For months, the campaigns to nominate a flagbearer for the two major US parties have been in a whirl. Confused may be the right term. However, after the New Hampshire primaries of Tuesday February 9 in which Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders won resounding victories, a few projections may now be made with some confidence.
First of all, the Democrats will be committing a huge political blunder if they make the mistake of giving the nomination to Bernie Sanders. Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist.” The sentiment is fine but the timing is all wrong. Politically speaking, America is predominantly conservative. In two hundred years, maybe, America may yet elect a socialist, “democratic” or otherwise. But, by then, so many changes will have taken place that the sentiment matches the tempo of the time and the label may well have become irrelevant and unnecessary.
For 100 years, American presidents, no matter their ideological self-identification, have determinedly carried out “socialist” and “communist” policies without naming them as such. These include “central planning”; setting the operational ground rules and restrictions for enterprise otherwise touted as “free”; strict regulation and enforcement of anti-trust laws to keep competition “fair”; subsidies to farmers to prevent them from “freely” producing more than the “free market” can bear, thereby glutting the market with “supply” so that “demand” shrivels and prices collapse, exposing the “free market” for what it is—a strictly regulated, “unfree” market.
With same policy of keeping supply and demand artificially balanced, the US government even pays states to produce only so many medical doctors per year and no more. So much for “free market,” “market forces,” “central planning,” “capitalism” and “socialism.”
In short, America lives in “contradictions” and “denial” on the matter of radical left ideologies and systems. Their blind faith is that communism, socialism and “central planning” are things that Communist Russia, Communist China and Communist Cuba practise—plus a few “misguided” EU countries, including, surprisingly, the United Kingdom which is so proud of its “socialized medicine” in the form of its National Health Service, its version of “Obamacare” which every Republican presidential aspirant swears to dismantle in his first week in office.
In view of these facts, Bernie Sanders is comical to call himself a socialist and seriously expect to be elected president of the United States. The Democrats are no fools. They surely have not forgotten the debacle of 1972 when their young radicals claimed the field and pushed their candidate, George McGovern, through to the nomination—only for him to be clobbered by conservative Republican Richard Nixon.
For 40 years, starting in 1968, successive presidents of the conservative “radical right” took America through the political equivalent of an Ice Age—an arctic winter which the brief Democratic interregnums of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton could not break. The Ice Age began with Nixon, reached its peak under Reagan, and flourished at its arrogant, saber-rattling worst with no credible opposition under Bush I and Bush II. It was four decades when all liberal thought withered, progressive programs to benefit the middle and lower classes were frozen, and rampant greed and unapologetic, unlimited capitalism of the wealthy upper class triumphed as never before.
The conservative blizzard lost its strength through the massive mismanagement of resources and opportunities by Bush II, and then the thunderous ascension of Barack Obama in 2008 put paid to it and brought back the sunshine—for the time being. The battle was won—but the war didn’t end, will never end.
Neither the US nor the global economies have quite recovered from the mess-up under Bush II.
Meanwhile, the conservative forces have regrouped, recaptured the US Congress, and are now massing for another onslaught on the presidency.
Surely the Democrats understand this process. So why are they flirting with Bernie Sanders and “socialism” which they know is one sure way to lose the presidency? Why are they making no serious effort to stop Sanders? If, in reaction, Vice President Joe Biden does get into the race, that may well stop Sanders. Meanwhile the youth need to be given a crash course in practical politics, something rather different from ideology and theory. They need to be made to understand that the things they want can only come, if ever, not from a Republican but from a Democrat in the White House.
As for the Republicans, all they need do is wait for the Democrats to stumble—and the presidency is theirs. No matter which of them gets the nomination, it will be the same bad news. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy it was universally received as a big joke. Then he went from one outrage to another, shamelessly badmouthing everyone in sight, from his political rivals to women, Mexicans, Moslems and the media. Instead of reducing his popularity, his clown show won him more and more support. If he does go on to win the nomination, and the election—then America is in serious trouble.
You can expect conditions to get worse for African-Americans generally. Police shootings of unarmed black men, which is partly a “white backlash,” a racist reaction against the fact that a black man could dare to be president of the United States—these shootings will double or triple. A second Clarence Thomas might get appointed to the Supreme Court—as Bush I appointed the first Thomas, precisely to spite blacks and accelerate the dismantling of existing civil rights legislation. Nixon started it with his relatively innocuous policy of “benign neglect” of issues of black wellbeing and citizenship rights. But as African-Americans nevertheless made progress, the Republican conservatives grew more and more frantic to block and pull them back. Under a Republican presidency the gap in education, skills, jobs and income will widen more dramatically between whites and blacks. And it will take another hundred years and another miracle for another black man to be elected president.
Onwuchekwa Jemie
