Bumper stickers on thousands of cars throughout the northeastern U.S. simply read “1.20.09 — Bush’s last day.” The sigh of relief on that day will be audible from the highest peaks of the mountains of New Hampshire to the lowest valleys in the southwest. Crooked smirk Cheney, who couldn’t tell a baby quail from a business tycoon, will be exiting the halls of power too.

Union and community activists, antiwar organizers, feminists, and civil libertarians will be clinking drinks to the toast of “new beginnings.” Problem is, we won’t be starting from scratch and we’re facing a whole new set of worries.

The Bush clique will be leaving behind disastrous wars and occupations costing hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. This disaster of an administration has left the country with 5 million more families in poverty and nearly 4 million less manufacturing jobs. Meanwhile, oil companies make record profits through price gouging.

How Did Bush Get This Far?
Bush came to office by stealing an election that disenfranchised African American voters. The Democratic Party hierarchy didn’t challenge this grand theft election. That was only the beginning in a long line of Democratic Party capitulations to Bush.

The Democrats voted to authorize the war in Iraq and they haven’t cut the funding for this quagmire of an occupation. The Democrats voted for the attacks on civil liberties and didn’t block Bush’s stacking of the Supreme Court. You call that opposition?

How could Bush have been re-elected in 2004 in the middle of this mess? Look at Bush’s competition: an out-of-touch billionaire (John Kerry) who wanted more tax cuts for the rich, more corporate power, and more troops in Iraq. Hardly motivating. The logic of big business influence in the Democratic leadership brought this human yawn of a candidate into the situation.

Bush and Cheney’s coalition was cobbled together as an alliance of the Christian Right (voting base), the neo-conservatives (ideologues), and a particularly rapacious section of big business (oil blood money). The Evangelical voting base of the Republicans in 2000 and 2004 blamed the “liberal elite” for “cultural decay.” As far as they and other working-class voters who went over to the Republicans were concerned, all the Democrats offered was empty promises at election time and in practice trade deals that led to the loss of millions of good jobs.

Karl Rove, the evil genius of the Bush clique, thought this coalition could secure a one-party state for decades throughout much of the country, but with scandals constantly surrounding Republican politicians it is harder for them to claim to stand on some sort of moral mountain of authority. From Enron to Scooter Libby to Cheney’s drunken hunting accident, it has become clear to the former Republican voting base that the Bush administration is just as corrupt as the big city liberals. The economy has become the key issue, rather than “moral values,” in the heartland of the country.
   
What Next?
In terms of style, Bush won’t be a hard act to follow. An articulate Obama looks a lot better in comparison. Even the bumbling old McCain would make people feel better than the fear and loathing of the Bush era. Still, over the last eight years processes have been accelerated that will not be easily reversed.

The U.S. ruling elites have become addicted to parasitic economic speculation, and the country is financed on massive debt. The world’s superpower is on the skids while regional powers like China, Russia, Iran, and the European countries have filled the vacuum for domination and exploitation.

After Bush, the powerful big business elites want to use Obama’s multi-cultural image to help leverage a return to the pre-Bush “multilateral” (as opposed to unilateral) foreign policy. They want to actively reassert the power of financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, which have declined due to the revolts in Latin America and the fall of the U.S. dollar. These institutions that were once responsible for slashing social spending, ending environmental regulations, and squashing the state sector of dozens of economies will now be propped up by U.S. rulers. This return will not happen seamlessly or easily or possibly at all. The ship is sinking slowly, and a new captain, no matter how articulate or steady-handed, can’t reverse course.

Polls indicate the Republicans are headed for defeats in the fall. We should remember how the GOP used issues like abortion and gay marriage to try to whip up a reactionary “consensus” around themselves at the turn of the century. They could do the same again, this time with a nasty anti-immigrant or racist character. In a time of economic crisis, this could be a scary phenomenon.

Socialists and activists will need to occupy the vacuum that could open up for us in the next period. We can’t be tied to the Democrats if we want to do this effectively, and we need to take up the day-to-day issues in the lives of working-class people.