Nine Democrats have already thrown their hats in the ring. Others, such as Sen. Hillary Clinton, are campaigning unofficially for the 2008 race while leaving open the remote possibility for a run next year.

In their wake, most middle-class radical or socialist groups are focusing their energies on a “dump Bush” campaign in support of Democrats. They portray the Bush administration as ultrarightist to bolster their argument that voting for the Democratic Party would back the “peoples’ candidates.” Some, like the Green Party, have already announced they are likely to not run a presidential slate next year and instead back liberal Democrats nationwide.  
 
Liberal forces ‘very, very energized’
Democratic Party machines and liberal political groups are feverishly organizing and debating in every arena to advance their electoral prospects. Over the next year, “I think they will be energized,” a top Bush strategist told the Washington Post. “Very energized. Very, very energized.”

Among the nine declared Democratic hopefuls, those considered the most liberal include former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former senator Carol Moseley Braun, and New York politician Alfred Sharpton. The other candidates are Senators Robert Graham, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joseph Lieberman, and Rep. Richard Gephardt, who are tied to the “New Democrats” with whom former president William Clinton is associated.

During the 1992 election campaign, prior to his first term as president, Clinton pledged to “end welfare as we know it.” He carried through on that promise four years later by signing into law a “welfare reform” bill that eliminated federally guaranteed Aid for Families with Dependant Children—the first substantial assault on the Social Security Act in decades. This was the extension of the “welfare reform” Clinton had carried out as governor of Arkansas in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he had also gained a reputation as a voice for the insurance giants. And it was the course he had charted as head of the Democratic Leadership Council—associated with the New Democrats— and National Governors Conference during his rise as a bourgeois politician.

This course went hand in hand with the former president’s ardent support for capital punishment and signing of “anticrime,” “antiterrorist,” and anti-immigrant bills, which paved the way for the attacks on workers’ rights registered under the Bush White House. The U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Yugoslavia and the intensification of the U.S. economic war on Cuba on Clinton’s watch showed how consistent his foreign policy was with Washington’s unbroken record of imperialist aggression around the world.

Dean officially launched his campaign June 23. He has drawn attention as a candidate who “opposed the war in Iraq,” as his supporters describe him.

In his opening speech Dean criticized “the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration” and its “disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations.” He vowed to “defend America against terrorism,” chastised the Republican administration for failing to find “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and said U.S. allies should be asked to send troops to maintain the occupation of that country.

Much of the political debate in Washington is now part of the election campaign. For example, liberal papers such as the New York Times have given massive coverage to charges by Democrats that the Bush administration did not offer “adequate” arguments to justify the invasion of Iraq, that no “weapons of mass destruction” have yet been found there, and that Washington faces a “quagmire” in Iraq.

Among the main points liberal critics of the Bush administration are campaigning on in relation to the U.S. rulers’ “war on terrorism” is that they can do a better job on “homeland defense” and dealing with “terrorists” at home.

Liberals and middle-class radical groups are getting keyed up for the 2004 race.

United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), a coalition that, before the Iraq war, sponsored national peace demonstrations that peaked on February 15, held a “national strategy conference” in Chicago June 6-8. The gathering, attended by 550 delegates, focused on how to defeat the Bush administration’s “right-wing agenda” in the 2004 elections. It discussed the U.S. rulers’ attacks on political rights and the rights of immigrants, attributed to Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, as a campaign issue to go after the Republican administration. UPJ is a coalition of liberals and groups on the left such as the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and Committees of Correspondence.

As the capitalist election campaigns heat up, it appears that a number of the political parties that in the past have run candidates against the Democrats and Republicans will not do so in 2004.  
 
Greens may not run own candidate
One of these is the Green Party, which ran Ralph Nader in the last two presidential elections. “Some of its activists are urging the party to forgo the race and, instead, throw its support behind one of the Democratic candidates—all in the hopes of unseating President Bush,” the Washington Post reported May 27, citing John Strawn, co-chair of the party’s presidential exploratory committee. “While Nader often said, during the [2000] campaign, that there was little difference between Al Gore and Bush, the party has since become an especially vociferous critic of the Bush administration.”

Some Green Party leaders favor supporting a liberal Democratic nominee for president and running local Green candidates—except in hotly disputed races, in which case they would back the Democrats.

The Greens are active in an effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis of California, a Democrat. Some party activists see the California recall campaign as a way to promote Green Party leader Peter Camejo—a “socially responsible” businessman who received 5 percent of the vote as the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the 2002 elections in that state—as a potential vice-presidential or presidential candidate in a future election.

The CPUSA, a longtime supporter of the Democrats as a “lesser evil,” is once again subordinating all its work to push for a “united front to defeat the extreme right wing,” that is, joining forces with anyone who will campaign for the Democratic nominee to unseat Bush, whom they describe as an ultrarightist who “stole” the presidency.

In an April 17 report to the CP’s National Board titled “The 2004 elections are pivotal to save our country and the world,” party leader Joelle Fishman said that while the CP might run its own candidates for local office, “I do not think it makes political sense to field a Communist Party candidate for president in 2004.” The last time the CP ran a presidential candidate was in 1984.  
 
 
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