MORE THAN three years after September 11, it is now possible—and necessary—to define the political character of U.S. politics since this turning point. This article aims to draw some general conclusions about the political period since 9/11 and to suggest some key strategies for rebuilding the Left.

Social polarization and squandered opportunities

The 2004 election took place in the context of sharp social polarization. Roughly equal proportions of the U.S. population stood on opposite sides over the Iraq War, tax cuts, and the Bush administration itself. But the Democrats squandered the opportunity to define themselves as an opposition party—even though opinion polls showed a majority of the U.S. population thought the country was headed “in the wrong direction” and Bush was shown to have lied about the justification for the Iraq War.

This sharp polarization offered an opportunity to strengthen and rebuild the Left among the millions opposed to Bush. Nevertheless, virtually the entire U.S. Left collapsed into supporting the Democratic Party candidate—leaving those against the war and Bush’s domestic policies with no organized expression to the left of the Bush Lite program of John Kerry. Indeed, the Anybody But Bush (ABB) Left assisted the Democrats by policing the movement against the only genuine electoral alternative, accusing the Nader/Camejo campaign of “helping” Bush to get reelected.

The Democrats spent months of effort and millions of dollars to keep Nader’s name off ballots in states across the country. As a result, Nader’s half-million votes had no influence on the outcome of the 2004 election. The reasons for Kerry’s defeat lay elsewhere.

In reality, Kerry’s defeat exposed the reverse logic employed by the ABB Left—when Kerry’s “electability” (that is, his similarity to Bush) failed to get him elected. That is how, in a country where a majority of the population views the Iraq War as a mistake, the man who led the country into that war on false pretenses managed to eke out a victory.

The resulting Bush victory predictably emboldened the Right, while demoralizing the Democratic Party’s most prominent left-wing supporters—who interpreted Bush’s victory as a major breakthrough for the Christian Right. Although the Christian Right has grown modestly in size, its influence in mainstream politics is magnified by the absence of a genuine Left opposition, due to the collapse of the Left into the Democratic Party.

The dynamics of the 2004 election were merely an acceleration of those already in place since 9/11. The terrorist attacks in 2001 provided the excuse for the U.S. ruling class to pursue its imperialist aims more aggressively abroad while escalating its war on the working class at home. In both cases, the U.S. Left has proven both unable and unwilling to build a viable political opposition.

The antiwar movement and the prowar candidate

The potential for building an antiwar opposition was shown first in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan in 2001, when tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out to protest the war before it began. This potential was realized in the months before the Iraq War, when more than a million came out to protest the war on February 15, 2003.

In both cases, however, the Left lacked the political wherewithal to sustain the movement. In the case of Afghanistan, much of the Left considered the war justifiable because “we were attacked,” and boycotted the antiwar movement altogether. The antiwar movement itself collapsed with the U.S. victory over the Taliban in November 2001, when the Bush administration claimed it was “liberating Afghan women,” complete with orchestrated scenes of women lifting their veils for Western television cameras. To this day, some organizations in the antiwar movement continue to regard the war on Afghanistan as justified, and refuse to build opposition to the ongoing U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

The antiwar war movement revived on a much larger scale in the months before the Iraq War began—taking on the features of a mass movement. But this revival was also short-lived.

Once the war began, some demoralization was inevitable among the ranks of antiwar activists because the mass demonstrations had failed to prevent the war. A stronger leadership, however, could have helped prepare the movement for the likelihood that mass protests alone would not stop U.S. imperialism from waging war—or the quick U.S. victory over Iraq, a much weaker power. Moreover, many on the left looked (and still look) to the UN as a vehicle for curtailing the U.S. Empire in Iraq, despite the fact that the UN endorsed both the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War and the U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iraq for more than twelve years. When the UN formally approved the U.S. occupation of Iraq in the fall of 2003, the movement’s leadership offered no coherent explanation for the UN’s support for U.S. imperialism.

