By Carlos Petroni

Weeks of inadvertent exposure of the rottenness of this system the ruling class calls "democracy" have left Democrats and Republicans with little more than a failed damage control operation. The elections exposed to the people of the U.S. and the world the methods of fraud, legal chicanery, deception, lies and systematic exclusion of millions from the process. Pushed to its limits, overwhelmed by higher-than-usual urban turnouts and the closeness of the balloting, with millions of voters swinging back and forth trying to find the "differences" between Gush and Bore, and stressed by the unrelenting attack from the left of the Nader campaign, the scrupulously planned and scripted electoral system serving the few and powerful simply gave way.

It takes more than an election to get a president

This is happening in the context of U.S economic growth and limited workers' struggles where U.S. imperialism remains essentially unchallenged in the world. Only the young demonstrators and some unions who besieged the WTO in Seattle and the IMF in Washington and Nader's massive, but largely under-funded left campaign, ignored by the media until the final weeks, helped expose the fragility of the vehicle of political control of the ruling class: the Republicrat bipartisan system.

Out of this mess, we are also facing a new unusually weak government; one that will either develop any governmental plan on strict bipartisan lines or face chronic gridlock and paralysis. Senator Torricelli put it in clear words when he said that the next government would be the "American version of co-habitation."

With few votes separating the Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives and the U.S Senate virtually split in equal halves, the center-right from both parties will be forced into Congressional co-habitation. There is even discussion of shared chairmanship in the key committees of both houses under the threat of chronic gridlock if the Republicans - who technically hold a paper-thin majority and thus have the legal right to name the committee's chairs - refuse to budge.

This will push both the right wing in the Republican Party and the liberals in the Democratic Party to the fringe, by prioritizing agreements that can move forward the general business of the economy and deal with international trade and the political crisis. Most of the issues discussed by Bush and Gore during the campaign - social security; prescription drugs; health insurance; tax cuts; campaign finance reform - will only be resolved as the result of strict partisanship or will have to wait at least until the next mid-term elections in 2002.

The "differences" that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party used as weapons against Nader during the campaign - Supreme Court Appointees; Roe vs. Wade; further cuts in the safety net; LGBT rights, etc. - will be pushed to the sidelines, "resolved" in "don't ask, don't tell" fashion or through bipartisan consensus. In the same fashion, the pet issues of the Republican right wing - the xenophobic attacks against immigrants, school vouchers, privatization of public education, school prayer, etc. - will also be postponed. The right received promises from Bush in order to line up behind the "compassionate conservative" and discard Buchanan - who ended up with a miserable 0.5% of the vote at the national level.

The electorate was already polarized to a certain degree on these issues, and both liberals and right wingers will feel that pressure, in turn exercising further pressure on the bipartisan system and enhancing the possibility of further splits to the left of the Democratic Party - continuing what started with the Nader campaign - and maybe provoking a mirror effect to the right in the Republican Party.

The next four years will be decisive for workers and the oppressed. The Damocles' sword of an oncoming economic crisis still hangs over the U.S. The deepening of radicalization amongst youth will combine with the first steps of more protracted workers' struggles, now clearly starting to develop as demonstrated by the Los Angeles working class in massive organizing drives, strikes of janitors, transportation, municipal, garment and other workers in this powerful industrial center. L.A. is the birthplace of a new, young, undefeated, militant - and predominantly immigrant - working class.

With a discredited "Democracy," a President that half of the country considers illegitimate, a stalemate in Congress, pressure from right and left, growing working class and youth struggles and a growing, new desire for political independence from the bipartisan system, the prospects of workers and the oppressed - and therefore for socialists - look much more promising. We are certainly light years away from the dreaded 90s.