First Published: Frontline, Vol. 6, No. 6, August 29, 1988.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
For nearly everyone on the left end of the political spectrum in 1988, giving enthusiastic support to the insurgent candidacy of Jesse Jackson through the primaries and into the Democratic convention was an easy, almost obvious decision. Now comes the hard part.
As the presidential campaign heads into the home stretch, with no progressive candidate in sight and the Democratic ticket doing its best to obscure the issues, the situation confronting the left is murkier and more complex, and the temptation to just sit this one out is bound to arise. But even without Jackson continuing as a candidate, work within the Democratic Party in the fall election period can make an important contribution to the protracted process of building a powerful progressive current in U.S. national politics. And even if Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen refuse to mount the kind of direct challenge to Reaganism that Jackson demanded, there are still very real, concrete things at stake in the outcome of this election.
For both of these reasons, the left in our view has a responsibility not only to vote for but to work for the election of the Democratic nominee – with no illusions and with a clear understanding of the broader political context which frames the period from now to November. As Jesse Jackson’s post-convention appearances and actions have shown, support for the Dukakis- Bentsen ticket is the new terrain on which the left must operate to advance an independent progressive agenda. The electoral activity of the left this fall should certainly not be reduced to boosterism for the Duke – but neither can the issue of support for the Democratic nominee be sidestepped.
To begin with, the decision to support Dukakis and help defeat George Bush comes with the territory – a natural extension of the left’s entry into the arena of bourgeois electoral politics over the past several years. The left’s increased electoral participation, catalyzed by the two Jackson campaigns, has flowed from a recognition that the present two-party system remains the key site for the political activity of the masses, despite the ruling class stranglehold over both parties. The Democratic Party in particular still holds the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of the most progressive-minded sections of the working class. To write off the electoral arena as some kind of capitalist hoax, or to stay away because of the “impurity” of the institutions encountered there, amounts to taking a permanent seat on the sidelines of U.S. politics.
Barring some unforeseen social cataclysm that completely reshuffles the political deck, the Democratic Party will continue to be the main staging area for broad progressive intervention into national politics for some time to come. Participation in the national electoral process through the Democratic Party, in other words, should be regarded by the left as a strategic investment in the development of a permanent progressive current, and not simply as a tactic to employ or discard from year to year, depending on the candidates or what else is happening.
Even more than 1984, the 1988 campaign has brought home the fact that contending on the bourgeoisie’s turf can yield major gains for advancing a progressive agenda and breaking the marginalization of the left. But making these gains also necessitates playing by at least some of the rules – one of which is supporting the party’s ticket. Jackson’s decision to run a more “orthodox” race this time around was a key element in the dramatic successes scored by the campaign. For Jackson and his supporters to now renounce the party, oppose Dukakis and call for a split or a boycott would be a self-destructive act, throwing away the fruits of years of work for an empty symbolic gesture. And for the left, much of whose participation has come through the Jackson campaign, the same considerations apply – though on a much smaller scale, proportional to the left’s comparatively weak and undeveloped position in U.S. politics.
This is not an abstract point. Chiefly through the vehicle of the Jackson campaigns and the related motion in Black politics, progressive voters and their representatives have for the first time established a measurable degree of influence over the policies and direction of the Democratic Party. The clearest example was the defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, derailed by the votes of conservative Southern Democratic senators who had no choice but to be accountable to the heavy Black voting majorities that put them in office. The same “new equation” was on display in Atlanta in a hundred ways, with a distinct progressive wing of the party playing a visible and recognized – though surely limited – role at the Democratic convention.
Looking forward, it should be obvious that if a Dukakis administration is installed in January 1989, those who helped put it there will be in a better position to exert leverage on both government officials and the party hierarchy than those who stayed home. (By the same token, should Dukakis lose, those who at least made the effort can hardly be blamed for the defeat.)
On a host of questions, progressives could at least have an opening to pressure a Dukakis administration – an opening earned by participation in the common effort to reclaim the White House after eight years of Reagan-Bush. The heightened potential for demanding accountability from a Democratic administration brings us to the second reason for supporting Dukakis and the party he currently controls: they are manifestly preferable to four more years of George Bush and the GOP. The team of Dukakis and Bentsen, the neo-technocrat and the old-line backroom politician, has no intention of breaking with the capitalist consensus, dismantling the empire or ushering in an era of sweeping progressive social reform. Yet within the constraints of the ongoing, “legitimate” ruling class debate, a Democratic administration would clearly be much more willing to make pragmatic adjustments to changing realities on specific policies than a Bush administration – particularly if enough public pressure is exerted.
On a host of questions, a Dukakis administration and a Democratic Congress could make a difference: aid to the contras and to Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA mercenaries; sanctions against South Africa; appointments to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary; staffing and enforcement practices in the Justice Department, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Environmental Protection Agency; funding for AIDS research and education, infant nutrition programs, and on and on. And simply through the natural operation of patronage, a Dukakis administration would send the small army of New Right ideological zealots now stashed away in government offices back to the private sector.
This is not an election that promises a radical shift in national policy. But it is hard to see how the interests of the working class, the progressive movement and the left would somehow be served by not working to block the election of a neo-Reaganite Republican ticket which obviously represents the greater of two evils.
None of this is intended to suggest that the left should devote all its energies to electing Michael Dukakis, or that the left should, as a matter of principle, always back whichever bourgeois candidate seems least objectionable. The necessity of supporting the Democratic ticket in 1988 is determined by the absence of any meaningful, historically significant alternative. If a substantial third party existed on the left, or if the conditions were ripe for a major split in the Democratic Party, an entirely different approach might be called for. But the fact that no such option is available, or even on the close horizon, only highlights the importance of using the remaining months of the 1988 elections to develop and consolidate the institutional base for the further growth of a progressive political expression. This means advocating a vote for the Democratic ticket; it also means projecting on as broad a scale as possible the main points of the peace, jobs and justice agenda. Jesse Jackson’s ongoing activity is a key element in making this occur; but so is the independent work of left activists who have gained rich experience in the Jackson campaigns of the last two contests.
The forms such activity might take will vary from place to place according to the level of development of the progressive forces. Depending on the circumstances, the emphasis might be on local races where progressive candidacies can have an impact, or on laying the groundwork in state legislatures for the congressional reapportionment that will follow the 1990 Census, or on support for the campaigns of the small but crucial progressive contingent in Congress. In other cases, the priority might be gaining greater control over the machinery of the Democratic Party itself, from precinct committees to state executive boards. Some local situations may warrant working independently, outside the Democratic Party, or focusing on strengthening promising chapters of the National Rainbow Coalition.
Whatever the particulars, it is essential that work be conducted to give the progressive movement in the electoral arena a more stable, institutionalized form. The period between now and November 8 will never be as heady as the weeks in the spring when Jesse Jackson’s vision of peace, jobs and justice dominated the headlines and scared the wits out of the political establishment. But the coming period can be crucial for translating the sentiment Jackson galvanized into more lasting forms-and in the process, getting rid of George Bush once and for all.