"Democracy" of the Rich on Trial

By Carlos Petroni and Abel Mouton

While Democrats and Republicans try to contain the crisis, we are for expanding it. While both Democrats and Republicans are striving to save the bipartisan system, we are for eliminating it as one of the major roadblocks to the political independence of the working class.

The true source of the present crisis is that the Nader campaign and the highest - while still humble - turnout in decades have exposed the hypocrisy, lies, fraud, cheating, and fragility of the ruthlessly anti-democratic process the ruling class calls "Democracy." The fact that the election was so close added another important element to the crisis. If we take a closer look at this "Democracy of the Rich" we will find that what happened in Florida goes on in every urban center of the US, in every electoral district of the country.

A System of Exclusion

Near the interchange of I-77  & I-485 Charlotte, NC

Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the bipartisan system - and what the ruling class calls "Democracy" - is based on limiting participation and turnout to manageable levels to avoid "surprises." Around 51% of all registered voters went to the polls on November 7, which is the highest turnout that has occurred in the last four presidential elections. Perhaps this percentage seems low to international observers accustomed to much higher participation in their own elections. But in the US, a deep cynicism pervading the electorate caused more than half of all registered voters to abstain from the last presidential election.

Rather than reflecting an active crisis of confidence in bourgeois democracy, these numbers occur because the US electorate passively disbelieves that they can wrest control over the corporate-controlled, big businesses-bankrolled process. The higher-than-usual turnout on November 7, 2000 reflects a slight recovery of faith in the process on the part of millions of US citizens. The present modest increase in the turnout introduced unexpected elements into a process grown accustomed to absolute control and certainty. For instance, the pre-election polls went wild, alternately indicating that both Bush and Gore were winning at different stages of the campaign, with millions of voters undecided until the last moment.

After all, the ruling class goes out of its way to keep those most oppressed by this system from voting. Elections are held on a workday. Millions, mostly African American and Latino males, are excluded from voting for life for legal reasons. Millions more non-citizens were deprived of suffrage earlier this century. In most states, registering to vote is a hassle, and registering at the polls on Election Day is not possible. TV, radio and newspapers repeat ad nauseam that there are only two choices: Democrats or Republicans, whether it's true or not. Finally, the ruling class has graciously made exercising the right to vote voluntary on top of difficult. Many US citizens understand this as the right to not waste their time.

How democratic is a system that cannot withstand a slightly higher than usual participation? How democratic can a system be when one candidate, in this case Ralph Nader, achieves 3% of the vote and makes it impossible for the system to produce a decision on who the next president will be? How democratic could a system be that is built upon layer after layer of barriers, prohibitions, confused systems, and exclusions?

Take another example: gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the name for the system in which the ruling class tailors electoral Districts to fit their interests by atomizing the force of the working class and the oppressed. Utilized extensively in the South to split African American constituencies among different surrounding Districts of white voters, gerrymandering still affects 25% of all Black voters in the country. In areas with a heavy concentration of Latino voters, similar gerrymandering schemes have been employed.

But gerrymandering is also used to connect two small areas of conservative or upper class voters, sometimes drawing a District composed of two large areas united by a single street that crosses an entire city to connect them - as in Los Angeles County - in order to maximize the voting block of the ruling class.

District boundaries have to be periodically redrawn to re-distribute, sometimes augment, the local, state and Federal representation of Districts and reflect the demographic changes in local and state Districts. Re-districting is one of the most important battles between the Democrats and Republicans. Both Democrats and Republicans at the State levels have generally agreed to split working class and oppressed communities to diminish their representation and secure the system against challenges from representatives of those communities.

Simply put, "These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of ten, if not ninety-nine out of a hundred, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy." (1)

For workers and the oppressed, these obstacles are built to prevent them from using the very system they are supposed to regard as the highest expression of popular sovereignty.

