Having to think and talk and work around bourgeois elections is the least appetizing job of a leftist. The institutionalized Party duopoly in the US makes it down-right sickening. I already pay way too close attention to the vagaries of US politics. I even watch C-SPAN to make sure that I am right. Here’s the secret to the US political system; it’s all bullshit. Piles of it. So here goes only a thought or two.
The primaries are finally over. Now we have to endure 5 months of the Presidential elections. I haven’t even wrapped my head around what the possibility of a black President means for the US. It sure means something. While the election is the Democrat’s to lose they might just do it. Obama hasn’t won many States lately and that’s IN the Democrat Party.
He doesn’t seem nearly as strong a candidate as he did to me some months ago. His performance at the AIPAC conference right after his victory was nauseating. His new flag lapel pin, etc. And as unpolitical as US politicians are Barak is still surprisingly light on any discernible platform or ideology. It’s all bullshit.
Hillary will try to save her legacy and position in spite of the considerable damage Club Clinton did to themselves. I, for one, am all for Hillary as Veep. It would put Bill back in Washington with nothing to do and load the administration with the heaviest egos in America. For laughs sake I hope he picks Hillary. It will not happen. He’ll probably pick Larry the Cable Guy to prove his redneck bona fides.
I promised myself I would say something about the morbid McCain. His recent trip to Louisiana to open the campaign wasn’t an accident. He may well pick the new Governor there Bobby Jindal; a pretty hard right Indian American. He’s young, almost half as young as McCain (37) and though he was born into a Hindu family converted to Catholicism. That may be a strike against him with the crazy evangelical set, but he has navigated Biblical waters before in the Louisiana race and did just fine with the local snake handlers. The First Person of Color award on a major party ticket could then be split for posterity’s sake between the two parties.
McCain will play the Iran card as often as he can. Bush and the feeble Olmert are going to assist by upping the rhetoric as well. I wouldn’t count the old buzzard out. He would be just about the most unhinged President we’ve had in a while. John McCain in some sort of rage as Commander in Chief isn’t pleasant to think about. What strange psychological things await a McCain Presidency is any body’s guess.
What a bleak picture for the next 4 years. Obama would be like having Bono for President. Which is more than I can take. McCain’s mad, mad, mad and, at 71, he might survive a whole term though probably not two. Plenty of time to heap more bodies on Bush’s pile.
The crises facing us all are so severe they cannot be solved within the capitalist framework; their origins lie in capitalism’s dynamic. These candidates don’t propose to treat the symptoms, reforms, of the disease, that is killing us and our planet of residence let alone the disease. “Change” is not even reform when Obama says it. He lives in a post-reform world. It’s all bullshit.
Rustbelt Radical 