It Wasn’t Our Fight But It Is Our Loss
by Bill Onasch
I have a perfect record in predicting every election since the first I was allowed to vote, in 1964. It’s been the same expectation every two years–the working class majority will be the losers.
While there are two major classes in our Free Enterprise society it’s the tiny one that has two major political parties while the rest of us haven’t yet established one of our own. The ruling class of bosses and bankers sometimes have competing interests and tactical differences among themselves. Fights among the dinosaurs can be risky and bloody so they prefer to use their donkey and pachyderm stunt doubles to sort them out on election day rather than through coups or civil wars.
I haven’t yet been able to dig up hard statistics for Tuesday’s voting but typically the majority of workers–especially in midterm elections–don’t vote. Many, such as noncitizen immigrants and convicted felons, usually can’t. New registration and voter ID laws in many states further discourage the poor and people of color from participating. And many recognize the outcome of most elections will make little difference to them.
In this election there were few working class alternatives on the ballot. Harold Geddings, a Sheetmetal Workers activist, got 4,137 votes--2.1 percent–as a Labor Party candidate in the second congressional district of South Carolina. Socialist Alternative candidate for a Seattle legislature district Jessica Spear garnered 3,826 votes--16.4 percent. While the Greens are not exactly a working class party some workers give them a protest vote and their candidate for Governor in New York received 173,510 votes, just a hair under five percent.
In 2008 energized American voters selected the first Black President who had campaigned for hope and change and told us we can do. On election night in his Chicago hometown, hundreds of thousands joined a rousing victory rally that lasted through the night. He was given majorities in both houses of Congress. Before he could take office he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a new President begun with so much goodwill and political capital at his disposal.
The book of Proverbs tells us “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” While the mainstream of the ruling class was on the whole pleased with the first two years of the Obama administration there was widespread discontent and anxiety about the economy. A well financed far-right wing of the Republicans backed a Tea Party Revolution that swept in to control of the House, and many state houses in the 2010 midterms.
More ideological than pragmatic, when this new Congress took office they made it quickly and abundantly clear that their strategy was that of obstruction. The more moderate wing of the GOP meekly followed the stern discipline imposed by the cracked tea pots and moderate Democrats began to distance themselves from an isolated White House that was rebuffed in initiatives to forge some Grand Bargain that would be very unpopular with the Democrat base.
The debates among the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 illustrated just how loony the new right party leadership was. Though they finally settled on a moderate bone fide member of the ruling class elite, voters didn’t trust him to stand up to the extremists. Obama got a second term and the Democrats secured the Senate.
Two years ago, the President still enjoyed some of the personal popularity that initially put him in office. That was not the case this year. He now owns the prevalent dour mood that led once adoring supporters to stay home last Tuesday. In fact, in the President’s home town, the billionaire Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois even succeeded in getting a layer of Black clergy to deliver some Chicago African-American votes that helped defeat Democrat Governor Pat Quinn. Most Democrat candidates avoided any identification with the President, some even refusing to acknowledge they had ever voted for him, but that usually was not enough to save them.
There were some mixed messages in the voting. There was overwhelming support for ballot measures increasing the minimum wage and providing paid sick days by law. Transit funding was given a big, much needed boost in Seattle. For what it’s worth, legalization of marijuana was popular. These indicate that serious proposals that can benefit our majority class can win support.
An updated program such as the one adopted by the now dormant national Labor Party, can find traction among disaffected working class voters--and current non-voters. A party of our own, linked to our mass labor, climate and social movements, is the only acceptable alternative I see to this rotting political system disguising an even more disgusting class rule of society as a whole.
November 6, 2014
by Bill Onasch
I have a perfect record in predicting every election since the first I was allowed to vote, in 1964. It’s been the same expectation every two years–the working class majority will be the losers.
While there are two major classes in our Free Enterprise society it’s the tiny one that has two major political parties while the rest of us haven’t yet established one of our own. The ruling class of bosses and bankers sometimes have competing interests and tactical differences among themselves. Fights among the dinosaurs can be risky and bloody so they prefer to use their donkey and pachyderm stunt doubles to sort them out on election day rather than through coups or civil wars.
I haven’t yet been able to dig up hard statistics for Tuesday’s voting but typically the majority of workers–especially in midterm elections–don’t vote. Many, such as noncitizen immigrants and convicted felons, usually can’t. New registration and voter ID laws in many states further discourage the poor and people of color from participating. And many recognize the outcome of most elections will make little difference to them.
In this election there were few working class alternatives on the ballot. Harold Geddings, a Sheetmetal Workers activist, got 4,137 votes--2.1 percent–as a Labor Party candidate in the second congressional district of South Carolina. Socialist Alternative candidate for a Seattle legislature district Jessica Spear garnered 3,826 votes--16.4 percent. While the Greens are not exactly a working class party some workers give them a protest vote and their candidate for Governor in New York received 173,510 votes, just a hair under five percent.
In 2008 energized American voters selected the first Black President who had campaigned for hope and change and told us we can do. On election night in his Chicago hometown, hundreds of thousands joined a rousing victory rally that lasted through the night. He was given majorities in both houses of Congress. Before he could take office he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a new President begun with so much goodwill and political capital at his disposal.
The book of Proverbs tells us “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” While the mainstream of the ruling class was on the whole pleased with the first two years of the Obama administration there was widespread discontent and anxiety about the economy. A well financed far-right wing of the Republicans backed a Tea Party Revolution that swept in to control of the House, and many state houses in the 2010 midterms.
More ideological than pragmatic, when this new Congress took office they made it quickly and abundantly clear that their strategy was that of obstruction. The more moderate wing of the GOP meekly followed the stern discipline imposed by the cracked tea pots and moderate Democrats began to distance themselves from an isolated White House that was rebuffed in initiatives to forge some Grand Bargain that would be very unpopular with the Democrat base.
The debates among the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 illustrated just how loony the new right party leadership was. Though they finally settled on a moderate bone fide member of the ruling class elite, voters didn’t trust him to stand up to the extremists. Obama got a second term and the Democrats secured the Senate.
Two years ago, the President still enjoyed some of the personal popularity that initially put him in office. That was not the case this year. He now owns the prevalent dour mood that led once adoring supporters to stay home last Tuesday. In fact, in the President’s home town, the billionaire Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois even succeeded in getting a layer of Black clergy to deliver some Chicago African-American votes that helped defeat Democrat Governor Pat Quinn. Most Democrat candidates avoided any identification with the President, some even refusing to acknowledge they had ever voted for him, but that usually was not enough to save them.
There were some mixed messages in the voting. There was overwhelming support for ballot measures increasing the minimum wage and providing paid sick days by law. Transit funding was given a big, much needed boost in Seattle. For what it’s worth, legalization of marijuana was popular. These indicate that serious proposals that can benefit our majority class can win support.
An updated program such as the one adopted by the now dormant national Labor Party, can find traction among disaffected working class voters--and current non-voters. A party of our own, linked to our mass labor, climate and social movements, is the only acceptable alternative I see to this rotting political system disguising an even more disgusting class rule of society as a whole.
November 6, 2014
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