US WORKERS will be asking themselves what the recent presidential election campaign was all about when Obama was fighting for change and saying that a vote for McCain was a vote for George Bush, while at the same time having to fight off a vicious Clinton challenge.
In fact, today the President-elect has opted for more of the same, and has quickly ditched his working class allies of the election campaign.
He has offered Hillary Clinton the job of Secretary of State, and has now met his presidential opponent, John McCain, and announced that he wants to work with him.
Since the Obama presidential campaign’s battle cry was that a vote for McCain was a vote for Bush, there is no reason why George Bush should not also be invited to assist the new president’s team or be one of his advisers.
As far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, it was the Clinton regime that brought in the NAFTA free trade agreement that prepared the way for the export of millions of American workers jobs!
As well, this regime got rid of a big chunk of the Roosevelt New Deal legislation that was a bulwark for the protection of the poor.
With other Republicans, such as Colin Powell and the current Secretary of Defence Gates in the queue for top jobs in the Obama administration, it seems as if US capitalism has got much more of the same in store for US workers and the workers of the world. A reconfiguration of the masthead is the nearest the world is going to get to a change.
When Obama and his former rival John McCain met yesterday they vowed to work together in a ‘new era of reform’ to restore trust in government.
McCain said he ‘obviously’ planned to help Obama’s administration.
The joint statement after their meeting spelt out that ‘At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time. We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy and protecting our nation’s security.’
As it is, Hillary Clinton, who fully supported all Bush’s moves to make war on Iraq, and fully supported the invasion, is said to be planning to accept the offer to be Obama’s Secretary of State, replacing Condoleezza Rice.
This will be hard to swallow for millions of workers, who oppose the way that Iraq has been butchered.
Her husband’s regime helped to keep the murderous UN sanctions clamped onto Iraq for over 10 years. These sanctions cost the lives of up to 1.5 million Iraqis.
He also directed the Desert Fox air attacks on Iraq when hundreds of Cruise missiles were used to attack and destroy Iraq’s infrastructure.
Clinton will be an out and out imperialist Secretary of State, who will prosecute the war in Afghanistan, and the war against Hamas and Hezbollah, with vigour.
This is not the coalition that is going to give to the working class and the poor what they are demanding, and what they mobilised during the presidential campaign to win. That is jobs, decent wages, a national healthcare plan, and pensions that workers can retire on.
The Obama regime will bail out the US banks and attempt to bail out the US giant monopolies such as the Big Three motor giants, but at the expense of decent jobs, decent wages, healthcare and pensions, so that they can wage a trade war against their German and Japanese rivals.
The want a cheap labour workforce at home, and they want to control the major sources of oil, and gas in the world.
Theirs will be a policy of class war at home and imperialist wars abroad.
The US working class will be forced to break with Obama and the Democrats and build a Labour Party, and a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to fight for a Socialist United States of America.
