-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded message follows ------- >From www.wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Elections >From impeachment to a tainted election: The conspiracy against democratic rights continues By the Editorial Board 10 November 2000 Back to screen version The brazen attempt of the Bush campaign to declare victory in the presidential campaign-in the face of mounting evidence of massive ballot irregularities in the state of Florida-exposes its utter contempt for the democratic rights of the American people. In 1998-99 the Republican Party, controlled by the extreme right, sought to overturn the result of two presidential elections through the impeachment and trial of Bill Clinton. Now it is attempting to hijack the 2000 presidential elections through crudely antidemocratic methods, using their control of the state government in Florida headed by the brother of the Republican presidential candidate. The issue goes beyond the fact that Gore won the popular vote but still, under the US Constitution's archaic and undemocratic Electoral College procedure, could be denied election to the presidency. In fact, Bush is presently trailing in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. His chances for eventual Electoral College victory-by a margin of only 271-267-depend entirely on the outcome of the tainted Florida vote. There is clear and convincing evidence that thousands of pro-Gore voters in critical Florida precincts were disenfranchised. Approximately 19,000 votes were invalidated in Palm Beach County because a defective ballot paper led people to punch two lines rather than one for president; several thousand votes in that county were wrongly cast for ultra-rightist Patrick Buchanan, because of the same improper ballot; computer “malfunctions” caused a sudden drop in Gore's vote total in Volusia County; there was exclusion and intimidation of black voters at polling places in the Miami metro area and in the state's rural Panhandle. Already, only two days after the election, revulsion against the ballot rigging has produced public protests. Hundreds of college students from Florida A&M, mainly black, held a demonstration and sit-in at the state capitol in Tallahassee. Hundreds of elderly Jewish voters rallied in Palm Beach County to denounce the Election Day travesty there. Many expressed outrage that their votes were being counted for the anti-Semitic Buchanan, and they demanded an opportunity to re-vote. So obviously compromised was the result in Palm Beach that a local judge ordered a full vote-by-vote hand recount in the county, rather than the cursory recanvass of computers and voting machines that the state government ordered for all 67 Florida counties. Even this superficial retallying had slashed Bush's lead to only 225 votes out of six million cast, before it was halted at the direction of Florida's Republican Secretary of State on Thursday evening. The evident irregularities, combined with the growing public protests, compelled the Gore campaign to reverse its cautious stance of Wednesday and announce that a full- scale legal challenge of the Florida vote would be made. Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, named by Gore to represent his interests in the Florida recount, described the Palm Beach ballot as “illegal.” Gore campaign chairman William Daley, who the day before had refused to claim victory in the state, told a press conference Thursday that Gore was the winner of the popular vote in Florida as well as in the country as a whole. “If the will of the people is to prevail, Al Gore should be awarded a victory in Florida and be our next president,'' Daley said, adding that “the disenfranchisement of thousands of Floridians” represented “an injustice unparalleled in our history.” The initial response of the Bush campaign and the Republican Party was to brazen out the disputed election rather than to try to prove their case. Bush aides scheduled a victory rally in Austin for Thursday evening, after the Florida recount results were to be released. They announced that the Texas governor was beginning to assemble a transition team and plan his first appointments as president-elect. Campaign officials Don Evans, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes dismissed the reports of voting irregularities in Palm Beach County in a manner that demonstrated contempt for democratic rights. By late Thursday, as Bush's margin dwindled to near zero in the state-run recount, a partial retreat was sounded. The victory rally was cancelled. Former Secretary of State James Baker, Bush's designated representative in the Florida recount, said that the outcome of the election would not be known until November 17, the deadline for overseas absentee ballots to be received in Tallahassee. “The presidential election is ... on hold,” he admitted. An issue of democratic rights The Socialist Equality Party did not support the campaign of Al Gore. We have unbridgeable political differences with the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, there are fundamental issues of democratic rights involved in the struggle over the outcome of the 2000 election. The working class cannot stand on the sidelines and allow the extreme right-wing elements in the Bush camp to, in effect, steal the election. The issues are essentially the same as those posed by the impeachment drive against Clinton. An attempt is underway, using conspiratorial methods, to overturn a democratic decision by the American people. In the impeachment, the far right made use of bogus lawsuits and independent counsel investigations to bring trumped-up charges against an elected president. