The enormous economic and social crisis engulfing U.S. society could not be more serious. Many workers and young people, desperate to see a change, are hoping this election will bring an end to the Republican policies that have been such a disaster.

The financial system is being propped up by a massive infusion of public funds while living standards are being undermined by exploding gas prices, rising prices, a collapse in home values, and a developing economic recession.

Add to this our dysfunctional, privately-run healthcare system, the unacceptable cost of quality child care, the increasing struggle of families to avoid falling off the debt cliff, the environmental catastrophe facing the planet, and you can understand why people are mad at our politicians.

In a recent Time/Rockefeller Foundation poll, 78% said they feel the 20th Century social contract has been broken, while 85% said the country is on the wrong track.

With the presidential election campaign in full flight, the most astonishing thing is how neither of the main candidates is offering any real solutions to these problems. Certainly, the corporate media is not asking them any searching questions on these issues. Instead, we are given daily doses of debates about “electability.”

The U.S. is bogged down in protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, the invasion and occupation of Iraq could cost in excess of $3 trillion.

There’s money for the Iraq War and to bail out rich Wall Street investors, but no money for healthcare, child care, housing, transit, or living-wage jobs. What sort of logic is this? To answer that, we have to raise the issue of class. When money is being spent for corporate interests, there’s plenty of cash. But there is no money to help homeowners, renters, or working families who have been left out to dry by the speculators.

Look at healthcare. Neither of the major candidates speaks about ending the corporate-run, dysfunctional healthcare system we have to live with. The mass media just pours scorn on the public healthcare systems in Europe and Canada, which are far superior. Why? They don’t want people here to duplicate them by kicking out the abusive private insurance companies.

If we want to improve our lives, we will need a candidate and a political party that will end the domination of U.S. society by these few hundred huge predatory corporations. We need a candidate and party that will promote, first and foremost, the interests of the working-class majority – i.e. those who work for a living rather than living off the labor of others.

Any cursory look at Republican candidate John McCain reveals that his campaign remains rooted in the policies of Bush. The Republican Party makes no bones about supporting U.S. business interests. Working people will not see any help from this corporate candidate.

Many workers and youth, desperate to see the back of Bush’s policies, are looking to support Barack Obama and Democratic candidates. We completely agree on the need to kick out the Republicans. But we need to ask: Is Obama willing to take on the corporations that dominate U.S. society? Is he willing to take on Wall Street and private insurance companies and to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

This can only be answered by looking at his funders, his advisors, and his track record. The evidence shows his top funders include Wall Street companies and healthcare corporations. He is hiring advisors who support free trade agreements, who back pro-big business economic policies, and who are opposed by the labor movement. On foreign policy, he wants to maintain massive spending in Iraq to continue U.S. bases there and to expand the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

But it is not only his policies. It’s also a question of which political party he is running for. The Democrats do not fundamentally differ from the Republicans in their class nature. Their economic and international policies are determined by the interests of big business, who fund and control them. They may disagree with Republicans on how best to extract cheap Middle East oil, or how best to keep Corporate America’s profits high. But on the fundamentals, they are anti-working class to the core.

While there is no doubt the election of Obama as the first African American president would represent a huge and welcome change in social attitudes, the key question remains: What policies does Obama stand for? Unfortunately, we have to say they are taken from the same page as those of other mainstream corporate politicians. For that reason, we oppose his candidacy. In fact, an Obama Presidency would bitterly disappoint his supporters, opening up a new period of struggle in the U.S.
Fortunately, in this election there is a candidate running who has committed his life to fighting corporate power. Ralph Nader made his start in public life fighting the unsafe practices of U.S. carmakers and earned the wrath of GM in doing so.

He is running on a platform of fighting corporate power and fighting for the interests of ordinary working-class Americans, such as a living wage of $10 per hour, a rapid and comprehensive military and corporate withdrawal from Iraq, a single-payer, Canadian-style national healthcare system, creating millions of jobs through public works programs, and repealing anti-union legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act.

In this election, we are urging voters to reject Obama’s false message of hope and to back Ralph Nader as the strongest antiwar, anti-corporate independent candidate for president in 2008.
In states where Nader is unfortunately blocked from getting on the ballot, but Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney makes it on, we are calling for a vote for McKinney as the next best way to demonstrate opposition to the two corporate parties.

Moving beyond this election, in order to end corporate domination of our society it is essential that we create a new political party of working people. This new workers’ party would need to be based on the power of labor and develop a clear program that defends the needs of workers and the poor as opposed to the big corporations and the logic of capitalism. Such a party could unite the working-class majority in this country into a powerful movement to expose the corporate elite whose actions have taken this country into such a mess.