Vol. 76/No. 42      November 19, 2012

The victor, as would his Republican Party challenger Mitt Romney, will use the power of the presidency to deepen the bosses’ assaults against working people, as the propertied rulers futilely drive to restore their declining profit rates at our expense. And either way they will seek to strengthen U.S. military and economic domination worldwide in competition with those they see as enemies and allies alike.

Given the reality the crisis of capitalism is visiting on workers, the election should have been an easy win for the challenger. Jobs are the central question on workers’ minds. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, millions have been thrown out of work. Some 23 million people are without work or forced to work part time.

In the face of this, the Obama administration has refused to organize any real national jobs program. Neither candidate even made false promises for such a step in their election bid.

Romney has no jobs program either, but an effective campaign against Obama’s record would have seemed an easy win.

In the last couple of weeks, some dozen big city newspapers that had endorsed Obama in 2008 announced that they were backing Romney in 2012, including the New York Daily News, Newsday, Houston Chronicle, Orlando Sentinel, Des Moines Register, Nashville Tennessean, and Los Angeles Daily News.

Romney failed to present even a pretense of something in common with working people or to conceal his country club Republican outlook. Late efforts to appear as a moderate, down-home, friendly kind of guy didn’t convince many.

In fact, despite media hype presenting the election as a contest between two sharply counterposed visions, many commentators pointed out there was in fact little difference between the proposals of the candidates.

In the first presidential debate, ostensibly about jobs and economic policies, Romney captured the heart of the matter when he said to Obama, “The rich will do fine, whether you’re president or I am.”

The Oct. 23 Huffington Post, which supported Obama, had this to say about foreign policy in the second “debate”: “It showed that when it comes to drone strikes, the war in Afghanistan, relations with Pakistan, the intervention in Libya, support for Israel or for ‘crippling sanctions’ on Iran, there is little difference between the two parties.”

Neither wants to weaken the capitalist state. Both support government attacks on constitutional protections and workers’ rights over the past decade, which have deepened under the Obama administration.

There are only differences on how to drive against workers at home and abroad, not whether to do so.

The overall result of the election reproduced the situation that existed before the election—Democrat Barack Obama as president, a Senate with a Democratic majority and the House with a Republican majority.

A little gridlock in the capitalist government is perhaps the one positive development—the less the capitalist exploiters’ representatives can agree and act in their efforts to take their crisis out on the backs of working people, the better.
 
 
Related articles:
Event celebrates SWP presidential election campaign, projects LA ticket
SWP candidates back Calif. postal workers’ fight  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home