Contingency Plan
Should these attempts to keep voters - particularly the majority of the working class and the oppressed - as far away from the ballot boxes as possible fail, the bipartisan system has a second line of defense. Whatever you may

Nader showing who the Democrats and Republicans represent

hear from Democratic and Republican mouthpieces on television and radio talk shows, any alternative party seeking ballot status has a bitter uphill battle ahead of them.

Beginners' luck plays a negligible role in the bipartisan system. Participation is reserved for those who can afford it, or can count on substantial name recognition and support from the start. It requires millions of dollars and an ongoing national organization with recognized personalities pushing the issue for a third party to get on the ballot. It is necessary to convince more than one million registered voters to join the new party and beat impossible deadlines in key states before the new party can face the judgment of the voters.

This highlights the role of the AFL-CIO as the working class organization that could mount a national challenge to the bipartisan system. They have the money and numbers to do so. Instead, AFL-CIO leaders choose to be field troops for one leg of the bipartisan system: the Democrats.

It is estimated that the Democrats and Republicans combined spent nearly $3 billion on the 2000 election, with a third of that going to television ads. The cost of running for president has increased geometrically since 1984, when both parties together spent $300 million. The money spent has increased at about the same rate that the political relevance of the two parties to the majority of the electorate has decreased. The huge expenditures on media further prevents a new grassroots political force from emerging to challenge the big business parties.

Even an organized opposition inside the Democratic or Republican Parties requires the support of the party leadership to achieve ballot status. Witness candidates trying to get on the ballot in both the Democratic and Republican primaries as opponents in states such as New York. Even John McCain, a right wing opponent of George W. Bush, was excluded from the ballot in this state by the state Republican political machine. Other candidates not endorsed by the majority of the "players" in the Democratic Party, like Jesse Jackson in the past, encountered extreme difficulties and even exclusion from the ballot in several states during Democratic Party primaries.

The primary election process is used to draw the dissident internal forces of the two main parties back into the fold. In the year 2000, the dissident Republican McCain openly criticized the intolerance and bigotry of the Christian Right core of the party and campaigned against George Bush, anointed candidate of the Christian Right. McCain represented certain conservative forces within the Republican Party who recognize that campaigning on issues such as proclaiming the right to life for unborn children and treating homosexuality as a disease like alcoholism has made a mockery of conservatism.

McCain made a strong showing in early primaries, but was out of the race well before the end of the season. In spite of millions of dollars and an extraordinary "moral" appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party, he was no match for Bush's war chest and political machinery. Fund raising is the main show. This indicates to the capitalist class how many of their own kind are willing to put large sums of money down on any particular candidate. Only candidates who can pull in a flood of money are considered viable. The results of the primaries are settled within weeks of the New Hampshire primary. All other candidates are expected to withdraw peacefully from the race in a timely fashion.

ÊAfter the primaries were over, McCain uncritically endorsed Bush for President. McCain was then assigned to campaign amongst moderate liberals and independents, who believed his rhetoric about being against the domination of politics by money, who had gone for a ride on the straight talk express. The other Republican would-be presidential candidates were smart people, true believers in conservatism sans compassion. The message of Elizabeth Dole, right wing preacher Alan Keyes and self-propelled millionaire Forbes was lost in the media mix.

Nothing better came out of Bill Bradley's challenge to Al Gore. Well before the California primary he was out of the race, smashed by the machinery that would hear nothing of the meager "issues" of this HMO-lover, posing as a "reformer." Bradley humbly returned to Gore's fold - the same man who condemned Gore as "divisive" a few short weeks before.

Outsiders Need Not Apply
When alternative candidates separate from the two parties are on the ballot, they face political ostracism, media blackout and massive negative campaigning from the parties of the bipartisan system. The most watched shows during the elections are the Presidential Debates. To be in them you need to get past the gatekeepers: representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties and the CEOs of big businesses who control the debates.

When 10-term Republican Congressman John Anderson broke from the Republican Party in 1980 to run for president on the National Unity Party ticket, polls conducted in August of that same year placed him at 20%. Given his standing, the League of Women Voters invited Anderson to participate in a nationally televised debate with Republican candidate Ronald Reagan and Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter.

