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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 21, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Clinton's first steps are to the right

By David Perez

The $2-billion con job known as the U.S. elections is over. The bosses are back to big business as usual.

On Nov. 12, the Sunbeam Corp. announced it is getting rid of half its work force-some 6,000 employees. In terms of percentages, it is one of the biggest job cuts ever through capitalist restructuring.

That the bosses were waiting until after the elections to announce mass layoffs has been an open secret among the capitalists.

Meanwhile, the reelected Clinton administration is continuing its rightward direction, in moves that will inevitably lead it into confrontation with poor and working people.

For instance, the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress are both conspiring to cut billions of dollars from Medicare. Their only difference is by how much and at what pace.

Neither capitalist party is even considering expanding this vital program, even though millions of elderly people need better and more affordable health care.

The generals at the Pentagon, of course, don't have such problems. Their budget remains fat.

Meanwhile, Clinton is busy "reassuring the business community" that he's their buddy, according to the Nov. 18 Business Week. The president has named Franklin D. Raines, a bank executive, as budget director. He appointed investment banker Erskine B. Bowles to replace Leon Panetta as chief of staff.

Wall Street mogul Robert Rubin is reportedly staying on as treasury secretary.

The stock market greeted this news with an upward climb.

Workers are not so giddy. There has been speculation in ruling-class circles that Clinton will ask one or more Republicans to be in his Cabinet. Various names are being tossed around in the capitalist media.

They include ex-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar and former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean.

Former Clinton strategist Dick Morris said that while "Republicans tend to be white men," appointing them to Cabinet positions would be "worth it."

Since Clinton's record includes abandoning civil-rights appointee Lani Guinier and dumping Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, two African American women with progressive reputations, the president would obviously have no problem heeding his pal Morris' advice.

No shake-up of status quo

Business Week cheerfully concluded: "Clinton's Act II is not an agenda for a major shake-up of the status quo."

Under 1990s capitalism, the status quo means higher profits and luxury for the bankers and bosses, and lower wages and growing insecurity for the workers and oppressed.

Even if Clinton appoints no open Republicans, his reactionary agenda will stay the same. As Raul D. Pedraza, chief executive officer of Eagle Co., a Miami-based transportation-services company, said, "Clinton is the most Republican Democrat in a long time."

According to the Voter News Service exit poll, 40 percent of those with income over $100,000 voted for Clinton. Dole received 48 percent in this category, little more than Clinton.

The capitalists have plenty of reason to be happy with Clinton. The Nov. 18 issue of Time noted: "Clinton's success [with the wealthy] owes most to his least liberal moments.

He pushed through a crime bill whose federal portion paid for 100,000 cops by cutting federal employees and gave death-row prisoners a shorter lease on life.

"In 1992 it would have been a wild, drunken Republican dream that by 1996 a 60-year-old entitlement like Aid to Families with Dependent Children would be demolished."

This bosses' dream has been turned into a real-life nightmare for the working class-thanks to President Clinton.

But this is only one side of the equation. Millions of workers all across the United States are disenchanted and totally fed up with bourgeois politics-and a growing number are becoming disillusioned with the promises of the capitalist system.

Over half the eligible electorate sat out this year's election. It was the lowest proportion in 72 years-despite close to a billion dollars spent by Clinton and Dole in television advertising alone.

The task facing the working-class and progressive movement, particularly its vanguard communist elements, is to activate these sectors into militant class struggle.

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