
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. As a Polish proverb has it: not my circus, not my monkeys.