BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
Despite predictions to the contrary in opinion polls leading
up to the November 3 elections, the Democratic Party gained an
additional five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives,
narrowing the Republican majority in Congress to 223-to-211. In
the U.S. Senate, the balance of seats between the two
capitalist parties remained unchanged, with Republicans
maintaining their 55-45 majority. The Republican Party
leadership was striving to increase its hold on the Senate to
60 seats - banking on making gains off the sex scandals that
have surrounded the presidency of William Clinton pushed mainly
by rightist politicians. Their tactics failed.
The election results in the United States are another confirmation of a shift to the left in bourgeois politics in most imperialist countries that has been visible for more than a year. In the last weeks before the November 3 vote, many Democratic politicians tried to portray themselves as the main defenders of Social Security and proponents of increasing government spending for education.
In Washington State working people and others demonstrated their concern about low wages by voting to raise the state minimum wage from $4.90 to $6.50 per hour in a referendum. The initiative passed by a whopping 73 percent.
The other most notable result in the U.S. elections was the upset victory of Reform Party candidate James George Janos Ventura, a former wrestler who was elected governor of Minnesota, defeating both the Democratic and Republican contenders. The Minnesota election points to the second main trend in bourgeois politics: a rise in social polarization that puts wind in the sails of rightists who play on the insecurities of the middle classes and better-off layers of workers to gain a hearing for their radical demagogy against the "corrupt elite" in Washington. This insecurity, often approaching panic, is produced by the growing instability and deepening economic and social crisis of the capitalist system.
Ventura's win also shows that the two-party system the U.S. rulers put together with the rise of imperialism at the end of the 19th century is not immune to breakup.
The outcome in Minnesota was similar to the vote for Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential elections, when the Texas billionaire who ran for president won 19 percent of the ballots cast. Perot founded the Reform Party following the 1992 vote.
The victory of Ventura is the first major electoral gain for this formation, whose candidates have capitalized on deepening resentment against the Democratic and Republican parties. Campaigning on a demagogic, stand-above-parties axis, Reform candidates have focused on electing "strong leaders" who can break through the "gridlock" of government. Ventura's Bonapartist character was most evident as he campaigned sporting a sweatshirt with "Navy Seals" on it - the U.S. Navy's special forces, like the army's Green Berets, that Ventura boasted of having served in for six years.
Shift to the left in Europe
The results of the elections show that the rulers have been
unable to convince working people to accept the bosses' demands
for greater sacrifice today, supposedly for the common good
tomorrow. If anything, defensive strikes and other struggles by
working people in the United States have accelerated over the
last six months.
This trend has been more pronounced in Europe. "With the new Social Democratic-led government of Gerhard Schroder now in control in Germany, the European car may be veering dangerously to the left," said an editorial in the October 31 Economist. "Helmut Kohl, and his finance minister Theo Waigel, have been replaced by politicians who prefer to talk of expansion and job creation rather than of price stability and fiscal rigor." The article was titled "Europe swerves left."
Referring to the attempt to declare a common currency, the "euro," among European Union (EU) member countries by January 1, the editorial said "the left now controls or shares power in nine of the euro's 11 prospective members. The new German finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, sounds even more Keynesian and critical of central bankers than his French socialist colleague, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. True, the left is a far paler shade of pink than it was. Yet a shift in Europe's economic consensus seemed to emerge at last week's summit of EU leaders in Austria, which called for lower interest rates, for more public investment to create jobs, and for policies to fight `unfair' tax competition."
The Economist editors, who openly expressed disgruntlement with this trend, said it's not right "to blame tight money for the euro-11's average jobless rate of 11.1%, compared with 4.6% in America. The real culprit is excessive rigidities in labour and product markets." That is, the Economist advocates slashing social services, wages, and working conditions.
But as working-class resistance to the bosses' belt- tightening demands has intensified in all imperialist countries, and the threat of collapse of the world banking system or other major financial catastrophe has loomed closer, a majority among the ruling classes are opting, for now, to lower interest rates, speak demagogicly about job creation, and distance themselves from proposals to slash the social wage. This is exactly what many Democratic candidates, and to a lesser degree Republicans, tried to do in the last month of the campaign.
Scandalmongering backfires
The attempt by the Republican party to exploit the
scandalmongering against the Clinton administration seems to
have backfired. In one of the races for U.S. Congress, for
example, in District 12 of New Jersey, Democratic candidate
Rush Holt, who defeated Republican incumbent Michael Pappas,
used as his main TV ads clips of his opponent singing a song of
praise to Kenneth Starr on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
Starr, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Clinton, delivered a voluminous report to Congress September 10, with salacious details of the affair between the president and former White House employee Monica Lewinsky. The House judiciary committee later endorsed Starr's call for impeachment proceedings against the president. But the release of Starr's report, compounded by the airing on television of a videotape with Clinton's grand jury testimony on this case that was filled with more lurid details, was met by negative reactions by many working people.
Also noteworthy was the defeat of veteran Senator Alfonse D'Amato, a New York Republican who was a leading player in the congressional investigation of Clinton, by his Democratic opponent Charles Schumer.
At the same time, the ultraright, the main pusher and beneficiary of these exposés, has taken advantage of the scandal to get a wider hearing for its demagogy against the "elite" in Washington and both of the main ruling parties.
The Ventura campaign in Minnesota stressed the need for a strong executive authority and weaker legislature. Ventura presented himself a tough guy who would "support legislation on its merits, not on the basis of which party proposed it." He had little to say about what he proposed and a lot about what he opposed. "As governor," he stated on numerous occasions, "I will veto any taxes and any increase in existing taxes."