Carter denounced Anderson as a "creation of the media," despite Anderson's twenty years in the House of Representatives. Anderson faced Reagan alone. Pressure from Democrats and Republicans alike ensured that Anderson was excluded from future debates.

It was twelve years before another third party candidate for President would rise to national attention, this time in the person of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. Perot's campaign broke through the media blackout with a series of TV spots, both standard format 30-second commercials and half-hour infomercials paid for with his own money. More than $150 million came out of his own pockets. He virtually created a parallel rented TV network to break the blockade. Again, summer polls placed Perot high in the running. As of August, 1992, Perot was neck-and-neck with incumbent George Bush and soundly trouncing Democratic challenger Bill Clinton.

ÊPerot's huge numbers forced the Commission on Presidential Debates to allow him to face off with Clinton and Bush on television. The power of the debates was revealed that November, when Perot received 19 million votes, or 20% of the overall electorate. The key to Perot was that his economic program was a continuation of Reagan's politics, with a full-frontal attack on government spending. This message was palatable to the ruling class, who were willing to give him airspace to put forward his views, thus forcing both main political parties to accommodate these views into their programs. Such free media space is not given to alternative candidates who stand against the two main parties witness the treatment given to Nader.

Through the Perot phenomenon the ruling class saw the effect of letting a third party candidate into the debates. They therefore further tightened the rules of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) created by the Democrats, the Republicans and big business. They set a high threshold of 15% and then used poll results to ensure the exclusion of Ralph Nader. His 5% in the polls nationwide was only a third of the 15% required by the bipartisan Commission to achieve a spot at the podium. The CPD paid no attention to the national polls in which a solid majority of registered voters said that they wanted to hear Nader.

Contingency Plan 2
Had enough? Well, if not, there are the "winner-take-all districts." This measure guarantees that a party may obtain 20, 30% of the vote and still go without representation in the Electoral College. The case of Ross Perot illustrates this most clearly. Perot received just short of 20% of the national total, yet not one Elector was granted to the Reform Party.

The Electoral College eliminates the popular vote as a factor. As a pundit put it recently, the Electoral College " is the bedrock of our political system, protecting us from assaults from without." Theoretically, a candidate could receive as high as 30% of the vote nationwide and not get a single Elector.

You could have a three-way split with three parties represented at the Electoral College, with let's say a mass labor or working class party obtaining 40% of the Electors by overcoming the "winner-take-all" system - and still the bipartisan system would be able to squash this opposition by uniting their Electors for a common candidate. This is so because only 14 states require that Electors will remain committed to the parties that elected them in the first place (see the article on the Constitution in this issue).

But there is a fourth line of defense for the system in case everything else fails: fraud, corruption, threats, and blackmail. All over the nation, throughout history, electoral fraud has played an important role in the vaunted "democracy" of the United States.

Massive and Widespread Voting Fraud
In 1960, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley produced hundreds of thousands of votes in the middle of election night to push John F. Kennedy ahead of Richard Nixon in Illinois. It is now considered a matter of historical record that Daley in collaboration with the Chicago crime syndicates stole that election from Nixon. Patrick Buchanan now cites Nixon's decision not to challenge these results as a testament to the "honor" of this great man. Honor amongst thieves, perhaps.

Organized voter fraud in the US usually revolves around the absentee ballots. In Miami in 1998, the election of Xavier Suarez for mayor was overturned when it came to light that people close to his campaign had engaged in improprieties with large numbers of absentee ballots.

In 1998, Democrat big player and Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown put a massive corporate welfare proposal on the ballot. This measure was to benefit a local sports franchise - the 49ers team - by giving them public money and public land to construct a new stadium and commercial mall. The measure encountered fierce opposition. On election night, from the beginning, the Proposition was trailing by several thousand votes. But the morning after, mysteriously, the initiative won with a 1,500 vote margin.

