Yet with the crucial exception of the antiwar movement that exploded into prominence on February 15, this sense of unease has yet to translate into any large-scale, organized opposition to Bush and the Republican Right. For this state of affairs, blame falls to the disorganized and pathetic state of the Democratic Party and its liberal constituencies, who have raised only the most lukewarm opposition to Bush’s policies. Bush has shamelessly used war-time hysteria to preempt opposition to the broader right-wing agenda he is forcing through under the cover of the war on terrorism. Weak-kneed Democrats have largely given Bush all he’s wanted, perpetuating the illusion that Bush and the right can’t be challenged. Professional liberals, like Democratic politicians and AFL-CIO leaders, work around the edges of Bush’s agenda, as yet lacking the conviction to offer an alternative to it. As Bush plunges the world into a major war, activists and socialists will be challenged to build an opposition in a rapidly changing environment.

Bush’s war at home

Until now, Bush has managed to camouflage his right-wing agenda with the rhetoric of "compassionate conservatism." But since the November election handed him and the Republicans control of Congress, he has unveiled a right-wing assault on all fronts. At the top of his list was the so-called stimulus plan that has nothing to do with stimulating the economy and everything to do with abolishing taxes the wealthiest Americans pay. More than half of the plan’s benefits will end up in the pockets of the richest five percent of Americans–people making more than $300,000 a year. Meanwhile, Bush agreed to extend unemployment benefits for millions of workers for only five months. He also dropped any plans to help state and local governments dealing with budget crises that are forcing drastic cutbacks in essential government services. Even if he runs into opposition on this or that policy, he’s already signaled that he has plenty more attacks where those came from. The administration’s plan to provide seniors with prescription drug benefits comes at the cost of forcing more seniors into private HMOs.

At the same time, Bush showed that all of his supposed concern about then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s nostalgia for segregation amounted to little more than hot air. Bush announced appointments to federal judgeships for three dozen reactionaries, including Judge Charles Pickering, one of Lott’s Mississippi buddies. When the Democrats controlled the Senate last year, they rejected Pickering for his hostility to civil rights, including his defense of a racist cross burner. Bush also reappointed Priscilla Owen, whom the Senate earlier rejected for her devotion to Enron and her extremist antiabortion views. He capped off his campaign to appease the right with his announcement–on Martin Luther King’s birthday–of his support for a Supreme Court case aimed at overturning affirmative action at the University of Michigan and elsewhere.

One could list other attacks on the conservative wish list–the privatization of 850,000 federal jobs and Social Security, stricter work requirements for welfare recipients, cuts in low income energy assistance, roundups of immigrants and increased spying on political dissidents–from among those Bush or his administration has already announced. Overshadowing all of this are their plans for launching a war against Iraq and a succession of wars to follow. British journalist Will Hutton called Bush’s plans "the most fiercely reactionary program to have emerged in any Western democracy since the [Second World] war, and for which [the November election], argue Republicans, is an explicit mandate."1

The administration’s attacks have an "in your face" feel, brimming with confidence at being able to push through whatever it wants. Bush pushed aside Washington insiders’ advice to govern cautiously after he lost the popular vote in the 2000 election. Likewise, he stuck to his reactionary agenda after all the same Washington insiders assured us his public criticism of Trent Lott’s pro-segregation statements put Pickering’s reappointment or opposition to affirmative action beyond the pale. Why shouldn’t Bush and his advisers feel cocky? They have had little opposition from the supposed opposition party in Washington, the Democrats, since 2001.

