Washington went to war mainly because the sanction on Iraq was unraveling, so I think that the Democratic White House would have been as belligerent toward Iraq as the Republican one has been, except a Democratic president would have given a bigger piece of action to the European power elites than the Republican one has.
A Democratic president would have been more aggressive toward Russia and North Korea than the Republican one has been.
>DH: There are a lot of people who argue that personnel don't matter
>- that the war emerged from the inner needs of American capitalism,
>American imperialism. That it was the rate of profit, the oil price,
>that forced the hand, and whoever is sitting in the Oval Office is
>just a pawn of larger forces. Do you buy that?
>
>TA: I don't buy that. If you believe that's all there is to it, then
>you can give up politics. Just wait at home for the big catastrophe.
The question doesn't make political sense, so the answer doesn't either.
Before getting to the point of actually being able to split the Democratic and Republican Parties, we need an intermediate goal: do what we can to make the next POTUS a weak president, rather than a strong one. To do so, we need to decrease the shares of popular votes that go to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
>TA: . . . A defeat for Bush would create a different atmosphere in
>American political culture, to show it can be done.
The ruling class have dumped Bush, and so have the majority of the populace. The question is when we can begin to rebuild a social force that can effectively attack the next POTUS. Leftists ought not to postpone this task until the election day. Leave it to Democrats to elect a Democrat.
>TA: . . . Whatever Kerry says, most people who vote for him, will do
>so because they don't like what Bush has done in Iraq, they don't
>like the way the economy's being handled, they don't like the way
>the environment is being dealt with.
Is the Fed still committed to a series of quarter-point hikes -- including one in September -- over the next 18 months? If so, Alan Greenspan may accomplish what the anti-war movement and the Green Party failed to do: deliver the coup de grace to George W. Bush and make the next POTUS John Kerry a weak president without a big mandate at the same time. Over on PEN-l, though, Jim Devine says that the Fed will surprise the financial market "by standing pat on August 10th."
>TA: . . . When Kerry is in power, if he carries on in the same way,
>it would be much easier to build a bigger movement against him.
That depends. The more leftists refrain from attacking John Kerry before the election day, the more difficult it will be to build a movement against him. The more leftists cheer the Democratic Party elite to disenfranchise actual and potential supporters of Nader/Camejo 2004, restricting ballot access, the more difficult it will be to build a movement against Kerry, for the party elite will try the same in 2008, and voters will have no choice but to vote for Kerry again.
In any case, whether leftists think it would be easier to build a movement against a Democratic or Republican POTUS, it is not leftists' business to campaign for either. Our job is to build our own social force in opposition to the two dominant parties of the ruling class. Leave it to Democrats and Republicans to campaign for their own candidates. Workers shouldn't do bosses' jobs, e.g., by spreading FUD about one group of bosses on behalf of another, nor should leftists do the Democratic Party elite's jobs. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>