The antiwar movement was further disoriented by the presidential election. By the time the U.S. invaded Fallujah and the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in the spring of 2004, the antiwar movement had already shifted its orientation toward the election campaign, supporting prowar candidate John Kerry. This enormous contradiction prevented the antiwar movement from mounting a visible response to these and other atrocities committed by the U.S. in Iraq, effectively sparing the Bush administration from the need to account for its war crimes. Since the election, the antiwar movement is struggling to revive—but with the same leadership responsible for the movement’s inactivity during the Kerry campaign once again seizing the reins of control over the movement.

Needed: Anti-imperialist politics

Sustaining the antiwar movement during both the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars would have required clear and consistent opposition to U.S. imperialism. The U.S. is the world’s main superpower. For this reason, a U.S. invasion of any country can never be justified, whatever the stated excuse. For the same reason, a U.S. occupation can never “liberate” the occupied people, or even inadvertently bring genuine democracy. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Left opposed U.S. imperialism as a matter of principle, and that generation of radicals was therefore trained in anti-imperialist politics.

The U.S. Left abandoned a consistent opposition to U.S. imperialism in the 1990s, however, when many supported Bush’s invasion of Somalia (continued by Clinton) and Clinton’s invasion of Haiti on so-called “humanitarian” missions. In 1999, Clinton again gained widespread support when he launched a war against Serbia, ostensibly to “protect” Kosovo from Serbian domination. Anti-imperialism went out the window for much of the Left because a Democrat, not a Republican, launched this war—claiming to support an oppressed people. The consequences were felt in the post 9/11 period, when the Left could not offer an anti-imperialist framework to oppose the “war on terror.”

Furthermore, the U.S. Left has yet to take a clear stand on the side of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. From its inception, Israel has functioned as an apartheid state, based upon the exclusion and oppression of Palestinians, using murderous policies to maintain this status quo. The U.S. Left has a special responsibility to stand firmly in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli occupation because Israel functions as the—paid—watchdog for the U.S. in the Middle East.

U.S. imperialism has set its sights on reshaping the entire Middle East in its own interests since 9/11, and the contradictions inherent in the U.S. Left’s failure to address the issue of Palestine have come to the fore. Many on the U.S. Left remain reluctant to link the struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land with the struggle to end the occupation of Iraq. Until this contradiction is resolved, the antiwar movement cannot develop a consistent opposition to U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.

From “police state” to “fascism?”

The immediate aftermath of 9/11 witnessed the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which led to the rounding up and detention of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, along with Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, and escalated attacks on airline unions that soon spread to an attack on the entire working class. The speed and aggression with which the U.S. ruling class pursued its domestic agenda was possible only because it is a bipartisan project, in which the Democrats have enabled all of Bush’s policies to pass, often enthusiastically.

After the passage of the Patriot Act, many on the left began to engage in a doomsday approach to U.S. politics, declaring the U.S. had been transformed into a “police state.” This was a clear exaggeration, and implied it was too late to do anything about it. This conclusion led many to throw up their hands in distress rather than try to build a broad movement to defend the main targets of the legislation—Arabs and Muslims. Later, the widely accepted claim that the U.S. had become a police state under Bush led easily to the assertion that the Bush administration was ushering in a new era of “fascism” or “neo-fascism.” This reasoning provided the justification for supporting “Anybody But Bush” in the 2004 election.

Now many on the Left point to Bush’s reelection as evidence that Christian Right and neoconservative politics dominate within the U.S. population as a whole. This is ironic, since the Left itself failed to seize the opportunity to build a genuine opposition to the Bush administration. Instead, the Left fostered the illusion that prowar, neoliberal John Kerry represented an opposition, despite Kerry’s tremendous effort to emulate Bush’s policies.

In reality, the U.S. Left in 2004 repeated the fatal mistake of U.S. social movements for more than a century: failing to recognize that the Democratic Party merely represents those segments of the ruling class not tied to the Republicans—and vice versa—in a bipartisan status quo aimed at protecting the interests of capital at home and U.S. imperialism abroad. For this reason, the Democrats have been unwilling to lay the basis for even the most timid opposition to the Patriot Act or the war on terrorism.