The role of official opposition to the Bush juggernaut fell to the Democrats, the major bourgeois party that historically incorporates popular sectors (labor, civil rights activists, etc.). Yet they have failed miserably to put up even the pretense of a fight against Bush. Bush’s exploitation of 9-11–and the Democrats’ early embrace of his warmongering stance–hemmed in the Democrats. As liberal foreign policy commentator William Hartung explained after last November’s elections,

As for the Democrats, their leadership badly misplayed what admittedly was a difficult hand. The notion that granting the president his war resolution would somehow take the war issue off the table and clear the way for discussion of domestic issues, which were considered the Democratic party’s strong suit, was a colossal miscalculation. Not only did it give voters concerned about the war nowhere to turn on election day–depressing turnout in the process–but the national Democratic Party never even bothered to craft an alternative domestic agenda. Not only was there no equivalent of the ten-point "Contract With America" that helped Republicans seize control of the house in the 1994 midterm elections, there was no plan at all.2

But the Democrats’ failure wasn’t simply a post-9-11 phenomenon. In fact, Democrats had rolled over for Bush in the pre-9-11 part of his administration as well.

For the historical period of roughly 1930 to 1980, the Democratic Party managed to incorporate sectors of the major social movements of the time (such as the labor movement in the 1930s and the civil rights movement in the 1960s) and many of their demands. The political ideology of liberalism was able to accommodate a pro-capitalist economic agenda with social policies that met the minimum demands of its constituencies–decent jobs, trade union rights and support for civil rights. This "social compact" held together until the mid-1970s economic crisis fueled an employers’ offensive that has continued to this day. In the 1980s, the employers engaged in open union-busting to break the power of major industrial unions in their respective industries. The industrial restructuring that ensued–and continued through the 1990s–continued to undermine union strength in the economy.

Politically, the employers’ offensive expressed itself, first, in a reinvigorated conservative ideology that captured and remade the Republican Party; and second, in the rise of the "New Democrats" in the 1990s. As the party whose presidential administration presided over the 1990s boom, the Democrats were transformed. Although maybe a bit overdrawn, Republican-turned-populist analyst Kevin Phillips’ description of "the underlying partial transformation of the Democrats into a party of a wealthy cultural and technological elite, indeed one whose fortunes and supporting middle-class numbers in parts of the North matched those of the GOP" has a lot of truth in it. Phillips continues:

Holding office during a boom for which it got much of the credit, the Democratic Party of the 90s steered clear of indicting the wealth and income distributions that heyday capitalism had brought. As the first decade of the new century began to unfold with a Republican in the White House, some of those Democratic inhibitions fell away, but a substantial underlying party transformation remained.3

This transformation helps to explain why the Democrats appear so disorganized when facing a concerted Republican onslaught. The economic agenda of Democratic leaders differs only in shades from what the GOP supports. That’s why the Democrats’ standard complaint about Bush’s tax cuts centers largely on their impact on the budget deficit. Liberal John R. McArthur, lamented that:

The simplest (and potentially most popular) proposals–an increase in the minimum wage, for example–lie dormant within a Democratic Party that raises money from most of the same sources as the Republicans. Wal-Mart likes its hired help cheap and Wall Street likes Wal-Mart to be happy; they both pay the campaign bills, on both sides of the aisle.

Thus, the leaders of the "popular" party do their best to appear unpopular, by allowing some of their members to support the administration’s drive to eliminate the estate tax, an enormous, regressive windfall for America’s already obese plutocracy.4

Abetting this shift to the right in the Democratic Party is the atrophy and decay of the popular constituencies that made up the New Deal/Great Society coalitions. Organized labor’s continued decline (representing only 13 percent of the workforce today, compared to one out of four workers in the 1970s) accentuates this.5 With declining power to influence the social climate or to affect the conditions of work in most U.S. industries, labor has lost its influence on the Democratic political agenda. As a result, the Democrats lean more heavily on labor to get out their vote, while labor’s interests have even less clout inside the party than they did 20 years ago. What’s more, the AFL-CIO, preoccupied with short-term maneuvers to maintain its own viability, has failed to project a vision that could galvanize large numbers of workers. The AFL-CIO’s 2002 annual Labor Day survey, taken in the wake of the Enron and other corporate scandals, recorded the highest-ever percentage of non-union workers (50 percent) saying they wanted to join a union. Yet AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s main initiative was a demonstration on Wall Street on behalf of swindled investors and in support of "socially responsible" companies. The same kind of decay in vision and mobilizing power seen among the unions can be observed in the civil rights and women’s rights organizations.

