Posted October 3rd. 2008

Electoral politics serve two contradictory functions. On the one hand it allows citizens a limited opportunity to determine who governs while on the other hand it tends to cover a country's endemic undemocratic tendencies. Nowhere is this contradiction more obvious than in the US where the definition and practice of democracy are generally confined to elections. While the US holds periodic certifiable elections within a narrow two-party system, those elections generally do not translate into political, socio-economic, gender and racial equality. In fact, the latter almost never emerge as part of election campaigns which generally are not about the fundamental issues in the society. These issues are usually fought in the streets, in picket lines, in union halls, on university campuses and sometimes in the courts. Hence, it is possible to get elected to high office in the US without having to answer a single question about, for example, social inequality.

Where am I going with this? I have more than a sneaking suspicion that this 2008 presidential election is to a considerable extent an exception to that rule. Yes, like other elections, this one is also distinguished by what is not discussed. But there is a difference. The voters and politicians have to directly or indirectly confront the issue of capitalism, race and imperialism-- the defining planks upon which American exceptionalism stands.

The debate over Iraq is really a debate about American imperialism. No amount of spinning of the American people's distaste for the Iraq war can erase the fact that the regular citizen has finally caught on to the relationship between an imperialistic foreign policy and domestic problems--the relationship between war and poor education, non-existent healthcare, poverty and the threat to homeland security. When the leaders' speak about winning in Iraq, they correctly speak about making America safer. But they are unable to explain how the war and a safer America translate into the socio- economic empowerment of regular Americans. Withdrawal from Iraq or not is in the final analysis about whether America continues the imperialistic foreign policy of the last sixty years.

That imperialistic foreign policy is linked to the "fundamentals of the economy". The American economy is premised on a free market capitalism that is devoid of any pretense to democracy and justice; a philosophy that has created one of the most socially unequal societies in the developed world. The enormous wealth in the US is overwhelmingly owned and controlled by a small minority and the little that trickles down to the workers is offset by the permanent insecurity of not knowing if their jobs or investments or businesses will be there tomorrow. Twenty eight years ago the Mighty Sparrow sang of how "Capitalism Gone Mad." It is that mad capitalism that is on trial in 2008--to continue Mad Capitalism or to move to what President Bush, I suspect grudgingly, calls "democratic capitalism."

What frightens the American corporate class and their supporters in congress is that "democratic capitalism" is at best an acknowledgement that "undemocratic capitalism" is being challenged not by leftists, but by its own logic. When John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong he meant that the fundamentals of that undemocratic capitalism are intact. The $700 billion bail-out represents something more than Wall Street and Main Street. Most of those who are against it do not want to touch the fundamentals of corporate capitalism while those who are for it recognizes that corporate capitalism has to be reformed if the myth of the American dream is to survive. The dilemma for the latter is that they know that reform often opens the door for revolutionary demands.

Finally, the issue of race is front and center of this election. The question is simply this: is a majority of white and non-white Americans ready to wake up everyday and look at its former slave in the White House? All of the debate about why the race is tight is simply the media's penchant for deliberate denial. Its race stupid! Blacks, Hispanics and young whites have made their decision clear. But a majority of whites have not reconciled with the thought of a Black president. It's a difficult decision, primarily because race as a function of social, economic and political mobility is so rooted in the American psyche.

Why is this election the site for engaging these issues? The answer is obvious: Barack Obama. For all his silence over, or some would say denial, of his blackness, Obama is where he is because of the relentless struggles of African Americans for equality in America. He is a special candidate not because of any super-special ideas he possesses, but because he is the product of a special historic and defining struggle for humanity. Every time the enslaved or the colonized or the oppressed breaks a shackle, they liberate the rest of humanity. Whether he appreciates it or not or whether his opponents acknowledge it or not, Obama's candidacy activates questions and actions from the social and racial bottom from where the impetus for real change invariably comes.

David Hinds lectures in Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University in the USA. His writings on Politics in Guyana and the Caribbean can be found on his GuyanaCaribbeanPolitics.com website.