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EDITORIAL

Biden and Palin

Published Sep 3, 2008 10:36 PM

The vice presidential candidates of the two major parties, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, confirm that nothing has changed about either of these capitalist parties.

There has been great change, on the other hand, among the masses of people who go to the polls. They are very much against the war in Iraq, after having been bamboozled for a while by the lies of the Bush administration. They want the government to do something about the economic crisis that is bearing down on them like a freight train out of control. They are ready to try something new to bring about change in this government. Many, many white people have put behind them the extreme prejudice that would have ruled out an African American presidential candidate in every election before this one.

Yes, there has been change already. But look at Biden and Palin, chosen by their respective running mates, and you won’t find it. Let’s take Palin first, since every liberal can give you a long list of reasons why she’s not just right of center but comes from the ideological far right on issues like women’s right to choose, climate change and the environment, reining in (not) the oil companies, and science—like denying evolution.

The only thing that seems to separate Palin from a whole host of Christian fundamentalist political figures is that she’s a woman. But being a woman, and acting on behalf of women, are two very different things. After Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and a bunch of other consummate imperialist women, it should be clear that gender alone does not define a political figure. Their class loyalties trumped any feelings for the problems of working-class women, whose situation has been growing direr as corporate rule grows stronger and meaner.

And then there’s Biden—an experienced servant of imperialist interests who has headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just when U.S. foreign relations are in a shambles. Why? Because most of the world rejects the rapacious aggression carried out by the Pentagon on behalf of the money lords of Wall Street. Biden knows how to talk softly while shepherding Congress into funding the big sticks of war and intervention.

Biden is also known as the MasterCard senator because he worked with the big banks to change the laws so workers can’t escape onerous debt any more by declaring bankruptcy.

Both these figures, by the way, come from states with great wealth and very small populations, where the super-rich (oil, lumber and mining corporations in Alaska, DuPonts in Delaware) hold the privileges and power of medieval lords.

Behind all the hoopla, smoke and mirrors of the choreographed conventions, the capitalist political process continues to disenfranchise the working class, especially its most oppressed sectors, while turning power over to craven servants of big capital.