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Vol. 72/No. 7      February 18, 2008

 
Democratic, Republican candidates
offer ‘change’ from unpopular past
(front page)
 
BY PAUL PEDERSON  
February 6—The U.S. presidential race remains highly contested in the wake of the Democratic and Republican primary elections held February 5 in more than 20 states.

In the Republican race Arizona senator John McCain dominated. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, trailed a distant second, and conservative former Arkansas governor Michael Huckabee came in third but made gains. The Democratic race was closely divided between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The results register efforts by major wings of both parties to present a new face and shed the baggage of unpopular policies, especially as fears of a recession grow. Among Republicans, “maverick” McCain often lines up against the party majority and other candidates on key issues. Among Democrats, the attraction to Obama’s mantra of “change” shows many reject the prospect of another Clinton presidency.

McCain’s lead has sparked an angry reaction in the Republican Party’s right wing, which sees the prospect of his winning the nomination as a further weakening of their base.

Ultrarightist Patrick Buchanan devoted the February 11 issue of his biweekly magazine, The American Conservative, to a full-out assault on McCain’s record. The front cover, subtitled “The Trouble With John McCain,” leads with the headline “Invade the World”—referring to his support to the U.S. military offensives in Iraq and elsewhere—and “Invite the World,” alluding to his promotion of immigration reform in order to maintain a large pool of superexploited immigrant labor.

“On the two issues where Bush has been his best, taxes and judges, McCain has sided against him,” Buchanan wrote in his editorial “The Great Betrayal.” He added, “On the three issues that have ravaged the Bush presidency—the misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders, and the trade policy that has destroyed the dollar, de-industrialized the country, and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America—McCain has sided with Bush.”

Right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh has said that if McCain is elected, “it’s going to destroy the Republican Party.”

Among Democrats, support for Obama reflects a broad rejection among many people of the idea of returning to the Clinton era.

“In the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles?” liberal columnist Frank Rich wrote in an article titled “The Billary Road to Republican Victory” in the January 27 New York Times. “The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton [campaigning aggressively for Senator Clinton] and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory.”

There is a sense among many Democratic politicians—especially with millions increasingly worried about an economic recession—that their party’s victory may be jeopardized by identifying with the policies of the Clinton years, which were part of a decades-long bipartisan shift to the right.

The Clinton administration ended “welfare as we know it” by dismantling Aid to Families with Dependent Children; increased prison sentences and use of the death penalty; expanded assaults on the rights of foreign-born workers; and altered the consumer price index to reduce cost-of-living-increases in income.

Comparing Obama to Clinton, Rich said in a February 2 column, “Their marginal policy differences notwithstanding…which brand of change is more likely…to get America moving again?”

All the Democratic and Republican candidates have been trying to convince working people and the middle classes that they will take measures to cushion the impact of a recession.

While Obama is not associated with the past, many pundits note that his call for “change” has little substance.

“Mr. Obama has built an exciting campaign around the notion of change,” the New York Times editorialized January 25 in a lukewarm endorsement of Clinton for the Democratic nomination. It described Obama as “incandescent if still undefined” and said he “holds no monopoly of ideas that would repair the governing of America.”

Obama tries to avoid identifying himself as a champion of Black rights. When a noose-hanging incident and the unjust prosecution of six Black youths in Jena, Louisiana, sparked a large antiracist rally in September, Obama wrote that it “isn’t a matter of black and white. It’s a matter of right and wrong.” He was criticized by fellow Democrat Jesse Jackson for his weak response.

“We don’t want to play that old game, that game that has held us back,” Obama said while campaigning in Alabama, the Birmingham News reported January 28. “That game that says some of you got a black child in a bad school and a white child in a bad school and that’s two different situations. They’re the same situation.”

The Clinton campaign, for its part, seems to use every opportunity to remind voters that Obama is Black. After Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary, William Clinton compared the Obama candidacy to that of Jackson. “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88,” he said. “Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.”
 
 
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