Thursday, February 21, 2008

What it is ain’t exactly clear (2008)

If we may go by the trend emerging from the presidential primary results so far, we very likely will see the end of the CheneyBush era next November. Voters both Democratic and Republican have turned out in large, often record-breaking numbers to make preliminary choices from among the presidential candidates who have offered themselves. This is a healthy democratic trend.

According to the Pew Research Center, the upsurge in voter interest is sharpest and heaviest on the Democratic side and therefore concerns a much larger constituency than on the Republican side. More interesting, younger Democratic voters "are considerably more likely than their elders to be Hispanic, and slightly more likely to be black, more apt to say they have no religious affiliation and more likely to say they are 'liberal' in their political orientation."

Not only that, but across the board regardless of race or ethnicity, "Barack Obama won a majority of the 2008 vote among this [younger] age group in every state that has held a primary or caucus thus far with the exception of California, Arkansas, and Massachusetts Obama also had a 54%-43% advantage among the next youngest age group, those ages 30-44."

Does this suggest that the Democratic Party is about to become the party of the working class, the sacred vessel of its political interests? Hardly. The Pew Center also notes that their attitudes with respect to the 2008 campaign are not very different from those of their elders and their issue priorities very similar to those of older voters. There is every likelihood, in other words, that young voters will hand over their brains to Those Who Think About These Things.

That said, turnout records "have been smashed in Iowa and New Hampshire" and many other places since then. So we are apparently about to witness another exercise in Throwing The Rascals Out (to get New Rascals in). But as the above analysis make clear, the pristine energy that is obviously emerging onto the political scene will have nowhere to go and is likely as not to dissipate in a flounder of confusion.

The Cheney-Bush Administration is an easy villain. The corporate/religious right alliance, as the Mitt Romney debacle suggests, is about to come unglued. Even now, Republicans are scrambling to whitewash themselves as "moderate" (without, however, ceding the point that political elections are mainly about economic issues, which would condemn them to outsider status in perpetuity). But while seeing a light at the end of the tunnel might bring a sigh of relief, the fine points of the above trend imply anything but a radical shift in perspective.

Still less, therefore, do they imply any increased receptiveness to the socialist point of view. Abolishing capital and wages in favor of community ownership of the means of production, real democracy and free access to the means of life are still on another planet, in another universe or in the "distant future" for most people. Take off the blindfolds, of course, and the changeover is already practically at hand. As it is, the night is only perhaps a little less dark again. It will probably take a much bigger crisis (global warming maybe?) to rock the capitalist political establishment. So treat yourself to an extra beer, but don't get too ecstatic.
Ron Elbert

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