In the 2004 election and its aftermath, the right wing only appears so dominant because it faces no significant left opposition. Yet so many who led the U.S. Left on its disastrous course since 2001 take no responsibility for the results: a barely discernable political Left in the face of a confident and coherent Right. To varying degrees, established political figures on the left have sowed confusion at exactly the time when political clarity was most needed. Over the last year, some of the most respected leaders on the left—including prominent Nader supporters in 2000—signed on to lesser-evilism and supported John Kerry. Since Kerry’s defeat, none have acknowledged their own responsibility for the present state of affairs—and have provided no alternative strategy for the Left to move forward.

Missing: a radical Left

U.S. society remains sharply polarized on all major social issues, with the Christian Right demanding payback for Bush’s electoral victory in the form of further attacks, on abortion and gay marriage in particular. George W. Bush also holds the lowest popularity ratings of any president entering his second term since 1948.

More than half the population continues to oppose the Iraq War, which has lost all credibility, having descended into a quagmire that has only gotten bloodier with the passage of time. And class inequality, already at levels not seen since the 1920s, is widening further as wages fall and social spending is slashed. None of these problems will be going away without a rise in struggle.

The objective conditions are ripe for the Left to rebuild, in the context of rising struggle. But a key element necessary for a sustained rise in struggle—a radical Left to provide the ideological counterweight to mainstream politics and the political tools for struggle—has been all but absent.

Most of the organized Left has declined steadily in size since the mid-1970s. This decline accelerated after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, throwing many organizations into crisis—because so many on the organized Left agreed with the mainstream media’s conclusion that the fall of the Soviet Union marked the “victory of capitalism over socialism.”

The broad Left today is also smaller and weaker than it was a decade ago. Understanding the reasons for this decline is crucial to rebuilding the Left on a stronger political basis today.

The collapse of liberalism

Bill Clinton represented a new breed of Democrat. As a founder of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), he aimed to shift the party away from the Democrats’ -traditional voting base (liberals, Blacks, and labor) to appeal to “swing” voters (white middle-class voters torn between Democrats and Republicans). This strategy required the party to lurch to the right, adopting positions that were unique to the Republican Party during the era of Reaganism.

Clinton’s “I feel your pain” campaign slogan soon proved to be smoke and mirrors as he stole the Republican’s thunder in dismantling welfare, and passing both the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (which paved the way for Bush’s more draconian federal ban on gay marriage proposal) and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (which preceded the yet more repressive Patriot Act).

Clinton’s approach to Iraq, likewise, differed little from his Republican predecessor. He continued the murderous sanctions put in place after the 1991 Gulf War that claimed over a million Iraqi lives—half of them children under age five. In addition, the U.S. and Britain conducted a continuous bombing campaign over Iraq’s “no-fly zone” throughout Clinton’s two terms in office, interrupted only by the more vigorous “Operation Desert Fox” bombing campaign in 1998. Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, calling for the “regime change” carried out by George W. Bush in 2003.

Had Clinton been a Republican, liberals would have protested many of these policies. Because Clinton was a Democrat, however, liberals continued to support Clinton as he embraced a range of conservative positions during his presidency.

The feminist movement never protested against Clinton, even as he allowed the erosion of legal abortion and dismantled welfare for poor women and children. Most gay rights organizations maintained their loyalty even after Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Many antiwar activists who had opposed the Gulf War in 1991 remained silent during Clinton’s subsequent “humanitarian” invasions.

The collapse of liberalism during the Clinton era allowed mainstream politics to shift rightward in the years before Bush took office.