As a result, conservatism holds sway in official politics, even if it doesn’t hold majority support in the population. Anis Shivani writes:

A case can be made that in a period of voter disillusionment and apathy, it is conservative issues that hold the spotlight. This is not to say that the electorate is necessarily becoming more conservative, but that when voters don’t see the political system able to handle large problems they vote conservatively. To the extent that the parties continue to be perceived as ineffective in articulating and solving the larger issues of the day, a conservative agenda–independent of which party holds power–will continue to dominate.6

Although this description of the present state of liberalism explains its paralysis today, it’s important to remember a couple of points from history. First, the opportunism of Democratic politicians can lead some to speak out against the outrageous attacks that Bush plans to push through. On issues such as abortion where there remain clear differences between the parties, liberal politicians and their organizations may decide to take a stand. This would open up possibilities to organize a genuine opposition to the right’s attacks on abortion. Second, liberalism gains its social base when social struggle and movements emerge. The 1920s Democratic Party was even more pro-business than today’s Democrats. But the 1930s labor movement–and FDR’s cooptation of it–transformed the Democrats into the "party of working people." These points are fundamental. The main institutions of liberalism will remain toothless and conservative politics will continue to carry the day until large-scale struggle begins to shift the climate of politics in the country.

In the wake of the enormous February 15-16, 2003 demonstrations against the war in Iraq, some of these molecular changes are beginning to take place. From below, war opponents who felt angry and isolated at the end of 2002 feel more confident to build opposition. Antiwar committees and organizations have mushroomed in neighborhoods, campuses, churches and unions around the country. This grassroots movement forms the most focused and impassioned opposition to Bush today. And some professional liberals are beginning to take notice. In particular, at least four announced candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004–former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun–are running on varying degrees of opposition to Bush’s war drive. While only Sharpton has publicly identified himself with the antiwar movement (speaking at the major national antiwar demonstrations in October 2002 and in January and February 2003), each of the four is attempting to stake out ground for a more aggressive opposition to Bush. Even if this is simply electoral posturing (which it no doubt is) these moves show that some Democrats understand that they have to oppose Bush to remain relevant to the constituencies whose votes they seek. Any division in the pro-war ruling class consensus makes it easier for grassroots opponents of the war and Bush’s agenda to build support.

For the right, the corporations and the administration, the results of November’s election–in which Bush defied historical precedent by increasing the GOP’s hold on Congress–prove that Bush has a mandate to push through a wish list of conservative policies. "The White House is saying this is the second 100 days the president will have because of the strength of the 2002 election," right-wing activist Grover Norquist explained. "It is as if the president has been reelected"7–he said with no sense of irony about the first Bush "election."

Although Bush claimed the election delivered a mandate for his policies, he would be advised to listen to his cousin, conservative commentator John Ellis: "The 2002 result is a strong vote of confidence for the Bush administration. It is not a mandate. The great danger that now looms for the GOP is that it will mistake the vote of confidence for a mandate." In fact, if 75,000 of the more than 75 million votes cast in the November election shifted from Republican to Democrat, the Democrats would have won both houses of Congress.

The programs the GOP actually wants to push through are unlike any they campaigned on. They campaigned as opponents of privatization of Social Security and supporters of adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. As they begin to press what they really stand for–privatization of both popular government programs–they will immediately ignite a backlash. Americans caught a glimpse of the "un-masked" GOP when Trent Lott, toasting the 100-year old bigot Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), waxed nostalgic for segregation, the main plank of Thurmond’s racist 1948 presidential campaign. Lott outraged millions, forcing him to resign his Senate leadership post. Bush and the GOP will be under pressure from their ideological hard core of religious conservatives to pack the courts for far-right judges who support outlawing abortion, among other reactionary policies. These payoffs to the Christian Right will no doubt stoke opposition among the broad population that doesn’t support their narrow agenda that includes outlawing abortion.

