The decay of American democracy

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The decay of American democracy
2 November 2010

The 2010 US election campaign, now mercifully concluding, marks a further
descent by the American two-party system into political imbecility. None of the
major issues confronting the American people—the worst economic crisis since the
Great Depression, two wars, spreading poverty, hunger and homelessness, the
plague of foreclosures, mounting attacks on democratic rights, the worst
environmental catastrophe in US history—were seriously discussed. Most were not
discussed at all.

Instead, the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties engaged in a
war of mutual mudslinging, inanities, diversions and outright lying on a scale
without precedent even in the dismal history of American elections. More than $4
billion was spent by the two parties and various corporate-backed groups created
for the purpose of smearing one set of candidates on behalf of the other.

The lion’s share of this vast sum went for the purchase of television attack ads
that reached a crescendo over the past weekend. It was impossible to watch a
news program, drama, comedy or sporting event without being subjected to a
torrent of filth, mind-numbing in its viciousness, repetitiveness and obvious
insincerity.

In Nevada, viewers were told that the incumbent Democratic senator, Harry Reid,
supported free Viagra for imprisoned child molesters. In Kentucky, they were
told that the Republican candidate for the US Senate had trussed up a college
co-ed and forced her to worship an idol called Aqua Buddha. In Illinois, the
Democratic candidate for Senate was vilified as a “banker for mobsters.” A
Republican congressional candidate in Michigan was branded a con-man who cheated
business partners out of $6 million.

Much of the advertising is purchased by “independent” groups created overnight
for the purpose of influencing the 2010 vote, usually by an influx of cash from
a wealthy donor, a corporate lobby, or one of the major unions. Under an
innocuous cover name—“Americans for Prosperity,” “Americans for Jobs,” “American
Families First”—the group then buys television time to slime one candidate and
promote another.

A major function of the advertising barrage is to confuse the viewing audience
and make coherent reflection about political issues virtually impossible.
Neither party wishes to actually communicate with the voters on a rational
level. Instead, their spin doctors and admen seek to stun the audience with
emotionally loaded attacks on opposing candidates, while the actual agenda of
the ad sponsors is concealed.

The abysmal intellectual level of the 2010 campaign is not merely a bizarre or
grotesque aspect of an otherwise healthy electoral process. It is an expression
of the fundamentally bankrupt character of American capitalist democracy.

It is impossible for the two big business parties to speak to the American
people honestly and directly, because both the Democrats and the Republicans
represent the financial aristocracy, a tiny handful of the population whose
interests are diametrically opposed to those of the broad masses.

The populist posturing of both parties has become stale and unbelievable. Obama
pretends that his administration has been the scourge of Wall Street, when it
has overseen the handover of trillions from the Treasury to rescue the banks.
The Republicans in their turn thunder against the bank bailout, although it was
devised by the outgoing Bush administration and ratified by the congressional
Republican leadership.

The absence of any substantive discussion of issues like war and the ongoing
attacks on democratic rights is a demonstration of the degraded and false
character of the officially sanctioned political process. Neither party will
submit to the popular will when it comes to decisions on any critical questions.

Bush went to war in Iraq despite mass opposition at home. Obama escalated the
war in Afghanistan after winning the 2008 election as the purported “peace”
candidate. Likewise on questions of democratic rights: both parties are
committed to the continued buildup of the powers of the military-intelligence
apparatus, the scaffolding for an American police state.

It has been a full decade since the notorious intervention by the US Supreme
Court into the 2000 presidential election and the capitulation by the Democrats
to the installation of George W. Bush in the White House. At the time, the World
Socialist Web Site drew the conclusion that there was no longer any significant
constituency in the American ruling class for the defense of democratic rights.

There have followed a series of elections, each more of a travesty than the one
before. The 2002 election was held amid the stampede to war in Iraq, with the
Bush administration warning of “mushroom clouds” in American cities if Saddam
Hussein was not overthrown.

In the 2004 election, the Democrats turned their backs on the antiwar sentiments
of the American people and ran a candidate pledged to military victory in Iraq.

In 2006, the Democrats won control of Congress, largely due to popular
opposition to the war in Iraq, but the Bush administration escalated the war
instead and the Democratic Congress refused to cut off funds or take any action
to halt the bloodbath.

In the 2008 presidential election, Obama’s victory was a triumph of media
manipulation and illusion-making. The candidate, a virtual unknown with only
four years in the US Senate, was selected and groomed by power brokers and
moneymen in the Democratic Party, then packaged as a fresh-faced insurgent who
would bring “hope” and “change.” He took office amid celebratory declarations
that the first African-American president represented a milestone in democratic
progress. Two years later, the disillusionment is all the more profound.

These years have not been lived in vain, however. Tens of millions of people
instinctively grasp, based on harsh experience, that both parties do the bidding
of corporate America, whatever their rhetoric at election time. There is a
growing realization that working people need a fundamentally new road.

There is no way out of the degraded and corrupt character of the American
political system through such mechanisms as campaign finance “reform” and other
efforts to tinker with the rules by which capitalist politicians are bought and
sold by their corporate masters.

American politics will be redefined only through the entrance of the masses into
great social and political struggles. The emergence of a genuine popular
movement from below will explode everything that is false, untrue, artificial,
concocted and phony in American political life, including pseudo-populist
diversions like the Tea Party.

The way forward for the working class is to build an independent political party
of its own—of, by and for the working people and all the oppressed—based on a
socialist and anti-imperialist program. This is the policy fought for by the
Socialist Equality Party.

Patrick Martin

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n02.shtml

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