10-08-08, 12:44 pm

Many readers of this publication have already decided to vote for Barack Obama. Indeed, there are several good reasons to vote for Obama, reasons resonating with leftist values. His union endorsements, work in community organizing, call for universal health care, support for a more liberal judiciary, and stand against the war in Iraq amid myriad of other qualities are reasons enough. Nevertheless, we all recognize that Obama is not a left candidate per se, and he certainly hasn’t presented himself as the sort of radical we might otherwise find attractive. No doubt many of us in recent years have sworn off supporting Democrats, particularly after the NAFTA-loving, union-busting, and welfare-ending Clinton administrations, and further, because we have accepted the simple fact that many congressional Democrats find themselves fat and happy in the same corporate pockets as their Republican counterparts.

Consequently, as leftists, as the believers in true democracy, some of us have supported candidates from the Greens, Socialist Workers Party, and others as the best means for voting our consciences. Perhaps we reasoned that the differences between Republican and Democratic candidates were insufficient to warrant supporting one against the other. Perhaps we decided that the only way to advance third parties was to actually vote for them. While we knew our third party selections wouldn’t win, we never believed that voting for the better candidate meant “throwing away” our vote.

However, in this election cycle, the circumstances facing the United States are radically different. Today, we stand at the precipice of two different forms of massive government intervention in the economy – at a time when the coffers are depleted, when personal, corporate, and public debt threaten the fabric of society in ways that are altogether more serious than ever before. At the edge of this precipice, in the face of a total economic meltdown, there are only two options facing the American government as it readies various packages designed to “stabilize,” “recapitalize,” and “rescue” the economy. These two options can be qualified as being more or less “socialistic” or “National Socialistic.” Indeed, both are forms of socialism, both are characteristic of massive government intervention, but as we well know, “socialism” is democratic while “National Socialism” is fascist.

Without question, the recently enacted “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act,” the $700 billion bailout, has more in common with fascism than democracy. In many respects, it is the economic equivalent of declaring martial law. As many commentators have noted, Wall Street has basically held a gun to America’s head and demanded money “or else,” “you’ll lose your job,” “you’ll lose your house,” “you’ll lose your health insurance,” “you’re kids will suffer,” and so on. Now, Treasury Secretary Paulson – a former Wall Streeter par excellence – has the legal right to spend your money with a cabal of bourgeois central bankers, none of whom will have to answer in any meaningful way to your democratic oversight, and all of whom are closer to corporate CEOs than they are to you and me. In the meantime, we are supposed to trust their capitalistic vision – a vision that got us into the mess in the first place, one that perhaps has run its course.

Now, as the nation teeters between socialism and National Socialism, between democracy and fascism, we must unite behind the single candidate most likely to stand for the people. We recognize that Obama is not a left candidate, that he is not a radical: we know that the Democratic Party has burned us in the past. But we cannot afford to let one vote among us to go to third parties this time. The stakes are too high. And the highest stake of all may well be whether some form of democracy continues in this country. Thus, we must ask: In the wake of government intervention, which candidate is more likely to support socialism? Should we trust democracy itself to an establishment scion with more houses than he can count, who “made his name” after an unsuccessful bombing run over democratic Vietnam, who made his name again as a Keating Fiver, again with a campaign finance law that made politics the sport of wealthy candidates, and again as an unwavering supporter of an unjust war in Iraq? Or should we put aside our support for third parties and vote for the young bootstrapper whose history and positions are more antithetical to fascism? At this moment we cannot forget that most Germans supported Hitler – and that most Italians supported Mussolini. In many ways, the economic conditions that faced their nations are not too different from those facing us today. It is no surprise that the political choices we face are similar as well. But in the end, as leftists, we don’t really have a choice, do we? We must support Obama.