Bush faced stiff criticism from leading Democrats in early March when he unveiled his plan to lure Medicare recipients into subsidized private insurance plans. It remains to be seen how far Democratic resistance will go, but they are no doubt responding to the fact that Medicare remains among the most popular government programs in history.

The audacity with which Bush and his administration push their agenda also fuels opposition. The belief that they can get away with anything they want means that they will cross a line that will inflame, rather than intimidate, their opponents. When Labor Secretary Elaine Chao high-handedly lectured the AFL-CIO executive council on union corruption at her appearance at the council’s annual meeting in February, she shocked many AFL-CIO officials who had believed they could "work with the administration." Even Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa, who had fronted for Bush on issues like drilling for oil in Alaska and the war in Iraq, denounced the president and hinted that he might end his courtship with Bush.

Even if the economy grows over the next year, it is not expected to produce the kind of growth that will be perceptible to large numbers of people throughout the U.S. In the 1991—92 recession, the economy was officially "in recovery" throughout much of 1992. But millions didn’t feel it and Bush Sr. suffered the consequences. Measured only by the broad unemployment rate, the current recession/recovery is not as severe as the early 1990s recession. Today’s unemployment stands at 6 percent, compared to a high of 7.8 percent in June 1992. But in other ways, the current recession is more severe. Long-term African-American unemployment is higher than it was in the early 1990s. And the decline in percentage of adults with jobs has been sharper today than it was in 1990—92. Long-term unemployment for women has not risen as fast as it did in 1990—92. But long-term unemployment for women also started at a higher level than was the case in 1990—92. With a decade of welfare reform and other cutbacks between these recessions, unemployed workers have little choice but to continue to search for work.8

Economic indicators show an economy that is barely growing; and incomes have slid backward after they grew in the last years of the 1990s boom. The government’s huge stimulus over the last two years (maintaining record-low interest rates and pumping up government spending by 10 percent) has lessened recessionary forces. But this has postponed, rather than solved the crisis. Taking advantage of low rates, Americans hold $800 billion in home equity loans. This helped to maintain their living standards, but homeowners are paying 42 percent of their incomes for mortgages, and the ratio of debt to equity in homes stands at the highest level in 50 years.

The average American holds $8,000 in credit card debt, serviced with extortionate 15—20 percent interest rates. Even with the slowdown in wages, workers are paying 16—27 percent more in health insurance costs over last year. This means that even people with jobs and income (i.e. not unemployed) are feeling erosion in their quality of life–having to work harder and longer just to keep up. Feelings of economic anxiety and uncertainty are pervasive. Even if the economy picks up over the next year, workers will continue to feel under the gun as companies continue to shed jobs. In November—December 2002, companies eliminated almost 200,000 jobs. And the corporate bankruptcies that threw thousands out of work show little sign of letting up.9 "Don’t expect 2003 to be any better" for bankruptcies than 2002, BusinessWeek warned in its January 13 issue. "With the economy still waiting for a lift, analysts at credit-rating outfits predict that roughly one in every 13 companies with noninvestment-grade debt, or 8 percent will default and declare bankruptcy in the next 12 months."10

The weakness in the private sector will continue. But the sharpest edge of the crisis will be felt in cutbacks in state and city budgets. The financial plight of state and local governments is at its worst since the Second World War, according to the National Governors Association. Forty-two states face a combined budget deficit of $60—85 billion, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Since taxes at the state and local level tend to be much more regressive than federal taxes, and since Washington offloaded social programs onto states throughout the 1990s, tax increases and spending cuts needed to balance budgets will hit the working class the hardest. California faces a $35 billion budget deficit–larger than most other states’ entire budgets. Democratic Governor Gray Davis’s budget, announced in early January, would eliminate health insurance coverage for 300,000 poor people and slash $3.1 billion from public schools.11 In the 11 states that have already made substantial cuts to medical assistance, as many as one million adults and children stand to lose health coverage. Oklahoma will virtually eliminate its child health insurance program.

