Obama,
Huckabee Finish First In Iowa
By
Patrick Martin
05 January,
2008
WSWS.org
Senator
Barack Obama of Illinois and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas
won the Democratic and Republican caucuses in Iowa January 3, dealing
significant setbacks to the candidates previously considered frontrunners
for the two parties’ presidential nominations.
Obama defeated
Senator Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards, getting 38
percent of the delegates selected by the caucuses, compared to 30 percent
for Edwards and 29 percent for Clinton. Three other Democrats, New Mexico
Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Christopher
Dodd, trailed badly and received fewer than 2 percent combined. Biden
and Dodd announced they were ending their campaigns for the nomination.
A major feature
of the Iowa caucuses was a sharply increased voter turnout. Some 239,000
took part in the Democratic caucuses, nearly double the number who participated
in 2004 and more than four times the number who turned out in 2000.
The increased
political interest is demonstrated in another comparison: the number
participating in the caucuses, which required attending a two-hour meeting
on Thursday night, was 50 percent more than the total number voting
in the state’s Democratic primary in 2006, which had a closely
contested race for the gubernatorial nomination.
Young people
made up a large proportion of the new caucus attendees. The number of
people under 30 increased from an estimated 2,000 in 2000 and 5,000
in 2004 to as many as 52,000. The vast majority of these voted for Obama.
The comparative
turnout in the two parties’ caucuses reflects the unpopularity
of the Bush administration and the candidates linked to it. Nearly twice
as many people participated in the Democratic caucuses as in the Republican,
although the state is nearly evenly balanced in party registration and
split nearly 50-50 in the last two presidential contests, going narrowly
for Al Gore in 2000 and narrowly for Bush in 2004. The disparity among
young voters was even greater: of 64,000 people under 30 who attended
caucuses Thursday, 52,000 went to the Democrats and only 12,000 to the
Republicans.
Despite the
attempts of the media, in the wake of his caucus victory, to build up
Obama as an insurgent figure, the senator from Illinois is anything
but. He has been assiduously promoted by sections of the Democratic
Party establishment since his US Senate campaign in 2004, when he was
given the role of keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
His top campaign
staffers are largely drawn from Democratic congressional circles, particularly
those linked to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former
House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt.
Obama’s
presidential campaign raised more money than any Democrat in history
in the year preceding the general election. While Internet fundraising
from small donors accounted for a well-publicized portion of this, the
bulk came in large donations from well-heeled financial backers of the
Democratic Party, who boosted Obama’s credibility as a presidential
contender when he topped Hillary Clinton’s quarterly fundraising
totals last year.
A profile
last year in the Washington Post described his key fundraisers in these
terms: “veterans of the Democratic financial establishment: a
Hyatt hotel heiress, a New York hedge fund manager, a Hollywood movie
mogul and a Chicago billionaire.” His billionaire supporters include
investor Warren Buffett, currency speculator George Soros, hedge fund
mogul Paul Tudor Jones and the Henry Crown family. Obama raised more
money on Wall Street than either Hillary Clinton or former New York
mayor and Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani.
There is
no doubt that the increased turnout in Iowa and the heavy vote for Obama
among young people reflect popular hostility to the Bush administration
and the war in Iraq—which both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards,
Obama’s principal rivals, voted to authorize in 2002. But the
beneficiary of this popular sentiment is a conventional bourgeois politician
whose program and political appeal do not challenge in the slightest
the consensus of American big business politics.
Obama specializes
in hollow rhetoric about “hope,” “change” and
“unity,” exemplified by his remarks Thursday night after
he was declared the winner in Iowa. The very emptiness of his appeal
makes it possible for voters opposed to Bush and disgusted with figures
regarded as the “old guard” of the Democratic Party to project
their desire for progressive change onto a politician who has no substantive
differences with his Democratic rivals.
