An
AhoraNow Commentary
The 2000 U.S. Presidential Elections
and the Anti-Imperialist Left:
Dilemmas, Hard Choices, Opportunities Eric Mann
Lian Hurst Mann Introduction The
every-four-year U.S. presidential elections are important historical junctures in which forces across the political spectrum assess the current conditions facing the U.S. nation state and present contending
strategies for the future of the country. Whatever strategies contend, all political perspectives are analyzing the same conditions of the new world order, and all agree that the United States is the leader,
indeed dominator, of the transnational capitalist system—led by U.S. imperialism. All of us on the Left in the U.S., by which we mean the anti-racist, anti-imperialist Left, can use these times when the U.S.
electorate chooses the person who will attempt to lead the world order as an opportunity to examine the state of our own work, the state of the nation, and the state of the world, in order to clarify our
strategy and to evolve specific tactical interventions. The superficial and in some ways self-important question currently consuming many progressives—"Who should 'we' vote for?"—masks a far larger problem
for the Left: the anti-racist, anti-imperialist Left in the heart of the world's imperialist superpower is weak and has painfully limited options in the electoral arena. In the
post-sixties decades, as the Left has been in decline and the Democratic party has moved further to the Right, this problem has become more pronounced. Today our electoral choices are extremely limited. We
can refuse to participate as part of an effort to highlight the large percent of the population that does not take part in the process (whether by exclusion or choice); we can make a protest vote for a
marginal candidate representing a Left organization like the Peace and Freedom Party; we can vote for Ralph Nader, a disenchanted liberal Democrat, because he is running on the Green Party platform and there
is some chance of a viable third party status for the Greens; or we can vote for the anti-Left centrist internationalist Democrat Al Gore—the would-be leader of U.S. imperialism's global domination—whose
most compelling argument is that his anti-Left centrism is a conscious tactic to defeat the truly dangerous reactionary George Bush. Our purpose in writing this article is not to resolve the
issue of selecting a candidate to vote for but, rather, to use this moment of national, indeed international, focus on the strategies contending for leadership of U.S. imperialism to articulate and extend
our anti-imperialist strategy and to strengthen the anti-imperialist movement. Towards this end, we at the Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union (BRU) have focused on mass work that can be
strengthened during this period of national elections. We placed a full page ad in the Western edition of the New York Times
that asked Al Gore and the Democrats, "Which Side are You On, Racism or Civil Rights?" The ad challenged Gore to intervene in the Bus Riders Union civil rights campaign against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA.) On August 15, the Bus Riders Union organized a march of more than 1,000 people to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles demanding that Gore and the Democratic Party take action to enforce Title VI of the 1964 civil rights act by immediately cutting off all federal funds to the Los Angeles MTA's multi-billion dollar rail projects and force allocation of more than $1 billion to improve the inner-city bus system for people of color. In a second tactic, at a public meeting in Los Angeles, the BRU leadership challenged Ralph Nader and the Green Party to focus on anti-racist and anti-imperialist demands rather than a narrow white consumerism. The Strategy Center is also using our publication
AhoraNow to present our contending strategy, Toward a Program of Resistance: "We Make These Demands Against the Institutions of U.S. Imperialism,
and to expand a national debate about the elections by encouraging people to write commentaries such as ours. Finally, as the Strategy Center continues our ongoing work to strengthen the anti-racist, anti-imperialist network in Los Angeles, we are encouraging all people and organizations to use this moment of national focus to place demands on all the political parties and candidates.
Our tactical proposal is for the self-identified anti-racist, anti-imperialist political tendencies in the U.S. to make a coordinated set of demands on all candidates, and to focus on
building a unity of program, more than a unity of vote.
We propose to make our decisions on who to vote for after a period of trying to struggle with and influence the Greens and yes, the Democrats. We understand that some will choose to bring those demands primarily into the Gore campaign whereas others will focus on pressuring Ralph Nader and the Greens. But the goal is to build a greater unity of politics that can last far after the election.
The remainder of this article follows a basic outline:
I. a discussion of the particular problem in electoral politics of how "voting rights" structurally obliterates minority rights II. a review of our strategy by way of reference
to the Strategy Center's programmatic demands III. a brief review of how the issues that concern us have been addressed by the Clinton administration's practices and by each of the
presidential contenders' practices and platforms— IV. the pro-imperialist candidates Gore and Bush V. the opposition candidate Nader VI. an assessment of what is at
stake in the electorate's choice and its impact on the concerns of the Left (which will likely influence how we actually register our vote), and a review of possible tactics during the time of the
election and some thoughts on where we go after November.
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