The Politics of Deception Trump & Cruz vs. Sanders & Clinton

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I the leading Republican and Democratic Party presi­ am tempted to compare the stated political views of dential contenders—even though they are largely ir­ relevant. But ranking Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders according to their purported de­ gree of “socialist, progressive, liberal, conservative” or even incipient-fascist views is of little value in com­ parison to their central defense of capitalism—the system of the rule of an elite minority that owns and controls the vast productive capacities and wealth of society. It is the system whose inherent evils include war, repression, racism, poverty, sexism, homopho­ bia, mass incarceration, environmental destruction, and ever-deepening incursions on civil liberties and democratic rights.

In general, elections in the United States, as in virtu­ ally all capitalist countries, are carefully orchestrated contests between sometimes competing wings of the ruling class. This competition has nothing to do with the interests of the working masses, the 99 percent, and everything to do with what portion of the wealth created by workers goes to which sections of the bil­ lionaire elites.

Donald Trump, the consummate “outsider,” appears as a reactionary populist racist, Islamophobic, superpatriotic, “America First,” “isolationist,” nationalist, homophobic, billionaire bigot. His claim to fame is his anti-establishment posture and his absurd assurance that as a clever and successful businessman, he can and will make “deals” (his favorite term) that meet the needs of everyone—workers and bosses alike.

During Trump’s recent 100-minute foreign policy interviews in two sessions with The New York Times, he openly accepted the “America First” characteriza­ tion of his views. It is doubtful that Trump was not aware that the central figure of the infamous America First Committee of the early 1940s was the famous trans-Atlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, a pro-Nazi/ fascist, with anti-Semitic, racist, anti-immigrant poli­ tics and a eugenics-based race “purity” ideology. Lind­ bergh, along with key American anti-Semitic industri­ alists like Henry Ford, opposed U.S. entry into World War II based on a pro-Hitler and German superiority ideology. The Times, perhaps embarrassed, limited its description of the America First Committee to “an iso­ lationist political party in the U.S. in the 1940s.”

Trump’s frequent advocacy of violence—“like in the good old days “—against protesting opponents, his staff members’ sometimes violent exclusion of Blacks and Muslims from his rallies, as well as his overt rac­ ism and hate-mongering aimed at Latinos and Blacks similarly reflect an incipient-fascist orientation. His belated disassociation from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s endorsement is sufficient to indi­ cate his vile character and politics.

The recipient of more free media coverage than any other candidate, Trump railed in mid-March against the anti-racist protesters who mobilized 8000 strong outside his planned University of Illinois rally and the several thousand who managed to get inside to exer­ cise their free speech rights. Trump’s lies that univer­ sity officials and Chicago police cancelled his meeting out of security concerns, and that the Bernie Sanders campaign sponsored the protests, were soon refuted by these same officials and by Sanders himself.

Trump’s now infamous line, “You’re fired,” taken from his previously hosted “reality TV” show, is now his watchword or signal to threaten or physically re­ move discordant attendees from his rallies. His cam­ paign chief, Cory Lewandowski, was recently arrested on charges of battery against a Florida newswoman. Trump denied the charges, but the incident was cap­ tured on video, and the bruised reporter’s accusa­ tions were subsequently affirmed by police officials. Republican tops try to block Trump candidacy Trump’s reactionary posturing is increasingly an anathema to the Republican Party hierarchy, sev­ eral of whose top traditional leaders have stepped forward in an effort to block his drive to obtain the 1237 delegates to ensure his nomination at the July 18-21 Republican Party national convention set for Cleveland. Former Minnesota Republican strategist and major fundraiser Norman Coleman warned that a Trump candidacy could imperil today’s Republican control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

In the meantime, ranked on an abstract scale of right-wing ideas, few doubt that Texas Senator Ted Cruz takes first place, exceeding all others in his in­ sider background, yet expressing racist, sexist, homo­ phobic, anti-immigrant and other reactionary views.

It appears that what began as an orchestrated ef­ fort to broaden its base has become a Republican Party nightmare. When the 18 original Republican candidates were paraded before the corporate me­ dia to display their wares, what emerged was not any significant differentiation aimed at bringing new forces into the Republican fold but rather a gang of like-minded, almost comical idiots denouncing each other. This ever-escalating descent into crazed rants and hatemongering aptly describes the moral and political bankruptcy of this prominent wing of the U.S. ruling class.

At the same time, at least some clever ruling-class elements who stand above the fray no doubt see these “hardball” right-wing contestants, regardless of who wins the elections, as facilitating the “liberal” Democrats’ moving ever further to the right in order to achieve common objectives. “Hard cop–soft cop,” so to speak.

On the Democratic Party side we see a different sto­ ry, with the traditional Democratic Party hierarchy realizing early on that Hillary Clinton’s bashing, not to mention red-baiting, “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders would do her no good, if not redound against her.

The populist Sanders campaign has its analogies with Trump’s in that it calls into question the Wash­ ington elites and their bipartisan “free-trade” deals that yearly, on average, ship some million relatively high-wage U.S. jobs to low-wage peripheral nations like China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Mexico. The result has been a U.S. working class whose previ­ ous manufacturing and associated trade-union base has been largely eroded—with private-sector union­ ism today reduced to some 5.6 percent.

Increasing numbers of U.S. workers, if they have jobs at all, (the official U.S. job participation rate, 62 percent, stands at the lowest point in decades) are employed in low-wage, part-time, or precarious/un­ certain usually service-sector jobs at the mercy of the boss class. Needless to say, anti-immigrant and rac­ ist prejudice is encouraged by corporate elites and serves to reduce all wages.

Sanders approaches this aspect of the employer offensive with proposals for massive public works programs, higher taxes on the rich, as well as singlepayer health care and free education through the public college level. In this he has sharply distin­ guished himself from Trump, who employs openly racist demagoguery and seeks to scapegoat the most oppressed, especially immigrants, as well as Wash­ ington’s “free traders” for the country’s deepening crises.

Bipartisan agreement on trade issues With regard to the issue of “free trade,” and I put this term in quotation marks for a reason, we should note that U.S. trade policy has in recent decades been largely a bipartisan affair. All sections of the capital­ ist class seek to employ trade policies that best suit their technologies and competitive status in the world economy. Those corporations with the most advanced technologies, regardless of party affilia­ tion, advocate free trade in the sense of opposing any protectionist barriers imposed against their better quality and cheaper products.

Free traders want no obstacles to their penetration of world markets. Indeed, many of the “cheap” prod­ ucts that enter the U.S. from China and other low-wage nations are manufactured abroad by multi-na­ tional corporations controlled by U.S. corporations. These same U.S. commodities, produced both with cheap labor abroad and high-tech machinery, if not robots, tend to undermine the economies of poorer or less competitive nations.

Quietly, but also with the operative principles in play, those U.S. corporations whose technologies can­ not effectively compete on world markets make sure that government negotiators press to include provi­ sions in trade pacts, like NAFTA and the more recent Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, that pro­ tect their weaker corporations’ lack of competitive­ (continued on page 7, in “What is fascism?”)

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2016 Elections in the United States, as in virtually all capitalist countries, are carefully orchestrated contests between some­ times competing wings of the ruling class.