In the 2000 elections, again in San Francisco and while all eyes were focused on Florida, the Department of Elections waited until after the regular ballots were counted to begin counting the absentee ballots. The absentee voters have thus far heavily favored the issues and candidates supported by Mayor Willie Brown, sometimes by as much as 60%! A slow growth measure, favored in polls and in the precincts lost, again, in the middle of the night. Candidates favored by the Democratic machine, who were losing, appeared to be winning or cutting their losses in half the next day.

When the desperate operatives of the Bush campaign found themselves trapped in the Florida recount, they could easily find voter fraud schemes and irregularities in Milwaukee, Madison, Portland ... and they tried to use them to blackmail the Democrats into submission. The fact that they found several states and cities on which they could focus so rapidly indicates how widespread fraud is in the system. In Oregon, another state in dispute, the Democrats uncovered an organized "conspiracy" to cast votes for the same people in two or more cities. A similar maneuver was denounced by Republicans in New York.

Electoral fraud is engendered and encouraged on a national scale by the lack of a centralized system for counting votes. This gives local political establishments, controlled by Democratic or Republican local or state machines, a large degree of latitude to fix elections on behalf of their candidates and issues. The Nader campaign, combined with a higher voter turnout - particularly in urban centers and some states - brought all of the contradictions of the "world's greatest democracy" to the surface. Cheating was widespread.

Political Machines and Dirty Tricks
Local and state statutes give the parties of the bipartisan system unchallenged authority to throw out tens of thousands of votes without any recourse from those affected. The electoral system does not provide any way for alternative parties to control the voting in the precincts, nor the count. All those activities are exclusively conducted by civil servants on the payroll of the local political machines. In over twenty states, including California, recount petitions must be accompanied by million dollar bonds which the challengers have to deposit ... in cash.

Only the expertise of the operatives of the Democratic Party - who are used to applying the same dirty tricks themselves - allowed them to focus on specific counties in Florida, like Palm Beach. They were able to identify the problems with more efficiency than the local authorities - also Democrats - and clearly define a line of action within hours. Nothing like the experience of a criminal to catch a criminal.

While the representatives of the bourgeoisie use voting fraud and dirty tricks against each other to thwart the preference of voters in favor of the preference of those who rule the country, they principally utilize the whole machinery of organized fraud against challenges from third parties, working class candidates and maverick members of their own parties - as well as against initiatives born out of popular movements.

That is why the electoral equipment is so faulty and antiquated and there is not, as Gore would put it, a Federal controlling authority. That is also why there are no universal, uniform and national ballot forms, laws and statutes. A decentralized voting system in the hands of local machines acts as a buffer between the system and the potential uprising of sectors of the population at the polls.

Only a mass, class party of the working class, with the ability to mobilize millions to control and stop the cheating and the fraud could disarm this barricade erected by the ruling class against the oppressed. But that struggle will take much more than just the passing of a few reforms. It will have to strike against the very existence of the bipartisan regime. Going against the bipartisan regime is a direct attack on one of the pillars of the US capitalist system.

Brought to Light
At every step of the 2000 elections, the independent campaign of Ralph Nader was a stone in the shoe of the bipartisan system. Nader began his campaign by pointing out how the Democratic Party, as expressed through Al Gore, had systematically betrayed the constituencies which dutifully support them year after year. Nader correctly attributed this to the "marination of the two parties in corporate campaign contributions."

Nader's campaign was then blacked out of the media, and misrepresented if even mentioned. At the protests against the Democratic National Convention in LA last August, the largest, best organized contingents were those calling for Nader to be allowed into the debates. Not one picture appeared in the mainstream media of the giant puppet of Ralph Nader calling to be allowed to debate. Every mention of the Nader campaign referred to it as a curiosity.

Curiously, Nader routinely drew capacity paying crowds to stadiums across the country. Nader addressed over 300,000 people at his more than a dozen Super Rallies and 800 other meetings in every state, in every large city - and many towns - around the country. This massive mobilization terrorized the ruling class, and especially its vehicle for the youth, the working class and the oppressed: the Democratic Party, one of the two legs of the bipartisan system.