The rise and fall of the U.S. global justice movement

The global justice movement that rose rapidly after the Seattle protests of 1999 was the first sign that a radicalization was both growing and translating into a significant revival of the U.S. Left. Eight years of Clinton’s betrayals, and an economic boom that increased class inequality on a worldwide scale, led to a broad rejection of the Democratic Party’s neoliberal policies. Nader’s run for president in 2000 quickly grew into the electoral voice of the global justice movement. Much of the Left embraced Nader’s campaign, and tens of thousands of young political activists joined in, gaining the feel of a movement in and of itself.

But the global justice movement emphasized the power of corporations in ruling the world, while downplaying the importance of national states in enforcing corporate rule. This political framework threw the U.S. global justice movement into crisis when U.S. imperialism was dramatically strengthened after 9/11. Global justice leaders pulled the plug on protests already planned for late September 2001 against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, instead of shifting the demonstrations to oppose the coming war against Afghanistan. The global justice movement has yet to recover.

From “United We Stand” to a divided society

The months immediately following 9/11 witnessed a surge in patriotism and widespread popular support for the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. The initial phase of “United We Stand” patriotism soon gave way, however, as the war on Iraq, the Patriot Act, and Bush’s tax cuts infuriated large swaths of the U.S. population.

Since then, U.S. society has been characterized by the massive polarization still evident in the 2004 election. This does mark a break with the Clinton era, when disillusionment with the Democrats was widespread and the global justice movement represented an ascending Left.

But a polarized society is a far cry from a nation united behind Bush. Had the Left responded in kind to Bush’s assaults after 9/11, the potential existed to build a broad opposition to both the war on terror abroad and the war at home.

There is no reason for the Left to remain an embattled minority. The radicalization is smaller than in 2000, but it has continued—precisely because of the massive hypocrisy of mainstream U.S. politics. This radicalizing layer numbers in the hundreds of thousands, made up of people who reject crucial aspects of the system, from the Iraq War to class inequality to neoliberalism. They are actively seeking political alternatives to the system, with a sense of urgency for changing society that is far in advance of a decade ago, when war remained an abstract concept.

Most of the Left does not orient to, or in some cases even recognize, the significance of this radicalization. The dominant view on the left is that Bush’s reelection requires yet further rightward adaptation.

Yet, grassroots struggle has been on the rise since the election. The first signs of revival from the antiwar movement came from the outpouring of local activists against Bush’s inauguration on January 20—including thousands of high school and college students who organized walkouts to protest the war. Military resisters such as Pablo Paredes and Kevin Benderman have launched courageous struggles to expose the injustices of the Iraq War, although they face prison time for doing so. Several thousand pro-choice demonstrators turned out in San Francisco in January to oppose anti-abortion activists.

The ABB Left after the election

The ABB Left, having charted a disastrous course over the last year, shows signs of continuing its misguided strategy in the aftermath of Kerry’s defeat. The Bush administration is preparing a full-throttled assault—as always, with the complicity of the Democrats in Congress. But the ABB Left remains tied to the Democratic Party’s coattails, and is therefore no closer to building a coherent opposition.

If anything, the movements have been set back compared with a year ago. Gay activists seemed on the cusp of winning gay marriage last February. Now major gay rights organizations are engulfed in a debate over whether gay marriage activists “went too far” last year. Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean have both made overtures to the anti-abortion movement, and NARAL Pro-Choice America subsequently dropped its opposition to the “Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act,” requiring doctors to offer anesthesia for the fetus in abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy.

The antiwar movement is struggling to regroup after months of inactivity, but some antiwar leaders are advocating further retreat. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported on January 16, “Bush Protesters Rethink Tactics: Critics hope to move beyond self-satisfaction of anti-war protests, gain wider voting base.” The article stressed antiwar leaders’ desire to retreat from organizing mass demonstrations in order to begin “preaching beyond the choir box.”

“We’ve got to start reaching out to people who don’t agree with us,” said Leslie Cagan, United for Peace [and Justice]’s national coordinator. In its recent short-term plan, the 850-organization umbrella behind many of the nation’s larger protests over the past few years conceded that “the anti-war movement must reshape its work.”