U.S. election charade: Workers lose again
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VOL. 32, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 The results are in: The Republican Party won at least seven more seats in the Senate, and now controls both houses of the U.S. Congress. Disaster is in the making! Right?
The Democrats and Republicans spent an unprecedented mid-term, if not all-time, election total of $4 billion, roughly $2 billion each. The giant cor porations that footed the bills for their chosen candidates undoubtedly will get trillions of dollars in return, as is always the case in capitalist elections. The working class, which creates all wealth, will continue to pay regardless of who officially runs the country.
Indeed, working people continued to lose ground in wages and social con ditions during the Obama administra tion’s entire reign since the 2008 elec tions, at which time the Democrats won control of both houses. At the time, Obama won the largest percentage of the white vote ever, almost all of the votes of Blacks, and close to 86 percent of Latinos.
This year, now that his poll figures have sagged deeply, Obama was invited to stump for fellow Democrats in only a handful of locations. Speaking in Phila delphia on Nov. 1, Obama poured on the populist rhetoric, pointing out: “The biggest corporations, they don’t need a champion. The wealthiest Americans don’t need another champion, they’re doing just fine.”
But the Democratic Party candidates, Obama declared, would be the cham pions of working people, “the middle class,” the “hard-working single moth er” and the “first-generation college student.” Is there any reason at all to believe Obama’s promises? Let’s look at the numbers:
Obama gifted only $30 trillion or so to the corporate elite in bailouts of ev ery sort. During 2012-13 he granted the great banks through the Federal Reserve’s “Quantitative Easing” or “economic stimuli to the rich” policy only $89 billion per month. The same crooked banks, the largest in the coun try, sold the government essentially worthless mortgages. They were even tually fined several billion, a mere “slap on the wrist” fraction of what they stole. No jail for anyone! In contrast, George Bush only granted the corporate elite a mere $1 trillion or two during his reign.
Obama’s policies brought the stock market to record highs since the eco nomic meltdown. Ninety percent of the SOCIALIST Change