Nader was not only excluded from participating in the presidential debates, but even from attending them. At the debate at University of Massachusetts in Boston, Nader had a ticket, but was turned away at the door. Security guards and, astonishingly, officials of the Presidential Debate Commission told him they were afraid he would be disruptive.

Meanwhile, thousands of people were protesting his exclusion outside. The media represented it as a general gathering of deranged people with fringe political ideals. The small contingents supporting other candidates and issues were given equal column inches to the overwhelming majority of the demonstrators who supported Nader.

When it became clear that the 6% - 7% of the electorate supporting Nader could cost Gore the election, all of the liberal media launched a slander campaign. The Nation ran a special issue on how the Supreme Court was the central issue of the Presidential election, including scathing criticisms of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They also ran articles on how the most liberal justices could die at any time. The Nation asserted that Al Gore would be more likely to appoint liberals than reactionaries, but did not mention that Scalia was appointed by the unanimous vote of the Democrats in the US Senate - including Gore - and that Thomas' appointment was possible only when 11 U.S. Senators from the Democratic Party joined the Republicans to vote for him.

Television ads in Oregon and Washington ran proclaiming "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." Thousands of mailings and radio spots in California, Oregon, Washington State, Wisconsin and other states reached millions of people, several times, with the same message. Even automated telephone banks were used - using the voices of well-known personalities - in 135 cities across the country to squash the Nader campaign, that only a few weeks before was characterized as "irrelevant."

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman made special campaign stops in several states carrying the same message. Former Nader's Raiders, former friends of Nader, actors, rock stars and dozens of executives of the AFL-CIO also campaigned against him, and Marlo Thomas, the wife of prominent Nader supporter Phil Donahue, appeared on national television to denounce her own husband as a madman for campaigning against Al Gore.

Tens of millions of dollars were spent to launch accusations that Nader was an "egomaniac," a "radical idealist without purpose" and a "careerist" that was trying to "advance his own image." The words uttered by then independent candidate John Anderson resonated in Nader's ears: "Instantly, I become a pariah. Those who admired me, now slander me. Those who claimed to be my friends, are now part of the campaign to stop me as if I'm Public Enemy Number. 1." In 1999, Anderson recognized that running for President in 1980 condemned him to social and political ostracism. Hardly a road for an egomaniac to build a career.

This cynical negative campaign succeeded in recapturing Nader's softer supporters, those who were planning to "send a message" to the Democrats. It also had the effect of consolidating the true believers. 2.7 million voters openly broke with the Democratic Party on November 7, with potentially disastrous results for the bipartisan system as a whole.

From a Stone in the Shoe to a Brick in the Eye
The results of the 2000 Presidential elections were the closest in years, spurring recounts and legal challenges on the part of voters in several states. Analysts from the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Green Party all attribute this to the weakness of Al Gore's campaign and his desire to disassociate himself from his term in office with Bill Clinton. Subjectively, it is true that this race was Al Gore's to win or lose. He had hundreds of millions of dollars, a reliable national campaign structure, and a weak opponent. Objectively, however, the candidacy of Ralph Nader is responsible for the closest results in the most hotly contested states. Had Nader not run for President, the ruling parties would not be in their present quandary.

While the Democrats were desperately fighting for a few thousand votes in Florida to get the 25 Electoral College votes from that state, 97,000 Nader voters - or 2% of the total votes in Florida - were silent witnesses of the hemorrhage from the left that threw the Democrats into crisis and uncovered the fraudulent, exclusionary nature of the system. In the states on the second line of the conflict - Oregon and Wisconsin - the Nader vote held the key to the crisis as well. In Iowa, where Nader was not a factor, Democrats and Republicans accused each other of dirty tricks on Election Day.

If a certain percentage of Nader's vote would have gone to Gore, it would have been enough to put Gore over the top in Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin. In New Hampshire, where Gore lost to Bush by 1% Nader received 4% of the vote. In New Mexico, a state which Gore initially appeared to capture by 2%, a Republican-motivated recount shows Bush as the victor by a measly four votes. Nader's support in New Mexico: 4%.

