BY NAOMI CRAINE
Entering the last two months of the U.S. presidential race, the two parties of big business are in the process of redefining the political axes of how they are viewed. At the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, even the most liberal wings of the party fell into line behind reelecting William Clinton - the president who has taken the lead in beginning to dismantle the social conquests the working class won during the labor battles of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole and running mate Jack Kemp continue to present their party as the force of "change" and economic growth, while reaching to win votes from Blacks and working people.
In his August 28 speech to the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, described how Clinton has led the shift away from social policies associated with the Democrats for decades. "The last time we all came together four years ago, this was a very different party," he began. "Many Americans, you recall, had lost faith in us, and frankly, many Democrats had as well....
"President Clinton found a way to preserve our party's basic principles while erasing the stigmas that had been branded upon our reputation over the years. Who will say today that Democrats are in love with big government, and big spending, after Bill Clinton has cut the Federal Government dramatically and brought the deficit down 60 percent." Cuomo added that Democrats can no longer be accused of being "soft on crime," "anti-family," and "anti-middle class" after four years of Clinton in the White House.
The former New York governor stated his disagreement with Clinton on signing the welfare bill. "The Welfare Reform Bill has been one of the most difficult," he said. "Many of us, and I among them, believe that the risk to children was too great to justify the action of signing that bill, not matter what its political benefits." And then Cuomo declared, "We should all hope and pray that the president is right, but we should do something more than hope and pray.... We need to give the president the strength of a Democratic Congress. We need to help the president make this law better as he has assured us that he will." Striking a nationalist tone, he said that along with ending welfare, "there must be jobs, not in Thailand, not in Mexico, but here in Chicago and rural Mississippi, and in East L.A."
Commenting on the Democratic convention in the August 30 Financial Times, Philip Stephens wrote that while a couple of "unabashed Old Democrats" - Cuomo and Jesse Jackson -
addressed the convention, "The New Democrats hold the levers of power at the centre. Vice-president Al Gore, anointed this week as Mr. Clinton's chosen successor, is a leading standard-bearer. So too is Evan Bayh, the Indiana state governor and youthful rising star who was given one of the best prime-time slots at the convention. Look for new ideas and they come from the Democratic Leadership Committee, the New Democrat caucus once chaired by Mr. Clinton."
Signing away piece of Social Security
Another prominent speaker at the convention in Chicago was
Edward Kennedy. The senator from Massachusetts gave high praises
to Clinton and Democrats in Congress for passing a 90-cent raise
in the minimum wage, the first in more than five years, and a
health bill Kennedy had co-authored. He did not mention the
third, and most crucial, part of the social legislation package
that Clinton signed the week before the convention - the
welfare bill. This act ended the federal Aid for Families with
Dependent Children program, one of the gains of working-class
struggle that was codified in the Social Security Act of 1935.
The measure includes major attacks on immigrants' access to
social programs (see article on page 16).
Prominent liberals made it clear there would be no split over Clinton's signing of the bill. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala told one reporter, "There is no difference among Democrats on this.... Everyone agrees that he signed it, and he has to fix it, and to fix it we need to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, so we can repeal the parts of the bill we hate and get better welfare reform."
Bella Abzug, a former congresswoman from New York who was a figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement, echoed Shalala. She told the New York Post Clinton should be reelected "because he has to get rid of the welfare reform bill."
Sen. Daniel Moynihan gave a different, more realistic explanation of the events. "The votes won't be there to repeal it, even with a Democratic Congress," he said to members of the New York delegation at the Chicago convention. "There's a basic fact. We have repealed Title 4A of the Social Security Act. That has been done and will not be undone." Moynihan continued, "We in New York are going to have to live with it for a very long time... and it's not going to be easy." His comments were widely reported in the media.
In his own speech accepting nomination for the presidency, Clinton boasted of putting 100,000 more cops on the street, cutting welfare roles by 1.8 million people, and making the federal workforce "the smallest it's been since John Kennedy." His rhetoric on "building a bridge to the 21st century" contained very few promises to make things better in the lives of working people. The proposals he did make included tax credits for those who profit from selling their home and for college tuition payments - leaving intact the tuition system, even in public colleges. He also proposed allowing companies to compensate overtime work with time off, instead of overtime pay. This would annul part of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which like Social Security was a product of the battles waged by union workers and the unemployed against the conditions they faced in the 1930s depression.
Clinton concluded with a portion of his speech that laid the ground for the U.S. bombing of Iraq a few days later. "We cannot become the world's policeman, but where our values and our interests are at stake and where we can make a difference, we must act and we must lead," he said. Cuba, Iran, Libya, and North Korea were among the countries he cited as needing change.
Kemp reaches out for Black vote
Vice-presidential candidate Kemp has been in the forefront of
the Republican campaign, even overshadowing his running mate,
Dole. A major theme for him has been reaching out to win votes
from Blacks. The former congressman attended a September 6
breakfast at a soul food restaurant in Harlem, for instance.
Among the businessmen and politicians present was Rep. Charles
Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem. Rangel praised Kemp for the
"courage you have to speak out when it was unpopular in your
party, to talk about all people regardless of color."
Speaking of "enterprise zones" as the solution to urban poverty, Kemp waved a dollar bill and declared, "This is the color of the new civil rights revolution -green." These zones are areas in predominantly Black and Latino communities where businessmen are given tax breaks if they set up shop.
