I was on a labor walk this Saturday and found union people of all backgrounds, private and pubic sector, ready to vote and ready to help get out the vote.

They understood the dangers in this election much better than they had in 1980 or in 1994, and much better than I had in 2000 when I supported Ralph Nader for President. But they were worried and for good reason – ultra right candidates like the one in my congressional district, who advocates the elimination of virtually all labor and social legislation – social security, Medicare, the regulation of business, and a 23 percent national sales tax to “replace” the income tax, were bombarding them with printed material and negative local TV ads.

Mass media has given these far rightists a good deal of publicity, taking their statements  at face value, while at the same time, labor’s campaign against the Republican right and the painstaking work of progressive organizations like Move on have  been largely invisible.

Contrary to the usual rightwing shibboleths, it seems to me that mass media is either consciously or unconsciously building what political scientists call a “bandwagon effect” for the Republicans, that is, encouraging voters for the GOP and discouraging voters against them by pointing to all the signs of their “coming victory.”

Elections are mobilizations of voters first and foremost. If the people who voted for President Obama two years ago because they sought to end the Bush era and save the U.S. from a catastrophic depression come out and vote, the Republicans will gain nothing and quite possibly suffer losses in a number of contested seats.

If those who opposed President Obama in 2008 because a. they feared that he would a) act to eliminate the tax giveaways of the Bush administration which benefitted the rich and no one else, b) revive regulation of business which had been undermined massively over the last 30 years, and c) the idea of an African American president regardless of his qualifications and policies was something they would never accept (an important point rarely dealt with here but widely understood internationally) come out as they are expected to do and the others don’t (which the media, as if to bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy is highlighting) then Republican gains, even a Republican victory will be likely.

Such a victory will put the Republicans in a position to launch a “third wave” of Reaganism, repealing the new national health care legislation, attempting to launch new draconian budget cuts in all areas concerning social welfare, and attempting to enact new anti-labor legislation. While I don’t think that President Obama will follow the road of Clinton and collaborate with such policies – I believe he will stand up and veto them – we can at best expect political paralysis at the national level.

If a significant number of misnamed “tea party Republicans” are elected to Congress, the ability of the “respectable” Republican right who have used them as they used the religious right since the 1970s, to control them will also be limited.

As the conservative German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, said to President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s once someone like Joe McCarthy gets some power, it is difficult to control him and keep him from controlling you.(Adenauer, an anti-Nazi conservative, I and others believe, was alluding also to Hitler, whom his fellow conservatives and the upper classes helped to fund against the Social Democrats and Communists as a sort of insurance policy, not necessarily to establish the racist dictatorship of capital which the Nazis eventually established after they made large gains in German elections).

A great deal is at stake tomorrow and we should do everything we can right up to the last moment to get out the vote.

At the same time, realizing the dangers, we should not be dispirited, whatever happens in the elections. A Republican defeat should lead us to demand in a stronger, more unified voice and action that the Obama administration begin to “bail out” the people and sweep away the dead weight of the last three decades. A Republican victory should lead us to close ranks against the inevitable GOP political blitzkrieg, to resist at all levels rightwing Republican initiatives and prepare to reclaim Congress and restore the presidency in 2012.

Photo courtesy elleinad Flickr, cc by 2.0