By Richard Mellor, Afscme Local 444, retied, California
In the weekly conference calls at the Facts For Working People, we have had, like most Americans, a wild ride. Let’s face it, very few expected Trump to get the Republican nomination for President, never mind take the presidency itself.
When I saw Trump ridicule the disabled, I thought he was toast. When he talked of grabbing women by the pussy I was convinced that was it. When I saw Nazis and the KKK at his rallies and they endorsed him, I was sure that he would never win. Not only is Trump still here despite his lies, racism, misogyny, visiting prostitutes right after his child is born, then lying about it, then getting caught, then paying them off, but it seems he’s becoming more popular among some circles. Oh man!
I was talking with a co-worker on a hike the other day and also with comrades around our blog Facts For Working People and I have said that I am not confident at all that the Democrats will make much headway in the mid-term elections to Congress, which are only a couple of weeks away.
Part of the reason for this is that the Democrats are so worthless. They are not an opposition party at all of course. We do not have an opposition party in the US. Both parties receive money from Wall Street and are capitalist parties. Some 100 million people never voted and Trump, remember, didn’t even win the popular vote: he was actually elected by the undemocratic Electoral College. There is a strong desire among the US population to abolish this body, but the Democrats won’t make an issue out of it as they know they too might need it someday.
The Democrats cannot mobilize the disenfranchised or those millions that have completely lost faith in the US electoral process altogether, as they fear a conscious US working class mobilizing and becoming involved in politics. The Democrats, too, wage war on the US working class and on the poor, but a little less aggressively and they are not so willing to provoke the backlash and the civil unrest that is sure to come. The major blame for this mood and the absence of an alternative is the criminal role played by the labour leadership atop an organization of 14 million members. Wedded as they are to the Democratic Party and as staunch defenders of the market, profits and capitalism, they offer US workers nothing but further declines in living standards, albeit at a slightly slower pace. They are a major factor in the rise of Trump.
A number of other factors play in to my concern. One is the xenophobia and anti-immigrant mood that Trump is fomenting. He has threatened to bring troops to our southern border to halt a caravan of Guatemalans and other Central Americans heading to the US border to escape the poverty and violence of these Central American countries, something caused by decades of US imperialist meddling and plunder. He has also threatened sanctions on the countries that have allowed them to cross their borders heading north. He reminded his supporters of this immigrant invasion today calling on them to “remember the mid-terms”. It’s almost as if this caravan could have been organized by Trump himself. In the absence of an independent working-class party and the deafening silence of the labour officialdom, a US working class savaged by decades of attacks is vulnerable to anti-immigrant rhetoric. I have been there myself for a brief moment in time.
Along with this, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that more and more Republicans are accepting him and even some of his staunchest opponents during the debates, many of whom he savagely insulted, are back in the fold. The more sober conservative old guard has been side-lined. Gerald Seib correctly points this out in his column in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The battle for the soul of the Republican Party is over, and President Trump has won.” Seib goes on, “For better or for worse, it’s Mr. Trump’s more-populist party now.” Popular with racists, narrow thinking petit bourgeois, billionaires, fascists and the most backward or desperate sections of the working class.
Opinion polls
The poll finds that Trump has an 87% approval rating among conservative voters and eight out of ten conservative voters have “positive feelings” towards the President. For many of his less lunatic minded supporters who are the ones that matter, they find his demeanour offensive but approve of most of his polices.
In our weekly discussions at Facts for Working People, we always make a point of raising the economic situation as it cannot be ruled out that Trump and the Republicans will do fairly well in the mid-terms as the economy is doing well. The big capitalists are raking in millions and many are supporting his trade policies and this is particularly so of steel that has had almost half the sanctions removed that would affect that industry. William Ross US Trade Secretary, we should recall, is very connected to that industry. Tech and the restaurant and retailers have not fared so well. The steel bosses would also have the support of the misguided union leaders of the United Steelworkers of America, no doubt.
So I am feeling less confident about the possibility of Trump being taken to the cleaners in two weeks time, and I figure the rhetoric about the mass migration north in the form of this caravan will heat up. There is also, of course, the Saudi affair and Turkish President Erdogan is demanding extraditions over it. But Trump won’t give a damn about it and to be honest neither will most of the US population. Our tax money props up and maintains numerous brutal regimes like the Saudis the Zionists and the other Gulf States: all family businesses, basically.
Something else that could derail this Trump train is Mueller’s investigation and Trump’s friend Putin releasing some dirt on him, but that seems unlikely at this point as Trump has managed to keep the Russian affair at bay.
What we do stress, and all workers should not lose track of, is the economic situation. The US housing market is in a bit of a slump as far as I can gather from the media (not the fake media) and that is not a good sign as so much economic activity is connected to home purchases, large purchases like furniture, appliances and so on.
We are at the tail end of a weak economic upswing, (or long depression as the Marxist economist Michael Roberts puts it) since the 2008 crash and it cannot go on indefinitely. The coming slump or outright crash will change the mood entirely and have severe consequences socially, as the US ruling class will not have an easy time of it suggesting any bail-outs, particularly the banks, speculators and capitalism itself once again. The system was dragged from the abyss by taxpayers’ funds last time.
Outside of this we have seen very positive developments in the form of the huge teacher/educators struggles. These workers not only overcame their own established union leadership’s opposition to strikes, in order to make some major gains for education, but they struck in states where striking was illegal. This movement has not gone unnoticed by bosses, the labour hierarchy and class-conscious workers alike. It has changed the game and there will be many forces attempting to halt its forward motion, directing it in to that black hole we know as the Democratic Party to render it harmless. It may well have reached its nexus for now, but as in all movements, there may be a temporary halt but lessons are learned and they never completely retreat.
The main points we have to absorb is that the domination of the two parties of capitalism, Republicans and Democrats over US political life is coming to an end. Splits are likely in both the parties. Things are not going backwards any more than the rise of women in response to sexual harassment and Trump’s misogyny is going backwards. The black-lives-matter movement, also heavily influenced by the middle class, is also just the beginning of another black revolt against the horrors of capitalism. When working class women enter this movement in their millions and workers in general are forced to enter the fray and fight back against the capitalist offensive, the entire mood and nature of the movement will be transformed and the Hollywood celebrities and liberal millionaires will fade in to the background. Some will reveal that they are actually our enemies, not our friends.
We are living in interesting times
October 24, 2018
First publishes on the blogsite Facts for Working People, on https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/
