With anger at the war and economic inequality rising fast, the Republicans discredited, and the Democratic Congress betraying their electoral base on every major issue, there is a pressing need for an independent, antiwar, political alternative to the two parties of Corporate America in the 2008 elections. With a clear lead and strong campaigns – from the local level to the White House – millions of workers and youth would be prepared to support an antiwar, anti-corporate, political challenge to the rotten right-wing consensus in Washington, DC.

The Democratic Party faces tremendous pressure from below to end the war and reverse Bush’s anti-worker policies, but their inaction is already producing a mood of bitter frustration among a large minority. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll reported on 2/10/07 that just 39% of Democrats approve of the new Congress, up only 9% since October when the Republicans had the majority!

The potential for an independent antiwar, anti-corporate challenge in 2008 was pointed out by Dick Morris, a leading political strategist for the Democrats and Republicans and Bill Clinton’s former political consultant. Morris recently published an article, “Hillary’s Nightmare: Ralph Nader,” which explained: “In a race of Rudy Giuliani vs. Hillary Clinton vs. Ralph Nader, a dedicated opponent of the war has only one possible vote: Nader. The ranks of antiwar voters could swell Nader’s performance… It is not inconceivable that Nader could pass 5-7% of the vote or go even higher if he is the only antiwar candidate in the field.” (2/9/07). If the election where held today, Nader would get 5% according to a poll by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics (2/13-14/07), and 14% said they might vote for Nader in 2008.

Big business has Two Parties…
“The 2008 race will be the longest and most expensive election in American history,” warned Michael Toner of the Federal Election Commission. He predicts that the two major party nominees alone will have spent over $500 million each by election day, double what Bush and Kerry spent in 2004!

The corporate cash orgy is just as bad during the primaries. Most of the $528.9 million raised by candidates in the 2000 race, or the $880.5 million raised in 2004, was spent before the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions (Center for Responsive Politics). These breathtaking figures will appear like “chump change” by the end of 2008. According to Toner, candidates will need to raise $100 million in 2007 just to be “taken seriously.”

This kind of money doesn’t come from the pockets of working-class America. Instead, big business and their army of lobbyists get to decide which candidates are “electable,” and they don’t give their money to politicians as philanthropic donations to the democratic process! These are political investments, and the corporations are handsomely rewarded with pro-business policies no matter which party wins the “election.”

While the Republicans flaunt their business ties more openly, corporations are bipartisan when distributing their corrupting cash. For example, the healthcare industry, facing public outrage at their crumbling for-profit system and growing calls for government intervention to provide universal healthcare, is doing its best to buy off politicians. Hillary Clinton is their biggest beneficiary, receiving almost $1.2 million in the 2006 election cycle alone (Center for Responsive Politics).

Like all the main candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Clinton has declared herself in favor of “universal healthcare” (not single-payer, but a market-based scheme that does not threaten the insurance companies). But money speaks louder than words. Clearly, the big healthcare profiteers are confident she will defend their interests. After all, the Clintons won the White House in 1992 promising universal health coverage, but even with control of both houses of Congress the Democrats capitulated completely under industry pressure.

The basic function of the Democratic Party for the ruling class is to contain and co-opt left-wing and working-class social movements and to prevent the rise of competing political formations not under direct corporate control. To accomplish this, they are compelled to give a limited voice to workers’ aspirations and to incorporate the unions and social movements into their party machine and electoral coalitions.

But the Democrats are only useful to their corporate paymasters if they can do this while at the same time carrying out the basic big business agenda of attacks on working people at home and imperialist policies abroad.

The corporate corruption of the 2008 primary process will further undermine the idea that the Democrats can be transformed from below into a pro-worker, pro-peace party. However, it is far from certain that opposition to the Democrats will find expression in a concrete, viable electoral alternative in the 2008 elections.

The main obstacle is the unholy alliance between the leadership of most social movement organizations – from the trade unions to the main antiwar groups – and and the antiwar, women’s and civil rights organizations, with the Democratic Party machine. Through a thousand threads of government largesse and career opportunities, often at the local level, the Democrats carefully cultivate these alliances to maintain their electoral base.

…We Need One of Our Own
Imagine what would happen if the trade unions redirected the hundreds of millions they now waste on Democrats toward running independent, antiwar, pro-workers candidates in 2008. What if the tens of thousands of union members mobilized for Democrats were instead campaigning for real working-class candidates running independent of the two big business parties? Imagine if the main leaders of the antiwar, immigrant rights, civil rights, and women’s organizations also threw their resources and authority into building a new broad-based, antiwar, anti-corporate, working-class political party.

The 2008 elections offer an important opportunity to prepare the ground for such a new party. Antiwar activists, fighting trade unions, immigrant rights activists, the Green Party, socialists, and others should unite to build the strongest possible independent, antiwar, anti-corporate challenge in 2008 – from the local level to the White House. Such a campaign could reach tens of millions of workers and youth, explaining the big business character of the Democrats and Republicans and the need to build our own political party.

An antiwar, anti-corporate challenge, even if it gained only 5-10% of the vote in the 2008 presidential election, would shake the U.S. political establishment. It would do far more to further the fight for a single-payer national healthcare system or an end to the Iraq war than the hapless lobbying efforts that occupy most liberal social movement groups today. Fearing the further development of a political opposition movement, big business and their governing representatives in both parties would be far more prepared to grant reforms.

Unfortunately, even now there are no real signs that antiwar or union leaders have the vision, courage, or interest in taking such a necessary step. There is the serious danger of a repeat of the 2004 elections, when the leadership of these and other progressive movements herded workers and progressive voters behind the “lesser-evil” John Kerry.

The pro-war, pro-corporate Kerry campaign served to demoralize the antiwar movement and tamp down workers’ hopes for change. Even though antiwar sentiment surged in 2004, the leaders of the antiwar movement failed to seriously mobilize for antiwar protests out of fear of “embarrassing” Kerry during the campaign. While failing to defeat Bush, the capitulation of the antiwar leaders to the Kerry campaign laid the basis for deep post-election malaise and confusion. The Democratic Party did its job well for big business in 2004, and they will try again in 2008.

The question is: will we let them? Will we allow the antiwar leaders to herd us behind whatever corporate-sponsored antiwar faker the Democrats put forward for the White House? Will we follow the advice of the union leaders, the main women’s groups, and the rest of the worn-out liberal establishment to water down our demands and lower our expectations to what is acceptable to the Democrats and their big business backers?

Lowering expectations is the inevitable logic of lesser-evil politics. The “strategy” of pushing the antiwar movement behind an imperialist political party only feeds into mass cynicism and apathy toward politics. It demobilizes and destroys the vitality of our social movements, which in the final analysis are our only source of power against the big business interests that dominate society.

Instead, we need to mobilize from below for an independent political alternative in 2008. With the 2008 election process already well underway, the time to begin organizing is now.