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted for impeachment shortly after the 1998 congressional elections had revealed widespread popular hostility to the anti-Clinton campaign. The right wing thumbed their noses at public opinion and went ahead with their politically motivated assault on the White House. Bush and his congressional Republican allies speak for an entire layer of the ruling elite that has grown utterly contemptuous of democratic rights. They want control over all agencies of state power to ride roughshod over democratic rights and impose social policies of the most reactionary character—the abolition of all taxation on wealth and income; the elimination of federal regulatory powers over business; the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, and whatever else remains of the social welfare programs. Impeachment failed to oust Clinton because of public opposition, but there was widespread confusion about the political significance of this right-wing campaign, because of the cowardice of the Democrats and the torrent of media sensationalism about a “sex scandal” in the White House. In the struggle now developing over the presidential vote, the political line-up is clearer and more readily apparent to public opinion. The Bush campaign's vicious response to the Florida vote fraud gives the lie to his entire campaign demagogy about “ending the bickering in Washington.” Instead of ending partisan warfare, Bush is engaged in a dramatic escalation, claiming a victory based on the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Democratic voters. The installation of Bush in the White House on the basis of such a fraudulent vote would mean a government imposed on the American people against their will. The only genuinely democratic resolution of the Florida travesty is to demand a complete revote in the disputed precincts. As for the Democrats, no one should rely on Al Gore & Co. to fight this attack on basic democratic rights. The Democrats fought impeachment on their knees, and then deliberately buried the issue during the election—thus contributing directly to the closeness of the final result and giving the right wing another opportunity. In the end, the deepest instincts of Clinton, Gore and the Democratic Party establishment are directed toward working out a rotten compromise with the Republicans behind the backs of the people. Even if the election is finally brought to a conclusion with the installation of Gore, it is all but certain that the back-room deal would include conditions highly injurious to the democratic rights and social interests of the working class. Above all, it must be understood that the present crisis expresses, in the final analysis, the fragile state of American democracy. The breakdown of traditional democratic norms-expressed first in the impeachment crisis and now in the tainted election-reflects the tremendous divisions and tensions in American society. While it is critical that workers oppose the present efforts of the Republicans to steal the election, they must recognize that the threat to democratic rights arises from the crisis of capitalist society. In a country whose social structure is defined by a staggering and historically unprecedented level of social inequality, with nearly half the nation's wealth concentrated in the hands of two percent of its population, democratic forms of rule cannot long survive. The unfolding events testify to the urgent need for the development of a genuinely independent political movement of the working class on the basis of a democratic and socialist program. Copyright 1998-2000 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ www.wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Elections The 2000 US election results: the constitutional crisis deepens By the Editorial Board 9 November 2000 Back to screen version The extraordinary events of the past 24 hours have fundamentally and irrevocably altered political life in the United States. For the first time in more than 125 years, a national election has produced a disputed result. Not only is there a split between the popular and electoral vote, but the stench of ballot fraud is wafting from the Florida voting precincts upon which Governor George W. Bush's victory depends. It remains unclear whether Vice President Al Gore will vigorously pursue a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the Florida vote. The fact that Gore waited until late Wednesday afternoon to issue a public statement on the election indicates that there exist serious divisions within his own staff over whether to continue to fight for the presidency. But even if Gore quickly reconciles himself to defeat, the inconclusive and tainted outcome of the presidential election has created a constitutional crisis for which there is no easy solution, and has deeply compromised the entire political setup. If Republican Governor Bush is confirmed as the forty-third president, his administration will lack political legitimacy in the eyes of tens of millions of American citizens. There is already widespread talk among the people of a stolen election, and this will have politically explosive consequences as a Bush administration attempts to implement—as it certainly will—its reactionary social agenda. The most significant feature of the election results is their exposure of the deep fissures and tensions within American society. The electoral map resembles, to a remarkable extent, that of the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Of course, there are differences. But the North-South divide continues. Another major division is that between the great urban areas which, for the most part, went for Gore, and the rural areas, which went for Bush. As for the voters themselves, there was a clear difference in the social composition of the Democratic and Republican electorate. The poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class in the major cities—above all black and Hispanic workers—voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidates. As for the institutions of political rule, the election produced both a House of Representatives and a Senate virtually divided down the middle between the two parties. The Supreme Court is likewise split between a five-member ultra-right majority and a minority of four somewhat more moderate justices. The electoral deadlock is the culmination of a series of events over the eight years of the Clinton administration that have revealed an intensification of antagonisms within the political establishment. Particularly in light of the impeachment episode, the manifold signs of gridlock impel one to ask: what is the source of the political impasse? The crisis of the 2000 elections reflects the growth of social contradictions to such a point of intensity that they can no