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Here’s a safe prediction to make on the eve
of the 2000 general election: The next President of the United
States will be sponsored by and highly responsive to corporate
interests.
That’s not to say that there are no
significant differences between Democrat Al Gore and
Republican George W. Bush. But the choice presented by the two
big parties is a vivid reminder of why we founded the Labor
Party: the bosses have two parties, we need one of our own.
UNCHALLENGED
CORPORATE POWER
Bush, coming from the party of the rich, isn’t
very apologetic about his pro-corporate, antiworker positions,
which are, after all, standard Republican fare. His claim of
being a "compassionate" conservative and his homey
Texan drawl notwithstanding, Bush doesn’t depart much from
the old Reagan-Bush script: cut taxes for the rich, cut
services for working people and the poor, privatize,
deregulate.
Gore sends more mixed messages. Coming out of
the convention, he took on a new populist sound. "I’m
not satisfied. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet," he belts
out at every campaign stop. He growls convincingly about how
he’s going to take on corporate interests — HMOs, oil
companies, the pharmaceutical industry.
That Gore is making these kinds of noises is a
good thing, and a tribute to all those who have organized and
protested in recent years against growing corporate power. The
problem is, the policies Gore proposes don’t amount to a
challenge of corporate power. And Gore’s record in office
provides even less reassurance. As the Clinton-Gore
administration’s own former labor secretary Robert Reich
noted recently, "No administration in modern history has
been as good for American business as the Clinton-Gore team.
None has been as solicitous of the concerns of business
leaders, none has generated as much profit for business, and
none has presided over as buoyant a stock market or as huge an
increase in executive pay."
MAJOR FIGHT HEAD
The good news is, no matter who is elected on
November 7, on November 8, the power will still reside in our
hands. If history is a guide, our politicians — whether
Democrat or Republican — are only as good as we force them
to be. Consider this: Republican president Richard Nixon
signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act and continued
"war on poverty" programs that represented a public
investment unimaginable under Clinton-Gore. It wasn’t that
Nixon secretly identified with working people — it was that
there were powerful movements afoot able to force
groundbreaking change no matter who was in office.
Given the positions of the two big-party
nominees, we already know we’ve got a major fight ahead of
us. And if we do it right, it won’t just be a defensive
fight to keep bad things from happening. It will be a fight
for a positive, pro-worker vision. It will be a fight to build
a powerful movement that can force whoever lives in the White
House to address the issues we care about.
Next: On
Jobs & Economic Security,
Al and George W. Span from Bad to Worse >
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