Spark, éditoriaux des bulletins d'entreprise :
(Spark 9 nov. a écrit :The Democrats Were Given a Mandate for Change
Led by Barack Obama, the Democrats swept the elections. Winning eight million more votes than John McCain, President-elect Obama trounced him in the electoral college, 364 to 162, with 12 votes yet to be decided. Only four states voted more heavily Republican this year than they did four years ago.
The Democrats increased their control of the new Senate, holding 57 seats to the Republicans’ 40, with three seats still too close to call. And they now control the House of Representatives, 255 to 174, with six other seats still to be decided.
Governors, state legislatures, county governments, and even some judicial bodies were swept by the Democratic-wave.
Not only were the elections a repudiation of George W. Bush and Republican policies. Not only did the elections give the Democrats a mandate to junk those policies. With this big sweeping victory, the elections gave the Democrats the means to reverse direction.
George W. Bush, with much smaller margins of victory in 2000 and 2004, and with only a bare Republican control in Congress, moved rapidly to carry out his policies. The Democrats could move even faster with their much bigger 2008 victory – IF they wanted to do it.
And yet, already, Democrats tell us we have to be patient, that change won’t happen immediately.
It’s obvious that Obama and the Democrats can’t address all the problems immediately. But a party that represented working people’s interests would reverse directions immediately. It would let everyone know it is going to tear up the deal giving more money to the big banks that created this economic mess. It would make clear that it will do whatever is necessary to put an IMMEDIATE stop to the hemorrhage of jobs, a stop to the confiscation of people’s homes, to the stealing of retirees’ pensions.
Working people used their massive numbers to vote the Republicans out. Workers could use their numbers to hold the Democrats’ nose to the grindstone, to push for the changes that working people need, and to organize to fight to get them.
November 5, 2008: It’s Been a Long Time Coming!
On November 5, 2008, an African-American was elected to the presidency for the first time.
It was a momentous symbol. And its significance was deeply felt by vast numbers of people, black people of course, but also white and Hispanic.
But, still, it was only a symbol, and it’s been a long time coming. Almost four centuries ago, 1619, the first Africans were brought to the colony of Virginia in chains. Almost a century and a half ago, in the 1860s, the Constitution was amended three times, abolishing slavery and promising that citizenship rights would not be denied based on race or former condition of servitude. Almost a half century ago, 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights act, promising again what had already been promised a century before.
This election does not mean, as an editorial writer for the New York Times pretended, that now “everything really is possible in America.”
It does mean that now a very, very few African-Americans have been granted entrance into all the privileged strata of white bourgeois society – into the White House and into the executive offices of big corporations and of big Wall Street banks.
But this election did not fling open the doors to advancement for the big majority of the black population, working class and poor – no more than the election of all those upper class white presidents opened the doors for the big majority of the white population, which is also working class and poor.
We remain a society divided into classes. Capitalist exploitation weighs heavily on all workers – black, white and Hispanic. All workers are denied full access to the riches they themselves have created – even if racism historically has imposed the worst oppression on the black population.
This election did not prove, as Obama said on Tuesday night, that “democracy” is flourishing. But it did show that working people, white, black and Hispanic could join forces.
How much more reason we have to join forces to defend our common interests as working people. The unity we can forge in such a fight can only make all of us stronger.