Vol. 81/No. 30 August 14, 2017
(front page)
Drive to impeach Donald Trump reflects political crisis of US rulers
AND JOHN STUDER
“The White House is imploding,” screams the headline in a July 28 column by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post. The only “remaining mystery is how, when and how badly this disaster of a presidency will end,” she claims.
“Trump Tries to Regroup As the West Wing Battles Itself,” is the headline in an article by Peter Baker in the July 29 New York Times.
Workers are bombarded with the same line on morning talk shows, evening “news” and from late-night comedians, as well.
The instrument tasked with finding a way to remove Trump from office is the special prosecutor’s office led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller. The workers’ movement has long experience with special prosecutors. They aren’t appointed to investigate crime, but to dig as long as needed to find something to bring their target down. There are no restrictions or time limit on what they can “investigate.”
They’re a mockery of the protections of the U.S. Constitution and a threat to workers’ rights. And this one is run by the former head of the rulers’ anti-labor political police.
Why the furor?
It’s not Trump. He’s a real estate boss who is as committed to defending the interests of his fellow ruling class members as anyone. What’s different here is that behind his campaign and victory, the rulers see something else — the working class. They see how, under the deep crisis wracking the capitalism today, workers are looking for something different. They responded to Trump because he promised to work for the working class and “drain the swamp.”
As Gary Abernathy, editor of the Hillsboro, Ohio, Times Gazette — one of the few papers in the country that endorsed Trump — put it, workers “like that Trump is a game-changer, a disrupter, a practitioner of what I see as ‘crafted chaos.’ Our stale system and its corrupted processes are in need of disruption.”
The rulers see — and fear — deepening class struggle coming. This is what the furor is about. And it’s self-reinforcing — the liberals are immersed in a world where everyone thinks the same way.
Trump “got the votes of more than 62 million people,” Michael Kinsley admitted in a July 29 Times column, saying, “I am pretty sure I don’t know any of them.” These liberals are convinced workers are lesser creatures, without the smarts to choose their own leaders.
Under the pressure of the media barrage, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll June 29 states Trump’s numbers “hit historic lows for a president in the early months of his term,” getting approval from 42 percent of those questioned, but “his favorability standing was still better than the ratings” for both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Much of the media has focused on changes in White House personnel, including the resignation of Sean Spicer as White House Press Secretary, the appointment and firing of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director, and the ousting of Reince Priebus as chief of staff, substituted by Homeland Security Director Gen. John Kelly.
President Trump spent a good part of the week complaining about the performance of former Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, his attorney general. This turned Sessions, one of the country’s more overtly right-wing Republican politicians, into a hero for the liberals.
They claim this is a sign of chaos in the administration. What it really shows is that Trump isn’t really a Republican. The Post reported, “With every staff move, Trump seems to be moving ever further away from the Republican establishment.”
Trump is more comfortable with his own people, businessmen, family and military figures who know something about the consequences of imperialist war.
Democrats, Republicans in crisis
Both of the capitalist ruling families’ political parties have been thrown into political crisis by the results of the elections.
One sign of the unraveling of the Republican Party was the collapse of all their attempts to repeal or modify Obamacare. The Republicans have a majority in both the Senate and House, but couldn’t pass anything.
The Democrats are in no better shape.
On July 26 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer rolled into Berryville, Virginia, an hour outside Washington — what Pelosi called “the heartland of America” — to announce the Democrat’s new brand, “A Better Deal.”
The “deal” is a rehash of liberal Band-Aids for the health care and jobs crisis without touching the real problem — capitalism in its decline.
“Democrats will show the country we are the party on the side of working people,” Schumer, who took his tie off for the road trip, proclaimed. “This is the start of a new vision for the party.”
But “in a country still seething at Washington, the two Democratic leaders,” the Financial Times wrote after Schumer and Pelosi’s media event, “have served a collective six-and-a-half decades in Congress” and “are struggling to present themselves as the face of a new Democratic Party.”
The other wing of the fractured party — Bernie Sanders and his supporters — are fighting to oust the party bosses and take over. Only a rebuilt party of radical capitalist reform, they believe, can win workers back into the two-party shell game.
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