For over two years since Donald Trump was elected president, the liberal media, Democratic Party and the middle-class left have been obsessed with finding a way to bring his administration down. They lionized Robert Mueller, a former head of the FBI political police who was appointed as special counsel by the assistant attorney general, fervently convinced he would find some bombshell that would bring Trump to his knees — and maybe to prison.
When Mueller finally submitted his report March 22, he was forced to admit there was no “collusion” between Trump and Moscow that led to his election, and no charges could be filed against him. This sharply intensified the political crisis fracturing the Democratic Party and the never-Trumpers in the Republican Party.
Mueller’s probe was based on a dossier drawn up by a former British spy paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign that the FBI had already deemed unverifiable.
After the election then-FBI boss James Comey met with the president to inform him of the existence of the dossier. That meeting was used as a pretext by the Trump-hating liberal press to open a frenzy of publicity about the smears in it.
As it became increasingly clear that Comey had tried to swing the 2016 election for Clinton, Trump fired him. Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then set up the special counsel investigation and hired Mueller to head it up. Rosenstein later offered to wear a wire in meetings with Trump in hopes of getting evidence to have him ousted, as unfit to rule.
The ex-FBI boss ordered highly publicized armed raids on many of the president’s former associates. He secured the convictions of eight people on matters totally unrelated to “collusion” between Trump and Moscow. Mueller hoped to squeeze them for dope on any shenanigans by the president he could use. His effort was hailed by the liberal mob who prayed his witch hunt would undo the result of the 2016 election that they cannot stomach.
Rulers’ real target is working people
The attempt to criminalize political differences between the capitalist rulers’ twin parties, using the FBI, sets a dangerous precedent. The FBI has been used for decades to go after working-class militants and Black rights fighters. It led the frame-up of leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Teamsters’ union that mobilized opposition to the U.S. rulers’ entry into the Second World War. Similar methods will be used by the capitalist rulers against working people’s struggles as they pick up in the years ahead.
The real target of the rulers isn’t Trump — it’s the workers who voted for him, or who failed to vote at all. The capitalists and the upper middle class and professionals who serve their interests consider all working people “deplorable” — as Hillary Clinton called them — and seek to restrict their influence on “responsible” decision-making. That is, decisions that reinforce capitalist rule.
Working people in city and countryside face a deep economic and social crisis today. In this context different wings of the Democratic Party are seeking a platform that can garner support. But with an uptick in the economy and the collapse of the Russia probe, Trump looks like a good bet in 2020.
Some Democrats think the best hope is to keep the witch hunt against Trump going, even though they have no facts to help them. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, insists that regardless of Mueller’s report, there is “evidence of collusion,” and his committee is going to launch a big investigation to get to the bottom of it.
Democrats search for a program
But most Democrats, like House leader Nancy Pelosi, want to move on, to campaign against Trump on health care and other issues, in hopes of regaining the White House.
While a lot of liberal media attention is devoted daily to Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the party’s “socialist” wing is failing to make gains against its centrist opponents in the party.
J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says proposals from the likes of Ocasio-Cortez — like her Green New Deal that envisions getting rid of all cows and cars — are an obstacle to winning support for the reforms he thinks have a shot at regaining some social stability needed by the capitalist rulers.
Dimon described the U.S. “bifurcated economy” as “fundamentally anti-poor” March 18, drawing attention to aspects of the broader crisis bearing down on working people. In an address to J.P. Morgan Chase shareholders in 2017, he complained that “household formation has been slow.” And it’s true that the hopes of millions of working-class young people that they can form their own families are being ruined by low wages, indebtedness and rising rents.
Dimon favors a big government job creation program and other measures to soften the blows inflicted on the toiling population by the lawful workings of capitalism. He says, “If a large portion of the American population cannot earn a living wage, then we will create a situation of permanent social turmoil.”
But the fact is capitalism today cannot produce lasting social peace. The coming apart of the liberal world order, the ongoing crisis of capitalist production and trade, the sharpening rivalry between competing capitalist powers worldwide, and their seemingly endless wars point in the opposite direction.
In contrast to Dimon, Socialist Workers Party candidates explain that the “turmoil” he fears will inevitably produce mass struggles by working people. In these battles workers and farmers will have the opportunity to discover our own worth as we fight together to change the conditions we face and to organize to take political power out of the hands of the bosses and their parties.