"Taken together, the reports indicate that cuts of unprecedented depth in vital basic services–and especially in health insurance for working poor and near-poor families–lie ahead," said Robert Greenstein, CBPP’s executive director. "Only the provision of substantial fiscal relief to states by the federal government, a step that would also be more effective in stimulating the economy than most tax cuts under consideration, can forestall such an outcome."12 Of course, Bush’s policies of cutting taxes for the rich and tightening welfare-to-work rules run in exactly the opposite direction.

It’s certain that this unsettled (and possibly worsening) economic picture and the massive government cutbacks will fuel bitterness and anger. It will also open opportunities to organize grassroots and working-class opposition to the cuts. In 1995, when the Gingrich "revolution" took over in Washington, unions and advocacy groups mobilized to stop some of the worst of the cuts. The cuts planned today are even more Draconian. The potential to mobilize large numbers to protest the cuts exists if unions and advocacy organizations take the initiative.

The immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 brought a surge of patriotism and unprecedented increases in trust in major institutions, such as the government, and a feeling that the country was moving in the right direction. But 2002 brought reversals of those trends. Inevitably, the post-September 11 upsurge of sentiment receded. More importantly, revelations of corruption and incompetence in one institution after another–from the Catholic Church to Corporate America–contributed to the sense that something is wrong in society. One couldn’t ascribe last summer’s dramatic anti-Bush shift of opinion to large-scale movements or social struggle. If one had to pick one thing that helped to bring Bush’s popularity back to earth, it was the continued decline of the economy and the exposure of one corporate scandal after another. This was a fitting ending to the decade of greed and the popping of the Internet and telecom bubbles. Corporations that were celebrated as the cutting edge of Corporate America (for example, Tyco’s now-indicted Dennis Koslowski was BusinessWeek’s executive of the year in 2001) were shown to have cooked the books and engaged in fraud. When the going got tough, they were willing to throw their employees overboard–hyping the company stock as they were dumping it, preventing workers from selling their stock as their pension funds were disappearing, and finally laying them off. In 2002, the economy experienced the three biggest corporate bankruptcies ever and the disappearance of some of the most established names in American capitalism: Wards, Arthur Andersen, LTV Steel, Enron, Kmart and so on. Throughout 2002, the administration issued predictions of recoveries that failed to emerge. Briefly, former corporate executives Bush and Cheney became caught up in their own scandals.

As Bush ratcheted up the campaign against Iraq in the fall, discontent that was largely ideological began to express itself in demonstrations, rallies, protests and teach-ins. The breadth of the opposition to the war has been impressive. In a climate when left and traditional liberal organizations are weaker than they were during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, millions of Americans have found ways to express their opposition. It’s become commonplace for journalists to emphasize that millions of "mainstream" Americans–rather than the "usual suspects" affiliated with activist organizations–are protesting. Activists regularly report demonstrations many times the size they anticipated. It’s also important to note that this protest movement has mobilized thousands in places like Phoenix, Ariz. and Tampa, Fla.–as well as the activist and liberal centers like San Francisco and Portland, Ore. And from these milieus will come new organizations. Indeed, in the wake of the February 15—16 protests in which millions of people demonstrated against the war around the world, antiwar organizations have blossomed around the country.

In this regard, political developments such as labor opposition to the war are key. At this point, labor opposition is only in its infancy. But what opposition has arisen, such as the formation of U.S. Labor Against War (USLAW) in Chicago in January, is more important for its very existence and the potential it holds for the future than its ability to mobilize large numbers of unionists into the streets today. (However, it should be acknowledged that SEIU/1199 in New York mobilized 26 buses to the January 18 demonstration in Washington, D.C. and 50 union locals marched in the San Francisco demonstration on the same day.) It represents the beginnings of a wider effort to build a political opposition to Bush’s agenda, especially his union-busting carried out under the banner of "national security." Labor writer Joanne Wypijewski, who attended the founding meeting of USLAW, put it:

The working class, unions particularly, aren’t usually associated with antiwar sentiment. Immediately after 9-11, the Machinists famously bellowed for "vengeance not justice," John Sweeney said the unions stood "shoulder to shoulder" with George Bush in the war on terror, and many labor leftists dove for cover, saying even raising a discussion on the prospect of endless war was too risky. There was a war at home the latter argued–the sinking economy, assaults on immigrants–and it could be neatly filleted from the war abroad.

