AMERICAN ELECTIONS…
COMMENT OR NO COMMENT ?
THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS BY ALAN WOODS
America’s presidential election is over and George Bush won. The result has caused a lot of disappointment, or even despair, both in the USA and on a world scale. On the face of it, the situation seems to justify the most pessimistic interpretation. The President won a clear majority of the vote. The Democrats achieved a huge turnout, but the Republicans managed to get still more. In addition to securing his re-election, Bush now has a much firmer grip on Congress.
The Republicans added at least four more seats to their majority in the House of Representatives. They made a net gain of four Senate seats, giving them in effect a 55-45 advantage in the upper chamber. If we add the occasional support of some conservative Democrats, then George Bush is close to the 60 votes necessary to survive a delaying filibuster procedure—a considerable advantage. The scale of the Republicans’ victory seems complete.
Yet this is only a superficial view of things. Elections are no more than a snapshot of the mood of the public at a given moment in time. This result is now being advertised as “the power of conservative America”. In reality, however, the basis of this vote is extremely fragile and unstable. It will evaporate like hot water off a stove in the heat of the events that are being prepared nationally and internationally.
The fact of the matter is that the people of the United States had no real alternative. There was little to choose between Bush and Kerry, and if the latter had been elected, it would have made very little difference to the policies pursued by the United States either on the domestic or international front.
Bush’s victory, in fact, was a narrow one. The voting showed that America was split right down the middle. In the end, the result was decided by a technical wrangle in Ohio, itself a sharply divided state, which he carried by just 136,000 votes (or around 2 percent of the votes cast there). What this reveals is an America more fractured and disunited than at any time since the Civil War. The victory of Bush will do nothing to heal that rift. It will make it ever wider and more unbridgeable.