longer be adjudicated within the existing political and constitutional framework. And because the spectrum of political discourse in the US is so constricted—to the point that the political establishment would not even allow Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to participate in the presidential debates—deep-going social contradictions can find no open expression within the political system. When they finally do emerge, they have already matured to the point where they threaten to burst the seams of the existing constitutional order. Most fundamental is the enormous growth of social inequality, which has reached proportions not seen in the US since the 1920s. The division of America between a fabulously rich upper crust and the vast majority of the population is, in the end, incompatible with democratic forms of rule. Whatever the near-term outcome of the election impasse, the American ruling elite has no lasting solution to its constitutional crisis. Those, for example, who propose simply abolishing the electoral college—the system established by the founding fathers at the end of the eighteenth century—and electing presidents by direct popular vote, ignore the fact that the electoral college was set up as a component part of a complex constitutional structure designed to balance the competing claims of the states and the federal government. It cannot be removed without calling into question the federal structure of the United States, including such institutions as a Senate with two representatives from each state. These old structures are incapable of dealing with the intensification of social contradictions within the US. But the elimination of the electoral college, for example, would require the imposition of a new structure. Any attempt at such a major change would only inflame the conflicts already tearing at the political system. As inadequate as the old structures are, the ruling elite has nothing with which to replace them. It can only move further to the right, and seek to defend its property and political power by more authoritarian means. It is instructive to recall that the last great constitutional crisis arising from a disputed election—that of 1876—resulted in a new political settlement that ended Reconstruction in the South and opened the way for Jim Crow apartheid. The present state of affairs stands as a colossal indictment of the prevailing political culture in the US, which has developed under the tutelage of a deeply reactionary media, whose operatives devote their efforts to traducing public opinion. Even in the midst of the electoral crisis, they evince an attitude of unseriousness and cynicism. Many commentators are predicting that the political stalemate resulting from the election foretells a period of stasis, in which nothing of great significance will take place in the US. They suggest that should Bush end up in the White House, the Republicans will be forced to adopt a policy of compromise and moderation. Such projections have no more substance than all of the other forecasts of the media pundits, who have shown themselves to be phenomenally out of sync with the realities of American life. The Republican right already demonstrated in the impeachment conspiracy that it was prepared, in the face of public opposition, to employ extra-constitutional means to impose its agenda. Should the Republicans capture the White House, they will seek rapidly to push through measures eliminating all restraints on the accumulation of personal wealth and the exploitation of the working class. The very fact that the 2000 election revealed that public sentiment is moving against their policies will, if anything, impel them to act with greater haste and determination. Should, on the other hand, Gore be installed, the fascistic elements that dominate the Republican Party will refuse to accept the legitimacy of his administration. From day one they will begin a new campaign of subversion against Clinton's successor. But as the election itself revealed, there is a growing, although as yet politically unclarified, determination among working people to assert their own interests. Notwithstanding the conservative and flaccid character of Gore's campaign, and the universal refrain of media reactionaries that the country was contented and apathetic, the combined popular vote for Gore and Nader registered a significant numerical majority of voters with, broadly speaking, liberal and left views. Without any lead from Gore or the Democratic Party, the electorate once again repudiated the Republican impeachment campaign. Popular anger over the year-long attempt to leverage a sex scandal into a political coup was a major factor in the double-digit victory of Hillary Clinton in her New York Senate race, as well as in the defeat of two Republican congressmen, James Rogan and Bill McCollum, who played leading roles in the impeachment drive. The electoral crisis has revealed the breakdown of any political consensus, mirroring the ferocious level of social polarization in America. Within this situation, a new administration will come to power lacking credibility among broad sections of the population. The implications of this state of affairs will only begin to become clear when the next government seeks to implement right-wing policies under conditions of a deepening economic crisis. The 2000 election heralds the onset of a period of social upheavals. None of the existing parties can establish a popular consensus. That can be achieved only on the basis of a mass movement that recognizes and takes as its starting point the objective reality of the class contradictions within society, and advances a socialist program for the working class. The next period must see the development of this movement in the form of an independent party of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party, through its political organ, the World Socialist Web Site, is devoted to the realization of this political task. Copyright 1998-2000 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved A<>E<>R Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] ------- End of forwarded message ------- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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