While he
claimed Thursday night that, if elected, he would end the war in Iraq,
Obama has refused to set any deadline for the withdrawal of American
troops, not even by 2013, when he would be inaugurated a second time
if elected this year and reelected in 2012. He has called for intensifying
US military action in Afghanistan and crossing the border into Pakistan,
and has echoed the Bush administration’s campaign of economic
sanctions, diplomatic saber-rattling and military threats against Iran.
Obama’s
talk of “choosing unity over division” is calculated to
obscure the reality of a class-divided society. There can be no genuine
unity of interests between the class of multimillionaires and billionaires,
who increasingly monopolize the national wealth and income, and the
vast majority who work for a living and struggle to make ends meet.
The senator
from Illinois has been promoted by elements in the American financial
aristocracy because of his (relative to his peers) rhetorical polish,
lack of connection to previous administrations, and bi-racial origins.
Obama in the White House would not represent any fundamental change
in the direction of US foreign or domestic policy, but he would, it
is believed, put a new face on US imperialism, sorely needed after the
debacle of the Bush presidency.
Obama’s
success in Iowa touched off a flood of adulatory media attention, including,
significantly, friendly commentary from such right-wing figures as former
Reagan/Bush cabinet member William Bennett and Wall Street Journal columnist
Peggy Noonan, who praised his non-confrontational approach to business
interests and the Republican Party.
The constant
harping on bipartisanship is a clear signal to the ruling elite that
whatever illusions Obama succeeds in arousing among young people and
anti-war voters, he sees his role as a political lightning rod—someone
who can be trusted to defend the status quo and work to defuse popular
anger against a system that produces worsening living standards, attacks
on democratic rights and endless wars.
Should Obama
win the presidency, his administration will do nothing to satisfy the
demands of those now being encouraged to place their political hopes
in him.
An Obama
nomination is by no means a certainty—still less a victory in
the November election. Ten months is a long time, particularly under
conditions of growing worldwide financial and political instability,
which will produce many shocks within the United States.
There is
no doubt, however, that Hillary Clinton has been dethroned as the Democratic
frontrunner. Edwards also suffered, finishing second, no better than
his showing in 2004, and losing to Obama among union voters, despite
the endorsement of much of the labor bureaucracy.
If Obama
wins Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary and contests in Nevada January
19 and South Carolina January 26, his nomination would likely be assured
on February 5, when 19 states, including California and New York, hold
presidential primaries.
On the Republican
side, the outcome of Iowa is far less definitive. Former Arkansas Governor
Huckabee won a sizeable plurality, 34 percent to 25 percent for former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 13 percent apiece for former Senator
Fred Thompson and Senator John McCain, and 10 percent for Congressman
Ron Paul. The erstwhile frontrunner, Giuliani, did not campaign in Iowa
and received only 4 percent of the vote.
The contest
was decided by a flood of evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists,
who comprised 60 percent of the Republican caucus attendees and overwhelmed
Romney’s well-financed campaign—a fact that underscores
the extent to which the Republican Party in many states has become an
essentially confessional organization.
Huckabee
antagonized the Republican Party establishment with populist demagogy
against Wall Street financial interests. In an appearance Tuesday night
on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno”—which was picketed
by striking members of the Writers Guild of America—he contrasted
himself to Romney, whose $500 million fortune derives from successful
corporate takeovers and asset-stripping. “People would rather
elect a president who reminds them of the guy they work with, not that
guy who laid them off,” he said. The Baptist minister also made
thinly veiled appeals to Christian fundamentalist prejudices against
Romney’s Mormon religion.
Iowa does
not make Huckabee the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but
it certainly sets back Romney and leaves the Republican race in confusion,
with five or even six candidates (counting Ron Paul) with the resources
to continue in the race for the next month.
The nomination
contests in both parties have little or nothing to do with competition
over policies and program and democratic decision-making. At each stage
in the process that formally began Thursday, vast sums of money and
the machinations of the corporate-controlled media play a decisive role
in determining the outcome. The interests of working people have no
representation in either of the two capitalist parties, which are neither
willing nor able to genuinely respond to their sentiments and needs.
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