Dems finally find an issue

If you whisper “Fire” in a crowded theater, nothing will happen. Shout it at the top of your lungs and it’s another story.

The heavies in the Democratic Party leadership have been very quiet over the continued suffering of thousands of Gulf Coast survivors, much of which results directly from institutionalized racism and rich people’s contempt for the poor. They haven’t squawked over the bleeding of this country’s social services to fund vicious, imperialist wars. They want even more troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

They didn’t even kick up much of a fuss over Bush’s appointment of Samuel Alito, an unregenerate right-winger, to the Su preme Court at a time when many are worried that women’s reproductive rights are seriously in jeopardy. Yes, many Demo crats voted against Alito—when they knew they didn’t have a majority. But when even a minority could have stopped his nomination by sustaining a filibuster, many Demo crats caved in—to the satisfaction of conser vatives they are wooing for the next election.

Now comes the fraudulent, bogus issue of the ports. Suddenly New York senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton are agreeing with Republicans Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert that a deal made by the Bush administration allowing a company from the United Arab Emirates to manage six U.S. ports is a horrendous threat to “national security.”

The company will have nothing to do with security, which is under the jurisdiction of U.S. agencies. Furthermore, the UAE rulers have shown again and again that they understand their privileged position rests on collaboration with U.S. governments and corporations in the exploitation of the riches of the Middle East, and that’s why they’re in-tight with the Bush administration.

But finally, finally, Schumer and Clinton, who both have even bigger political ambitions, think they have found an issue that will appeal to those to the RIGHT of the Bush administration, especially anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigots. And they are the ones who have much of the big money the politicians want for the coming congressional and presidential campaigns.

These “liberal” Democrats aren’t concerned about the majority of people in the U.S. who are against this war—including most of the soldiers and their families—and who have come to understand more clearly that the “homeland security” issue and Arab-baiting are just ways for the warmongers to push through their agenda.

If they made a real clamor about the growing divide between rich and poor, about the billion-dollar compensation for some executives while workers’ real incomes fall, about the health care crisis—all of which are tied to Washington’s costly imperialist expansion—they could pick up a lot of votes from the huge number of people who have given up on politics and don’t go to the polls.

But they are not the ones who can throw millions of dollars into the Democrats’ campaign coffers.

However, they are the ones who can breathe life into a REAL opposition to the Bush gang’s right-wing offensive by taking it to the streets, the workplaces, and wherever workers and poor people struggle to survive this greedy, oppressive capitalist system.