8-15-08, 9:03 am
Editor's note: Joelle Fishman chairs the political action commission of the Communist Party. She discussed what voters should know about the real John McCain. The first part of the interview can be read here and both portions can be listened to here. The Communist Party election program, 'Election 2008: Help Make History,' can be read and downloaded at .
JOELLE FISHMAN: The truth about John McCain is not very pretty. His background is steeped in the military industrial complex. You can start with the Iraq War, when he made the flippant comment that 'as far as I'm concerned, we could be in there for 100 years.' The peace movement has been fighting for a timeline. We have been fighting to get out of Iraq, and we understood that perhaps the tactical way to do that is to at least set a timeline. Barack Obama is working/pressing very hard on the idea of a timeline. We now have before us 70 percent of the people in the country who are opposed to this war, but John McCain would defy the wishes of the majority of people by staying in Iraq, for the oil corporations' profits and for US domination of the region. So that is the first thing people need to know about him.
Number 2 is Social Security. This is one of the things I always talk about when it comes to who the real John McCain is. Social Security is for retirement security after you've worked hard all your life. Social Security is for children who are beneficiaries because a parent is no longer alive. Social Security is for those who are disabled and do not have the capacity to work. Social Security reaches across the spectrum and across the generations. It was a tremendous victory that was won in the 1930s as part of the New Deal program. It wasn't handed down. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded to millions of people on the streets and a huge demand and helped create the Social Security System.
John McCain would undo Social Security. He would privatize Social Security, and risk it on the stock market to the benefit of the financiers. He would end any kind of confidence in a worker that there would be some income in the older years. Barack Obama has said unequivocally that he opposes the privatization of Social Security and that he would uphold this very important program.
The third thing about John McCain is that he opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill would give workers the right to a voice in their workplace/ Workers would gain the right to unionize without discrimination. With a union workers would be able to win higher wages and work in dignity and repect. Even if it passed the House and the Senate, John McCain would not sign the Employee Free Choice Act. On the other hand, Barack Obama has made the Employee Free Choice Act a priority. I believe he has said that it is one of the first things he would like to enact.
If you look at the health care proposals of each candidate, John McCain has no commitment to everybody being covered. As a matter of fact, he is so callous and big-business oriented that he would actually undermine the coverage that people have won in their union contracts through struggle.
Barack Obama says that he is committed to universal healthcare, which is excellent. We support HR 676 which is single-payer, and with an Obama presidency, we would have the opportunity to make our case and organize for that in the context of a president who supports universal healthcare – the idea that everyone should be covered.
On the issues of civil rights, women's rights, and immigrant rights John McCain has failing grades. At the NAACP Convention he had a lot of explaining to do as to why, every time the Martin Luther King holiday came up for a vote over a great number of years, on every single occasion he voted no, which is indicative of his overall attitude toward the struggle for equality. He can say what he wants to now to try to double-talk, but that is just a plain and simple fact.
Barack Obama, by virtue of his whole life experience and choices, has been in the forefront of the struggle for equality, not only for African Americans as an African American, but for all people in our country. When it comes to immigrant rights, for example, he supports a comprehensive approach to immigration reform, and he supports the Dream Act, so that the children of immigrants can attend college at the in-state tuition rate. He supports that everybody who can pass a driver's test should be able to get a driver's license, whether they have citizenship papers or not, and he supports the concept of a path to citizenship.
John McCain did co-sponsor a bill with Ted Kennedy in the Senate, which had some good features but also had serious problems. There were some in the immigrant rights movement who supported it and some who did not. The Communist Party was very critical of the bill, because it contained guestworker provisions that were exploitative. But now McCain has said that today he would vote against his own bill. He is pandering to the extreme right within his party. So when it comes to immigrant rights, the choice is also very stark and clear. Most of the immigrants rights movement may want to go further than where Barack Obama is at this time, but with an Obama presidency we would have the space to raise those struggles in the framework of a path to citizenship, of trade agreements that are non-exploitative, and so on. Whereas with John McCain, it is the exact opposite.
When it comes to women's issues, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund shows that on every vote regarding women's health – not only abortion, but on all issues of women's health, for poor women, for testing for breast cancer and other such measures, John McCain voted no, or he was absent and didn't make it a point to be there. John McCain's rating on women's health issues is zero percent – which is outrageous. A lot of women don't know this. Even women who support Barack Obama don't know this. Planned Parenthood is knocking on doors and letting people know. Barack Obama has a very strong record on the issue of women's rights. On the other hand, John McCain has bluntly stated that if elected he would try to get the Supreme Court to repeal Roe v. Wade. Obama, of course, would uphold Roe v. Wade.
There is a lot of material coming out that is easily available to the public, which exposes the real John McCain. One of the best websites is by the AFL-CIO. They have a section called McCain Revealed. It is in the form of a little notebook with different topics. You can click on a topic and get a pretty good picture of where John McCain stands, and, as I say, the picture is pretty ugly if you are looking at it from the point of view of a working person.
We have a big job. McCain has a veneer of being a moderate, of crossing the aisle. But when you examine his voting record, his background and his political orientation, it is very very chilling. That's why I say that with John McCain it would be another four years of Bush, or worse.