At least as many people were killed in Afghanistan as died in New York, and in exchange for fealty to national security through slaughter, the Machinists got layoffs at Boeing, layoffs in the airline industry, a concessionary contract at Lockheed Martin. Sweeney and Co. got to watch as Bush intervened against the West Coast longshore workers and threatened to strip dockworkers permanently of the right to strike, as civil servants first in the U.S. Attorneys’ offices, then in the Office of Homeland Security lost collective bargaining rights, as immigrants were fired from their airport screening jobs and unions forbidden to organize, as 850,000 government jobs crept toward the privatizing block, as unemployment rose, benefits ran out, the rich got goodies and government workers, soldiers included, were stiffed on pay. For its part, the timorous left got more evidence than needed of the naiveté of its argument.13

These initial steps to building antiwar sentiment in the working-class movement legitimizes the socialist argument that the real enemy is at home, that Bush’s wars are a cover for his attack on workers in the U.S. and that workers have no interests in this war drive. It opens up a "material breach" between ordinary people and the administration’s largely successful strategy to cloak its attacks in the American flag. The headway made so far reflects the accumulated bitterness of decades of attacks on workers. Because today is not like the Vietnam era–when the government promised (and workers expected) "guns and butter"–the potential to bring antiwar and class politics together is enormous. Today, the choice between guns and butter is sharp and unavoidable. And the experience of large numbers of ordinary people mobilizing against Bush’s war drive also raises the prospect of large-scale mobilization against the rest of the Bush agenda, especially its attacks on the working class.

This means that the gap between ordinary peoples’ dissatisfaction with the status quo and their willingness to take action to change the status quo can close. These developments have now begun to have an impact at the top of the labor movement as well. In a move unprecedented in its history and clearly in response to the antiwar mood among its ranks–the AFL-CIO executive passed a resolution in late February critical of Bush’s plans for war in Iraq.

As the economy fails to create jobs and Bush plows ahead on his plans for war and favoritism to the rich, a growing minority is expressing discontent with the current state of affairs. Recent polling data confirms this. A February IPSOS/Reid Poll showed 54 percent of adults describing the country as heading in the "wrong direction," against the 40 percent who said the country was heading in the "right direction." National surveys showed Bush’s popularity hitting post-September 11, 2001 lows. A mid-February CNN/Time survey had Bush’s approval at 54 percent, about the level he had at the beginning of his term. A Harris Survey published in mid-February had only 52 percent of adults rating Bush’s performance as "excellent" or "good," a 12-point drop since mid-December, 2002. Also, for the first time since September 11, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed that fewer than half of registered voters say they would definitely vote to reelect Bush in 2004. A Gallup Poll in mid-January showed 56 percent said Bush’s policies favor the rich and 55 percent said he wasn’t spending enough time on the economy. 14 To top it off, an early March nationwide poll conducted by Quinnipiac University in Connecticut found that an unnamed Democrat would edge out Bush 48 to 44 percent in a presidential election. Bush’s approval ratings will no doubt jump upward during the war against Iraq. But a substantial minority (25—30 percent) will remain skeptical and become more hardened opponents of Bush and his agenda.

