STOP THE WAR!

Voters angry over the disaster unfolding in Iraq, a decline in workers’ living standards and the Bush administration’s anti-worker policies, handed a significant setback to the Republican Party in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, including a clear loss of its House majority and possible loss of the Senate.

Much of the country and the world is elated, watching the usually aggressive and arrogant Bush gang squirm after this defeat. Adding to this mood, the figure most closely associated with the tactics of the war on Iraq—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—was forced to resign in the wake of the election. (See editorial, page 10.)

But the battle to end the war has only begun. The challenge for all progressives in the U.S. and for the anti-war movement in particular is how to take this setback for Bush and turn it into a consistent struggle in the factories, schools, offices and streets to really challenge both the new Congress and the old White House.

As of mid-day Nov. 8, the Democrats had picked up at least 28 House seats. They hold a clear majority in the House of 228 to 196, with 11 seats still undecided. Democrats also picked up five Senate seats, giving them 50 to the Republican’s 49 with the close Virginia race headed for a December recount.

Democrats also replaced Republicans in six of the 34 state governorships contested this year.

Popular revulsion over the Iraq war, which has existed since the Iraqi people began a heroic resistance against the unpopular and brutal U.S. occupation, increased over the past few months. In that same period, Pentagon generals and top politicians, including former supporters of the war, openly expressed their pessimism about its outcome and their criticism of the Bush administration’s war tactics.

Meanwhile, sections of the corporate media finally began to focus on the growing casualties among U.S. troops in Iraq and the instability of the Iraqi puppet regime.

It is significant that the Democrats collected $25.9 million in contributions in 18 days in October, more than the Republican’s $18.6 million, although the Republicans collected more over the year.

A referendum on Iraq—through a glass, darkly

This split in ruling circles over the war and the growing ruling-class disillusion with the Bush administration’s unilateral management opened a space for ordinary working people to express their own opposition to the war. And they did. In exit polls, over 60 percent of voters disapproved of the Iraq war. In about a third of Massachusetts’ towns, a popular referendum calling for a U.S. withdrawal also won approval from about 60 percent of the half-million people voting.

The national election itself became a referendum on the Iraq war, distorted because the Democratic Party candidates presented no program to extricate the U.S. from Iraq. Still, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney locked onto a “stay the course” position and accused the Democrats of wanting to “cut and run.” The perception was that the Republicans were more pro-war than the Democrats. This helped the Democratic Party.

The anti-war movement, however, has no reason to expect the Democrats to take concrete anti-war measures. The Democratic national leadership—like Howard Dean and Sen. Hillary Clinton—have openly said they would not propose troop withdrawals. Some Democrats—like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry—have said they would even consider increasing U.S. troop levels. They focus their criticism on Bush’s management of the war, but never disavow the imperialist objective of ruling Iraq.

From the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney had claimed that, whatever the election outcome, the administration would go “full speed ahead” on Iraq. He told ABC News in an interview Nov. 3, “It doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. ... We’re not running for office.”

The Rumsfeld dismissal shows that the administration has been much more on the defensive than it liked to admit. But the real message these events bring to the anti-war and progressive movements is that they too had better go “full speed ahead” to mobilize against the war. It would be foolish to wait in hopes that the Democratic Party success will in itself help end the war and occupation.

Along with the Iraq war, the precarious economy and especially the deterioration of living standards for working people were important factors in the election. Voters passed all the referendums on the ballot to increase the minimum wage from the $5.15 national minimum—in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio.

Ohio has been hit severely by unemployment and a shift to low-wage, non-union jobs caused by factory closings in the “rust belt.” Ohioans, many with a strong union consciousness, voted for the referendum on the minimum wage and also punished incumbent Republicans, voting the governor and the senator up for re-election out of office.

At best, elections in capitalist countries take a measure of popular sentiment and reflect the state of the class struggle. In the contemporary United States, elections are even more limited. Only the two big parties, both pro-imperialist in their national leadership and both committed to preserving and extending capitalism, are able to play a significant role. During the elections an avalanche of pro-capitalist ideology is imposed on the population.

In addition, even within the limitation of Democrats v. Republicans, the election rules are weighted to favor more conservative politics. The makeup of the Senate—two senators from each state, no matter its size—favors the mostly Western states with small, more rural populations instead of giving proportional representation to populous states with large cities having many workers and people of color. Even the House districts have been gerrymandered, that is, distorted so as to favor the more conservative Republican candidates.

Non-citizens can’t vote, even though they are an important part of the working class in this country and highly aware of the issues, as this year’s huge May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights showed. Nor can ex-prisoners vote in many states. Biased voting rules and unequal enforcement minimize the votes of African Americans, Latin@s and Native people.

Despite these limitations, the 2006 election showed clear popular opposition to the war and anger against Bush’s anti-worker policies.

Victory for abortion rights

There was also a significant electoral victory in South Dakota for women as 55 percent of voters rejected a referendum to support a law whose acceptance would have made abortions illegal under almost any circumstance.

After the referendum was introduced, the state became a national focus of mobilizations by both pro-choice and anti-abortion groups. Planned Parenthood’s Sarah Stoesz, who organized the successful campaign against the referendum, said Nov. 8 of the victory, “This means that there has been a rebellion against social, right-wing wedge politics that have been dominating this country.”

A balanced view

But not all the voting results were progressive, and it is important to keep a balanced view of what happened. A detailed examination of the many referendums is beyond the scope of this article, as is an examination of “third-party” results, and both will have to await a future analysis by participants in these struggles.

In Michigan, the misnamed “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative,” a measure to scrap affirmative-action programs in university admissions and government hiring, was approved on a 58 percent to 42 percent vote. In another backward vote, the African American Democratic candidate for the Senate, Harold Ford, lost the election in Tennessee, most likely because of a blatantly racist and sexist television ad run by the Republicans.

Four anti-immigrant measures were approved in Arizona. They would deny bail to undocumented immigrants charged with a serious felony, make English the state’s official language, bar undocumented immigrants from receiving punitive damages in lawsuits, and prohibit them from receiving certain government services and benefits. On the other hand, two of Arizona’s most violently aggressive anti-immigrant politicians, Reps. J.D. Hayworth and pro-“Minuteman” Randy Graf, lost their House seats.

Reflecting continued social backwardness, measures aimed at banning same-sex marriages were approved in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. In Arizona, however, voters rejected such a ban for the first time in a statewide referendum.

In a progressive move, Missouri voters narrowly approved a measure guaranteeing that all federally allowed stem cell research, including on embryos, can occur in the state.

The main accomplishment of the 2006 midterm elections was to open a breach in the wall surrounding the Bush gang, who had ruled almost by edict since the 9/11 events. Now is the time to step into that breach and mobilize a massive movement to really get the U.S. troops out of Iraq, to win rights for immigrants and for all workers in the U.S., and to promote the struggles for women’s rights, against racism and for lesbian, gay, bi and trans rights.