The political authority of the Bush regime is visibly collapsing even within Bush's own party. Whether this will translate into a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, let alone the Senate, in the coming midterm elections is an open question. And how much real difference this might make also remains to be seen, reports DAVID FINKEL. THE LATEST intraRepublican riit has been healed, for the moment. Several dissident senators signed on to Bush's obscene legislative initiative to legalize torture of "security" prisoners by the CIA charge, trial or recourse to civilian court oversight.
The Bush administration has flushed down the proverbial toilet the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Koran. Katrina and Rita out of the How many Democrats or minds remaining Republicans" will resist in the the Gulf Coast. closing weeks of this most wretched of congressional terms is another of many unknowns. US politics, American elections as in other countries generally depend on whether the electorate "rewards" or "punishes" the incumbent
FBI OUT of Puerto EP Ricol › BUSH party for the state of the econIn this respect the signals in the present mid-term election campaign are confusing at and mixed.
Gasoline prices have fallen summer, whether due to market forces or the oil com panies suspending pricegouging to give the Republicans a break. US far, anyway has pushed the A slow hurricane season (so
memories of hurricanes "moderate Americans, at least outside of most white
Corporate profits in general are through the roof. But wages are stagnant at best and With all the peculiarities of orrhaging money and looking US auto companies are hemto cut their work force in half.
The notorious "housing bubble" is getting ready to burst, with potential severe
IRAN 2 Money
for Jobs
M not War STEP implications for consumer contidence and spending. There are indications that when an economic recession does come it could be severe, with global repercussions.
In the election campaign a lot depends, unusually, on non-economic issues. The Republicans are counting once again on lne mylnical amalgamation of the "war on terror" with the unbelievable debacle in Iraq.
How many people still believe that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were connected to Saddam Hussein, or Saddam to the 9/11 attacks, or what either of these have to do with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Palestine or the revived Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan? The answer seems to depend primarily on who asks the question, and how.
The US population essentially understands now what the world in general knew long ago - that the war in Iraq is lost and that Afghanistan is crumbling.
For those who are paying attention, certainly, the newly leaked National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) destroys Bush's posture that the war in
has "made America safer".
The NIE lays out that Iraq has become both a recruitment symbol and training theater for a whole generation of international jihadists.
But the real significance lies in the leaking of this highly classified document at a most embarrassing moment for the administration.
and Mahmoud openly Nations, the general response of the US population, aside from the right wing hard core and some self-righteous editorial writers, was not outrage but rather indifference or amusement.
One might have thought that leaders who are clear targets of the empire's wrath - in the case of Iran, possibly facing an imminent military threat - would be diplomatically cautious and conciliatory. Quite the contrary:
populism sells almost as well in America as it does throughout the world.
Why, then, is a massive Republican defeat November not a foregone conclusion? Partly it's the peculiarities of a rigged US electoral system.
The Democrats need to win 15 new seats to take the House of Representatives; but of the 435 districts, only around 40less than ten percent - are considered seriously "in play," as both capitalist parties have collaborated to maximize their safe seats. In the Senate, only a third of the 100 seats are up for election in each two-year election cycle.
Finally, the Republicans' control of crucial state administrations enables them to cheate in voting-machine fraud and disenfranchisement of minority voters in a targeted fashion that can sway the results in a closely contested district.
More than this, however, this spectacularly failed rightwing administration has been blessed with an "opposition" that is the mirror of its blithering self.
The Democratic Party has only one major asset, the visceral dislike for Bush that runs throughout the electorate. Aside from that, it has little to offer, least of all a coherent message.
The mainstream Democratic argument runs something like this: Bush's war in rad was a disastrous mistake, which most of us voted for because he lied to us. (Vote for us; we're the party that was fooled by George W. Bush.)
Now that we're there, we can't leave until the Iraqi military and police are ready to take over. (We can run the war better than Bush, though we can't explain how.) Iraq has diverted America from the war on terror. (We can't bring LIOODS home from Iraq, because we need to transfer them to Afghanistan.)
We don't like Guantanamo and secret detention (but we won't repeal the Patriot Act or close Guantanamo or do much of anything else about civil liberties except about mem.)
This is hardly a clear message to a war-weary public. What's worse, the Democrats' substantive poncies, such as they are, can only make the Middle East and the world even more dangerous.
The vast majority of Democratic politicians, including most of the antiwar types, supported without reservations the Israeli assault on Lebanon.
The overwhelming majority voted for the genocidal legislation to starve the occupied Palestinian territories for the crime of voting for Hamas, against US orders. In short, the Democratic Party does not and cannot look like an anti-war party, for the simple reason that it isn't.
In short, in an election that rides mainly on the question of war, with an electorate that is deeply disillusioned with the war and the war-makers, there is no major anti-war party.
In several congressional and senate races, particularly
California, Wisconsin, Washington state and Delaware, the Green Party is running campaigns which, although they won't "win," offer some chance to rebuild this independent party following its debacle in 2004.
The Green candidates include Peter Camejo for governor and Todd Chretien, a leading member _oT Tne
Socialist Organization, for US Senate in California; Aaron Dixon, a one-time Black Panther Party leader, for US Senate Washington state; Michael Berg, anti-war activist and the father of Nick Berg who was murdered in for Congress in Delaware; and Rae Vogeler, an anti-war and community activist and a member of Solidarity, for US Senate in Wisconsin.
In themselves these campaigns don't transform a bleak US political landscape. They represent a hope for the future. • David Finkel is an editor of Against the Current, the magazine sponsored by the US socialist group Solidarity. www.solidarity-us.org