Of all of these states, Florida is the whirling blade in this blender of electoral confusion. Early on election night, the mainstream media proclaimed Florida a victory for Al Gore, giving him Florida's 25 Electors. Florida Governor Jeb Bush had what his big brother the Republican presidential candidate called an "interesting emotional response." A few hours later, when Florida's final results came in, it appeared as though Jeb Bush's fraud machine had pulled his big brother's fat out of the fire. Both Bush and Gore had an even 49% of the Florida electorate, but Bush had 1,784 more votes. 97,000 Floridians cast votes for Ralph Nader.

If 10% of Nader's votes had gone to Gore, this would be a very different article. Nonetheless, Gore's percentage was monkeywrenched and an unpleasant (for them) bipartisan drama has played out before us.

Ground Zero
In Florida, state regulations require that a vote that close be instantly recounted. The recount process began; still no President. During the recount, it came out that a ballot designed and approved by a Democrat had led to as many as 3,000 voters accidentally registering their vote for Pat Buchanan at the expense of Al Gore. 19,000 ballots had been disqualified by double voting. Poll workers had refused to give new ballots to voters who requested them. The Gore campaign announced that it would join any lawsuit filed against this ballot by disgruntled Gore supporters.

The results of the first recount showed that Bush had defeated Gore by a much slimmer margin, only 229 votes. The Nader factor had an even more important impact than originally thought. The Gore campaign demanded a recount by hand in a couple of counties with a majority of registered Democrats. The Republicans did what they criticized the Democrats for proposing two days before: they went to Federal Court to oppose a hand count of the votes.

The Judge rebuffed the petition from the Republicans and asserted what was obvious to everyone: a recount by hand was more accurate than machines. Then Florida's Republican Secretary of State, the Bush Campaign co-chair, ordered the count by hand to be done in an impossible 48 hours. Florida governor, Jeb Bush, who recused himself from intervening in the recount due to a "conflict of interest" was obviously behind the maneuver.

By now, public opinion was at 65% for having an accurate count of the Florida votes and as many as 70% of those surveyed suddenly expressed their desire to see the Electoral College abolished. Nobody understood why a few thousand votes in Florida may give the Presidency to one candidate when the other was ahead in the national popular vote by more than 200,000 votes. The crisis has shown millions the undemocratic nature of this democracy for the rich.

Damage Control to Save the System
Then the ruling circles started to demand the protection of the system above the interests of the campaigns. The campaigns started to lower their rhetoric. Both candidates began to talk about the Constitution and the importance of the Electoral College as a cornerstone of "our" democracy, envied around the world. Gore promised to respect the decision of the Electoral College, while Bush retreated from an earlier "transition" series of meetings with likely cabinet members of his would-be government cabinet to "informal meeting to prepare a potential administration."

Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who is representing Gore in the dispute, and former Secretary of State James Baker, representing Bush, agreed to try to contain the crisis to the event in Florida. While other segments of both parties continue threatening to open new fronts of the dispute in other states, the heads and representatives of both campaigns started to work overtime to abort such initiatives.

As the ruling class ran out of options, they worked to save the system from further exposure and crisis even if it should benefit one candidate unfairly over the other. But the damage was done. For millions of workers and oppressed people in the US and abroad, the "Democracy" of the most powerful imperialist country in the world does not differ much from that of the "Banana Republics" controlled by authoritarian parties and leaders. After all, they had a good teacher.

Now is the time for the unions, the Nader campaign, organizations such as the Labor Party and socialists to organize a massive campaign to abolish the Electoral College and attack the most obvious obstacles and exclusions that prevent the emergence of working class and left alternatives (See Program Article). We need to use the cracks opened in the system by the present crisis.

Our task is not to support one or the other parties, but to expose as a whole the rottenness of their system since "their fight has not had any serious importance for the mass of the people. The people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by means of spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties. This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America ... has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party." (2)

(1) V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution
(2) V.I. Lenin, "Results and Significance of U.S. Presidential Elections." 1919