"There is a new Black bourgeoisie that's so important to this country," Kemp said, pointing to retired Gen. Colin Powell, who headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, as an example of how Blacks can "rise to the top." Kemp has stated the goal of winning half of the Black vote for the Republicans by the year 2000.
In an interview with the Boston Globe published September 8, the vice-presidential contender praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's emphasis on Black entrepreneurship and family values. He also said he wished he had been invited to speak at the Million Man March last fall. Two days later, speaking at the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, Kemp called on Farrakhan "to renounce anti-Semitism." In the same speech he pledged full support to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kemp is also making an effort to appeal to workers. He spent Labor Day in Flint, Michigan, an industrial city hit hard by auto layoffs. And he offered himself and Dole to meet with the National Education Association, one of the two main teachers' unions and often a target of attack in Dole's speeches.
Meanwhile, Dole has been holding a series of rallies with supporters dubbed "Listening to America." His talks focus largely on his proposal for a 15 percent tax cut and other "economic growth" measures. "We are the party of reform.... We are the party of Main Street. We are the party of working people. We are the party of the farmers in the state of Georgia," he said in Fayetteville, Georgia, September 9.
In an interview with New York Times, Dole was asked whether reports of continued modest economic growth, consumer confidence, and lower unemployment rates hurt his campaigning. "If the growth rate was 3.5 percent we'd be out of business," Dole replied. "But it's not. It's 2.4 percent and it's gone down." He also stated, "We've got the worst recovery in this century." This gets a hearing from some workers and middle-class people who don't feel that times are better. One indicator of underlying instability is that personal bankruptcies are at an all-time high, despite being five years into the upturn since the last recession.
Nevertheless, Dole remains about 20 points behind Clinton in the polls, which worries many Republican leaders. Time magazine correspondent James Carney reported that when Dole paid a visit to Congress September 11 to rally support from GOP representatives, "the setting was akin to a funeral." Only 120 of 288 Republican congressmen showed up.
As Clinton promises a few small tax cuts of his own, trying to undercut Dole's strategy, both candidates are presenting themselves as the saviors of the Social Security and Medicare programs. Both Dole and Clinton, however, have backed large Medicare cuts as part of recent budget proposals; Dole to the tune of $168 billion, compared with Clinton's $124 billion reduction.
And as a front page column in the August 26 Wall Street Journal put it, "As they lay out competing visions for the final four years of the 20th century, there is one thing neither President Clinton nor Bob Dole will tell you: Whoever gets elected is going to preside over a recession." There is no escape from the normal workings of the capitalist business cycle.
Tough times for former Clinton friends
One the sideline to the Democratic convention was the demise
of Clinton advisor Richard Morris. Days after Morris appeared on
the cover of Time magazine under the headline "The man who has
Clinton's ear," and hours before Clinton's acceptance speech,
reports hit the press about his relationship with a prostitute,
whom he supposedly told details of White House affairs. Morris
quit the campaign, went back onto the cover of Time together
with his wife, and announced plans to publish a book.
Morris claims credit for Clinton's policy over the last couple of years of taking the lead in dismantling welfare, emphasizing "family values," and pushing austerity in the name of a balanced budget. He also claimed to have written the speeches given by the president and his wife, Hillary Clinton, in Chicago. Other White House staff deny this. Speaking to the Washington Post, senior Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos countered, "The president said no to Dick as much as he said yes." In any event, the policies Morris pushed are now the official program of the Democratic Party. "It is not clear what more Mr. Morris, never a tactician, could have done for Mr. Clinton over the next 10 weeks," wrote Jurek Martin in the August 31 Financial Times.
Early news reports mentioned that Treasury Secretary Robert Ruben has his Washington residence in the same hotel as Morris, where the campaign advisor was photographed with the prostitute, Sherry Rowlands. According to the New York Times, the hotel "has been the site for intimate fund-raising events for Mr. Clinton." These facts soon dropped out of the news.
On September 9, Morris denied Rowlands's statement that he told her Hillary Clinton was responsible for the White House's improper acquisition of some 900 FBI files on individuals, including many prominent Republicans. The Clinton administration attempted to explain the files situation as a "bureaucratic snafu."
Another former associate of the president, Susan McDougal, was jailed in Arkansas September 9 for refusing to answer questions about the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater real estate deal. McDougal has already been sentenced to two years in prison for fraud. She and James McDougal, who was convicted of 18 felony counts, were partners with the Clintons in the Whitewater deal when Clinton was governor in Arkansas.
Bipartisan Senate Passes Antigay Law
By an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 85 to 14, the U.S. Senate voted September 10 to approve the Defense of Marriage Act, a law against gay marriages. The House of Representatives passed an identical bill in July by a vote of 342 to 67. President William Clinton promised in May he will sign the measure.
The Senate also narrowly voted down a bill that would ban discrimination against homosexuals in hiring in most circumstances, in this case by a vote of 50 to 49.
The Defense of Marriage act bars federal recognition of same- sex marriages, including for the purposes of health insurance, Social Security, and other benefits usually available to spouses. It also explicitly allows states to deny recognition gay marriages conducted in other states. Currently none of the 50 states allow provisions for same-sex marriage, though an upcoming court case in Hawaii could be the first test.
Speaking against the antidiscrimination bill, Sen. Daniel Coats, a Republican from Indiana, declared, "It would give the stamp of Federal approval to activities still considered illegal in many states.
Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said the two votes were an "affirmation of mainstream values."