Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

Are the Racist Smears Working?

Campaign by Codeword

By BRIAN JONES

This year , I'm guessing a lot of people are going to dress up as John McCain or Sarah Palin for Halloween.

If you've seen the videos of McCain/Palin rallies, you know what's so scary about them. You've seen people call Obama a terrorist or express fear that he's an Arab--or worse, a secret Muslim! You've seen the person carrying a Curious George doll with a hat that says "Obama." Yes, a stuffed monkey labeled "Obama."

In other words, you've been transported, via YouTube, into a world of hard-core racists--people who are just seething at the possibility that someone who isn't white might be the next president. And worst of all, some of those crowds look pretty big.

A lot of people I've talked to over the past few weeks are drawing the same conclusion: McCain and Palin's turn towards a racist smear campaign is working. My friends and colleagues are looking at these videos and thinking: "That's what most of America is like."

Four things (at least!) need to be said about this.

First, these rallies are extremely scary, and people are right to be frightened by them. McCain and Palin are clearly tapping into an audience that is ready to blame Arabs, Muslims, Blacks, immigrants or any "other" for the economic crisis. Georgia Rep. John Lewis was dead right: the Republicans are appealing to a racist minority that has a history of putting their despicable ideas into action--violent action.

But the second--and often overlooked--point is that while the McCain-Palin smear campaign galvanized a hard-core racist base, it has also provoked a backlash in the country as a whole.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that six out of ten voters thought McCain was spending more time attacking Obama than explaining his own ideas. It also found that Obama had opened up a huge lead on McCain (53 percent to 39 percent, "if the election were held today"), and that voters who recently changed their minds about McCain were three times more likely to have developed a more negative view of him.

"The top reasons cited by those who said they thought less of Mr. McCain," the Times reported, "were his recent attacks and his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate."

The same poll found "for the first time, that white voters are just about evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama, who, if elected, would be the first Black president," the Times article said. "The poll found that Mr. Obama is supported by 45 percent of white voters--a greater percentage than has voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections, according to exit polls."

Interestingly, a crowd of mostly white hockey fans booed Palin, the self-described "ultimate hockey mom," at an NHL game in Philadelphia. This wonderful event may not be based on the most scientific sampling, but it's the kind of thing to keep in mind when people around us are falling back on the idea that the American population is hopelessly racist.

McCain and Palin have not succeeded in shifting the population in their favor with racist attacks on Obama. That is extremely good news for those who aspire to build a broad movement against racism in this country.

I'm not sure which is more frightening, though: watching McCain and Palin whip a crowd into a patriotic, anti-Obama frenzy with racist code words, or watching McCain try to backpedal when audience members drop the code and speak in plain language?

McCain has a TV ad where the word "DANGEROUS" appears in large letters by Obama's face. But in Minneapolis, he was clearly embarrassed by a supporter who admitted to being "afraid" of Obama. McCain quickly said: "He is a decent person." At that point, the audience began booing. McCain continued, "And a person that you do not have to be scared of as the president of the United States." McCain apparently wants to have his smear campaign cake, and deny it, too.

He took questions at a rally in Minnesota, which led to an even worse exchange:

WOMAN: "I can't trust Obama. I've heard about him. He's not, he's not... He's an Arab."

MCCAIN: "No ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."

That's not a typo.

Third point: Since when is "decent family man" the opposite of "Arab"? John McCain can profess all of the respect in the world for John Lewis and the civil rights movement, but he doesn't feel the need to pay any respect to Arabs.

That's one of the things that that the civil rights movement won, by the way--politicians are definitely not allowed to be openly racist against African Americans anymore. Unfortunately, it's still okay in American politics to say profoundly racist things against Arabs and Muslims.

To my knowledge, neither of the candidates has come out and said that there's nothing wrong with being Arab or Muslim. Neither of the candidates (to my knowledge) has appeared at a mosque. Shamefully, last June, Obama's campaign even barred two Muslim women wearing headscarves from sitting in the area behind Obama's podium at a campaign event in Detroit.

And that leads to the fourth and final point: Obama's campaign is more about capitalizing on the sea change in American attitudes about race than it is about challenging the racism that continues to exist.

The high-water mark on that score was Obama's speech about racism in March, after the media first began whipping up a controversy about Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was the best I've ever heard from a politician, but it was a speech he did everything to avoid giving.

Hillary Clinton had attempted to use his relationship with Wright to paint Obama as an "angry Negro." Faced with the threat that Clinton could pull white voters away from him, Obama took up his and Wright's views on race in a more straightforward manner. Unfortunately, when the hysteria about Wright reared its head again, in early May, Obama backed away from the content of his earlier speech and renounced Wright.

Many progressives are deeply proud of the fact that Obama is African-American. But is his campaign a vehicle for progressive, anti-racist ideals?

The New York Times has reported several times on the experiences of people campaigning for Obama and how they respond to racism from voters. One volunteer wrote:

I'm canvassing for Obama. If this issue comes up, even if obliquely, I emphasize that Obama is from a multiracial background, and that his father was an African intellectual, not an American from the inner city. I explain that Obama has never aligned himself solely with African-American interests--not on any issue--but rather has always sought to find a middle ground.

Another, when confronted by a woman who expressed fear that she couldn't trust Black people, said: "One thing you have to remember is that Obama, he's half white, and he was raised by his white mother. So his views are more white than Black really."

The point isn't to lay the tactics of random volunteers at the feet of Obama. The point is that we can't rely on the Obama campaign to be a vehicle for anti-racist activism. Election campaigns, by their nature, are a low form of political activity. Whatever the views of the participants, the priority inevitably becomes getting votes, not changing ideas or policies or institutions.

A co-worker of mine who is campaigning for Obama on her lunch hours thinks that the campaign will help to create a network of people who care about social change and want to stay active after the election. I hope she's right.

Whether she is or not, though, we need an anti-racist movement of the civil rights variety, badly. We're going into a painful recession with relatively weak unions, and relatively weak community organizations. Politics, as the saying goes, abhors a vacuum. It's likely that there will be a right-wing element that attempts to speak to people's real pain, and point it in a racist direction.

But no matter how scary the Republican right gets, we shouldn't expect Democratic politicians to squarely take on racism. That's the job of an independent movement, and there's never been a more urgent time to start building one.

Brian Jones writes for the Socialist Worker.

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