As Bush pushes his agenda further, social and economic polarization will only increase. Just how this volatile mix will play out is impossible to predict. On the one hand, patriotism and Pentagon cheerleading in the media will push other issues more unfavorable to Bush (corporate scandal, tax cuts for the rich, etc.) to the side of the "official" discussion in Washington. On the other hand, the brazen unfairness of Bush’s policies and state-level budget crises will cause real pain to millions and will stoke bitterness. If the war in Iraq is not the breeze that Bush’s chickenhawk advisers assert, then all bets are off. An American populace conditioned to accept U.S. wars where few Americans die could be aroused to take action in ways not seen in three or four decades.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that a substantial majority will turn against Bush in a single moment of epiphany. Instead, it is important to understand that Bush and the right are potentially digging their own political graves today. Their generalized attack is forcing larger sections of the population to generalize as well–to see the connections between Bush’s war abroad and his war at home, for example. How fast the generalization will happen and how effective our side is depends on two things: 1) politics; and 2) organization. Socialist politics cut through the maze of administration deception and liberal confusion ("winning without war," "let inspections work" and so on) that can set the movement back. Organization puts those politics into practice, helping to broaden and deepen the movement. Socialists, it is worth noting, contributed directly to shaping the USLAW meeting. Also, the Chicago "Voices Against the War: Union Activists and Veterans Speak Out Against the War Drive on Iraq" meeting (held the night before the USLAW meeting)–which Wypijewski cited as a model for how to connect the war and working-class concerns–would not have happened without the active intervention of socialists. Labor opposition to the war won’t rescue the labor movement from its current crisis, but it can help to give confidence to activists who can lead a push to rebuild the unions’ ability to fight for their own members.

The recent victory in Illinois over the death penalty offers important lessons for the next period. First, the dramatic advance of former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s pardons and commutations grew out of years of persistent and often frustrating work. Second, strategic orientation (i.e. building a grassroots movement involving working-class, predominantly Black, family members and prisoners) and political argument (i.e. political fights with liberals over the character of movement events) shaped the kind of movement that has been built. The Campaign to End the Death Penalty helped to inject vitality and an outward orientation into an abolitionist movement that had been unsure of its ability to move public opinion. Putting these politics into practice and building an organization around them helped to create a climate that moved first, the moratorium, and now, abolition, from the realm of far-off dreams into serious political options today. The current antiwar movement and future movements in opposition to Bush’s right-wing agenda present socialists today with the same opportunities.

Bush’s attacks are forcing people to "take a stand" on issues as diverse as Iraq, abortion, affirmative action, tax cuts for the rich and even the separation between church and state. This process forces people to begin to generalize politically, and engenders a "them and us" worldview among those who do begin to generalize. This process can galvanize the right (the large anti-abortion turnout in Washington on January 22 is one measure of this). But it can also embolden the left, when it is willing to stand its ground (as indicated by the enormous antiwar turnout on February 15). During this period of sharp social and political polarization, a new generation of political activists and socialists is being forged.

2 William Hartung, "Elections and the war," November 20, 2002, available online at www.commondreams.org/views02/1120-05.htm.

3 Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), p. 343.

4 John R. MacArthur, "Democrats have no one to blame but themselves," Toronto Globe & Mail, November 8, 2002.

5 Labor has become so weak that Bush feels he can get away with: the first invocation of Taft-Hartley in 24 years; mass privatization of federal jobs and deunionization of the Transportation Security Administration in one year.

6 Anis Shivani, "Conservative politics in an era of dealignment," January 4, 2003. Available online at www.counterpunch.org/shivani01042003.html.

7 Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei, "Key GOP Senators Object to Bush Plan," Washington Post, January 11, 2003.

8 For the comparisons between the 1990—92 recession and the current one, see Heather Boushey and Robert Cherry, "The severe implications of the economic downturn on working families," Working USA (Winter, 2002-03), pp. 39-45.

9 For instance, Kmart’s recently announced restructuring under bankruptcy protection calls for closing more than 300 stores and laying off 37,000 workers.

10 Michael Arndt, "The bankruptcy run isn’t slowing," BusinessWeek, January 13, 2003, p. 36.

11 Figures quoted in Nicole Colson, "Victims of the budget ax," Socialist Worker, January 10, 2003.

12 Figures and Greenstein quote from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "State budget deficits loom larger than previously thought, signaling deep cuts in health insurance, other programs," December 23, 2002 available online at www.cbpp.org.

13 Joanne Wypijewski, "Workers against war," CounterPunch, January 17, 2003.

14 For references on these and other opinion polls, see www.pollingreport.com.