Bush has placed in key posts politicians whose record is one of opposing government policies, laws, and regulations that in many cases codify gains in struggle by workers, farmers, women, and oppressed nationalities. In his inaugural address Bush said he will press to "reform Social Security and Medicare," code words for the continued bipartisan drive to undercut working people's social wage. In his first few days in office, Bush reinstituted a policy of barring federal funds for organizations that perform abortions or raise abortion as a choice for women.

Why this is happening and how the Bush administration got into office are important questions because they involve an assessment of politics in this country, including what is happening in the U.S. ruling class and the political parties that represent them, the Democrats and Republicans.

Some among the liberal wings of the Democratic Party claim Bush stole the election from Gore. Many radical and "socialist" organizations echo this bourgeois demagogy. For example, the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, ran a front-page headline declaring that there had been an "American coup" by right-wing forces against the candidate they urged working people to vote for, Democrat Gore.

In his letter to the editor on the facing page, Edwin Fruit takes exception to a sentence in an article I wrote on the outcome of the election that says Democratic presidential candidate Albert Gore tried to steal the election from Bush. Fruit points to the various ways the rights of working people in the election were violated, most importantly through the standard racist practices and violations of voting rights. The Militant is giving coverage and support to the protests and the NAACP lawsuit against these outrages (see news coverage on opposite page).

The violations of voting rights exposed in Florida happen in every state of the union; Florida came under the spotlight mainly because of the extraordinarily close election there. From the point of view of working people, a "truly fair election" cannot occur as long as the superwealthy capitalist minority run society. First, the ruling class will not allow the working class to gain political power through elections if such a prospect is posed. History has left no doubt: they will defend their state through force and violence when needed. The capitalists always use their power and resources to make sure that politicians acceptable to them are chosen. These methods include not only undemocratic laws that prevent working people from getting on the ballot or gaining media access, but sometimes take the form of undemocratic electoral maneuvers in squabbles among capitalist politicians themselves. And let's not forget that U.S. elections have been marked by the low percentages of people who vote. Gore and Bush each received around 24 percent of the eligible vote, not a figure the self-proclaimed representatives of U.S. "democracy" can brag about.

Within this framework of an election under bourgeois democracy in the United States today, Gore was trying to change the outcome and steal the victory from Bush. When the questions of who would be president came down to the vote in Florida, and it seemed likely Bush would win a slim majority of the electoral vote, Gore and his campaign staff began to try to find a way to justify a hand recount in several heavily Democratic counties to boost his overall numbers. He couldn't care less about a principle of "counting every vote."

Gore never asked for a full hand recount in Florida. Several commentators in the big-business media wrote after the Supreme Court ruling that this was a big tactical error by Gore. A December 13 New York Times article expressed the view that "Gore's failure to ask the Florida courts for a manual statewide recount has emerged as one in a series of pivotal legal miscalculations," noting that "Mr. Gore's lawyers never once pursued it in court even though they were invited to do just that during oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court." Bush and the Republicans tried to prevent in court any moves that would give Gore the advantage. And they won out.

Stealing elections is not an uncommon practice in U.S. politics. For example, it is widely accepted in bourgeois circles that the election of John Kennedy to the White House in 1960--also an extremely close election--was possible because of ballot box stuffing in Chicago by the Democratic machine headed by Mayor Richard Daley. To clearly state what Gore was up to, especially in the midst of the loud campaign by Democrats and radical groups to cover up what Gore tried to do, doesn't let the Republicans "off the hook" for the underlying undemocratic character of elections. And in factional fighting between sections of the ruling class, working-class militants do not hold the view that one side or the other are "victims." They are both enemies of working people worldwide.

To subscribe to the idea that there was a "coup" in Florida or that the Republicans stole the election only feeds the notion that the policies the Bush administration will pursue are a sharp break from the U.S. government's course up to now, which has been a steady bipartisan assault on working people. The policies that will now be pursued in Washington are part a long-term shift to the right of both major parties, part of the offensive against working people by the ruling employers. Bush, in fact, will build on what the Clinton administration accomplished for the capitalist class, pushing on every front possible.  
 
 
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