Special Election Issue What is At Stake in the 2012 Election?

I hear you. No, I don’t really want to vote for Obama, either.   He flies drones into the heart of Middle East battles that are antiseptic from the American point of view—they avoid troop losses and even pilot losses—but kill a lot of innocents.   He has joined the argument to deny habeas corpus to those…

In 1968, although I had been elected a delegate for Gene McCarthy from Pennsylvania, I eventually  voted for Hubert Humphrey despite my deep opposition to the War in Vietnam and Humphrey’s refusal to condemn it. Anything to stop Richard Nixon from taking the White House. (He took it.) In 2000 I was vociferous in opposing…

Every four years those to the left of the Democratic Party go through the same soul searching; to vote or not to vote; build a new party or identify with an existing party; stick with principle or accept the lesser of the two evils: bolster the system or demand an alternative. This kind of soul…

Casting a ballot for President Barack Obama on Election Day should not be a dilemma for people on the left.   The problem is what to do on the day after, I am assuming, as seems likely, that the president wins. What not to do is clear. After the 2008 election, the president urged the social…

Every four years, American presidential candidates seek to stir voters by claiming that “more is at stake in this election than ever before!”  Every four years, they contend the voters face “stark” choices between “dramatically” different visions of America’s fundamental principles and aspirations.  In 2012 these histrionic tropes, while still exaggerated, are closer to being…

Every four years, there is a major debate within left circles as to whether or not movement leftists, often identified with various socialist perspectives, should or shouldn’t participate in the election. As many perhaps correctly argue, there’s not that much difference between the bourgeois parties insofar as both are bought and paid for by the…

The Republican Party has dominated American politics for more than three decades. It strode into power as the muscular guardian of white privilege, moral authority, efficient markets, male power, and military strength, but it wasn’t long before its central project came into view. The past thirty years have been a testament to its success: the…

When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, at the start of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, like many people I was elated. At the time it seemed that the Republican Party, with its aggrandizement of economic elites and undisguised deployment of arbitrary power, had been completely discredited. In light of the…

In the Fall of 2012, U.S. unions found themselves, per usual, caught between a scary Republican rock and a dreary Democratic hard place. Regardless of whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama wins the presidential election, the period ahead will be very difficult for workers and their organizations. If the Romney-Ryan ticket wins, labor faces a…

Of course it is lousy situation. These days voting for Democrats, however, helps build a bulwark against elitist reactionary rage at restrictions on their greed, and right-wing populist fears among white people over demographic changes in our population. Since the 1930s Organized Wealth has been trying to shred the meager social safety net woven during…