After the Elections: Resistance Is Not Futile
Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism.

George Bush was opposed in 2004 by more votes than any other president in history. That's the good news.

The Bush reelection and the Republicans' reinforced control of Congress mark the most complete and protracted control of government by the Right in a century. That puts basic constitutional protections as well as such social gains as Social Security and reproductive rights in serious jeopardy.

The anti-Bush vote was an expression of an explosive grassroots movement. It was an achievement of the "other superpower" of democratic public opinion, finding its voice and creating new forms of organization, coalition and mobilization.

These divisions won't go away. The confrontation will continue, and therefore, as painful as this loss is, it should not -- it must not -- be cause for demoralization or demobilization.

More than anything seen in decades, this democratic movement has shown a capacity for independent initiative from below and has created a ongoing infrastructure for progressive change. It has
* placed a steadily expanding army of activists on the ground, when and where they were needed, from the nationwide demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq to the Republican convention to house-to-house canvasses of battleground states. It brought millions into the process of protest, resistance and political activism, and fell short by only a heartbreakingly narrow margin of the goal of sending the little man in the White House back to Crawford.

* built an array of cooperating organizations, including the labor movement and its new citizen- affiliates and a host of cyber organizations that now embrace millions

* matched the record war chest of the Republicans almost dollar for dollar, something that only a year earlier would have been considered a fantasy, and conducted a sophisticated nationwide advertising campaign

* built an internet-based truth machine, countering the spin and falsification of Fox TV and hate-radio, and filling the void created by the self-censorship and submissiveness of the mainstream media to those in power.

The election achievements of this movement were all the more impressive because it was burdened by a candidate who played to Bush's strengths. John Kerry had fallen into line early for the Iraq war and, to the end, never voiced a clear critique of it or even of the policy of preventive (that is, aggressive) war. He emerged, in fact, from the efforts of the Democratic Party establishment to crush the anti-war insurgency in its ranks.

Right-wing pundits have been asserting loudly that the real division in America is not class and economics but social issues (God, guns and gays). Not so. The promotion of "wedge issues" is a way that those with a narrow class base seek a broad electoral base. But politics is still very much about power and money, about class, race and gender.

The right can be defeated because its true beneficiaries are a very narrow group. It can only be defeated by soberly analyzing and countering the deceptions by which it frightens, deceives and stampedes wide sections of the people. It will require dialog and engagement, as well as resistance.
* The Bush administration is a child of crony capitalism -- the naked use of government to reward the already rich, to reshape government as an enforcer of corporate agendas. The progressive movement needs to sound a clear populist alternative, using the language of class. It can't do so while confining itself to neutered formulations about assisting the poor to enter the ranks of the "middle class." The working class exists and must fight for its own rights.

* In 2004, the Republican Party finished morphing into the Dixiecrats. That process, begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and proclaimed by Richard Nixon as the Republicans' "Southern Strategy," is essentially complete, merging the most far-right, militarist, rabidly pro-Big Business forces with the South of resistance to civil rights. In doing so, they are building on a history of centuries of racism.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black people won the right to vote in the South, but the old power structure -- the descendants of the Confederacy -- still rule there, under a different party label, by a combination of fear and exclusion. And they aim to reshape the government and political structure of the country along this model of eviscerated democracy. Hence the wholesale efforts to disenfranchise African Americans, both in 2000 and in 2004, in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere.
* One of the most dangerous trends of right wing politics is its success in wrapping shilling for corporate interests in the mantle of religion. Given the depth of religious conviction in the United States and the growth of evangelical Christianity, in particular, this is a potent force. When politics is a matter of faith ("moral values"), by definition it resists all evidence and argument. Faith trumps facts.

Many other religious forces -- Sojourners, the Call for Renewal, and Tikkun, to name a few -- assert a very different perspective on war, abortion, the death penalty, poverty and gay marriage.

In the end, corporate politics and do not readily coexist. In Iraq, for example, the Halliburtons and oil companies feed at the public trough while the faithful get pious phrases and body bags.
* Running as Commander-in-Chief in a time of war -- specifically, the "war on terrorism" -- gave Bush a huge advantage. Fear-mongering works, especially when the fears are rooted in such a real and traumatic attack against our country as September 11. But the "war on terror" is designed to last indefinitely and therefore to entrench the right in power indefinitely. On this issue, too, John Kerry failed the movement, simply echoing the simplistic macho rhetoric of Bush. The left can speak sensibly about what is needed to keep our country safe and about how to play a constructive role among the community of nations.
* The play book of Karl Rove -- Bush's political strategist -- uses fears and prejudices with brutal effectiveness. The anti-gay-marriage initiatives, on the ballot in 11 states, were this year's equivalent of the Willie Horton campaign of Bush I in 1988, mobilizing people against a fictitious threat.

One of the finest accomplishments of the movement to defeat Bush was its cooperation, mutual support and unprecedented unity along diverse political and ideological lines. That unity has to be preserved, nourished and expanded in the coming critical days and months. Yes, there are difficult times ahead. But we have the power to resist. And we have the vision to build for the future.