Elections are over, austerity lies ahead

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Homeless mother and child outside a mission in Venice, Calif. austerity mean more pauperization.

On Nov. 8, 1988, millions of Americans must have sighed with relief as one of the most loathsome presidential election campaigns in U.S. history finally came to an end.

The fact that Republican Vice President George Bush beat Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis was almost anti-climactic. Bush was leading in the polls right up to election day. And Dukakis, despite a last-minute campaigning surge, seemed to go out of his way to lose the election.

Both capitalist candidates refused to address the issues of most concern to American working people, relying instead on what has become known as "negative campaigning," that is, slick TV ads where slanderous charges are hurled back and forth and candidates are canned like a dog-food commercial. It became obvious to many people that no matter which candidate won, the working class would be the big losers.

The majority of eligible voters expressed their disgust by staying away from the polls in record numbers. Despite the best efforts of the TV and news media to play up the importance of the elections, S1 percent declined to vote. Ninety million American voters believed it made no difference who won the election.

In short, George Bush was elected by receiving only 27 percent of the votes from eligible voters—hardly a glowing mandate! In fact, it was the lowest voter turnout since 1924. Outside of the South, turnout at the polls was the lowest in 164 years.

But even before election day, many potential voters were already holding their noses. In an October 1988 New York Times poll, over 58 percent said they would prefer to vote for someone else—indeed, anyone else.

Millions of working people, the unemployed, and the poor saw no political alternatives in this election. Significantly, Jesse Jackson was unable to stampede Black voters, who were crucial to a Dukakis victory, to the polls. The lowest voter turnout in the country was in Washington, D.C., an overwhelmingly Black city.

No alternatives Following Bush's election victory, many of the post-mortems and analyses in the liberal and left-wing press were filled with a certain despair. After all, many of them said, Bush's victory will mean four more years of Ronald Reagan's policies.

Publications like the left-wing magazine the Progressive found the elections "particularly disturbing." In its December 1988 issue, the editorial board of the Progressive noted disappointedly: "The hapless campaign of Michael Dukakis provided no inspiration and leaves no solace. He failed to uphold the faded banner of liberalism, let alone to articulate a vision of a better America freed from the shackles of the Cold War and runaway capitalism [sic]."

In its November 1988 pre-election editorial, the Progressive correctly pointed out that Dukakis offered "only the palest of (continued on page 5, in “[(continued from page 1) alternatives-and on many crucial…]”) policies will

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Anti-racist protests, See page 4.