle East attest. This is not to say, of course, that a Romney win would be preferable. Although a Romney victory would likely pose some minor adjustment problems for the US ruling class, the Republican party offers no alternative to austerity and crisis for US workers and imperialist violence overseas. There is no lesser evil here: the US is essentially governed by a one party machine constituted by two virtually interchangeable factions, neither of which constitutes a 'progressive' option.
Voter turn-out at the election is likely to be lower than it was 2008. Indeed, it is remarkable that despite the obscene media razzmatazz around election time (which this year is estimated to have cost an astonishing six billion dollars), US election turn-outs have not exceeded 60% since 1968. Modest election turn-outs are sometimes discussed by journalists in terms of 'voter apathy'; yet they may also be an indication that working class people are aware of the irrelevance of parliamentary politics to their lives and aspirations. Indeed, many workers understand perfectly well that a meaningful change in the way society is ordered - a change that could eradicate work, hunger and war and safeguard the natural environment - is never going to emerge from bourgeois democracy. The worry, of course, is that this quite understandable insouciance towards democratic politics shades into suspicion of all political action. Sheldon Wolin's understanding of Western democracies as 'inverted totalitarianisms' in which the public, far from being enthused and mobilised as in totalitarian states, become increasingly insecure and politically passive, is one to take seriously.
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