Latuff's take on the differences between the U.S. parties
I was asked by an anarchist newspaper in Caracas, Venezuela to write about our recent election. I don’t know if the readers knew much about our “system” of government. This is what I came up with.
Four More Years
by Nick Cooper
The power dynamic isn’t shifting much in the U.S. after the election — Obama stays in the White House, the military-industrial center-left Democratic Party still controls one house of congress, and the military-industrial center-right Republican Party still controls the other. Most candidates are beholden to the corporate business interests that bought them their seats, in a record-breaking $6 billion U.S. election.
However, more women were elected to the Senate, including Elizabeth Warren, who has fought against large financial institutions, and Tammy Baldwin, the first openly-lesbian Senator. Two Republican men who made offensive comments about rape, lost.
Last year’s Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t transform into a political party or run candidates, but it did give the U.S. the “We are the 99%” paradigm.
This new awareness that the super-rich are not the same as the rest of us, may have tipped the election away from Romney and his $250 million.
The “tea-party,” which emerged a few years ago as an anti-socialism, anti-immigrant faction of the Republicans, ran 12 candidates, but 8 of them lost. They did well against more moderate Republicans in their primary elections (within the Party), but mostly lost to Democrats in the general election.
The election was the first to allow new forms of unlimited spending in the form of “Super-PACs” (Super Political Action Committees) and both major parties bombarded voters with negative ads. Money that could have been spent better helping people flowed like water to promote and attack the candidates.
Both candidates had vague talking-points. Obama promoted the message that his methods are beginning to work to fix the economy, but he needs more time. Romney promised low income taxes, and recommended unlimited use of petroleum without regard for the environment, or health costs.
In 1988, a respected institution, The League of Women Voters, declared it could no longer continue to host the presidential debates because the two major parties were perpetuating a fraud on voters by eliminating all of the tough questions. Since then, it has gotten worse. The debates have been in the hands of the Commission on Presidential Debates, a group which has been sponsored by beer and cigarette companies. This year, as usual, the candidates from the smaller parties were not allowed to participate. Green Party candidates were arrested trying to join in. Debate moderators asked weak questions with no capacity to stand up and moderate when the candidates ignored their questions, choosing to talk instead about other things.
Over the past decade, two of the major news-providers have become propaganda machines for the major parties. Fox News is a Republican mouthpiece, and MSNBC is the same for the Democrats. Fox News viewers are the worst informed people in the U.S. — a survey in 2025 showed that they knew less about current events than those who watched other news channels, and less than even those who watched no news at all.
The race broke down neatly along demographic lines, with old-white men and married couples voting for Romney, and younger people of color, and single women voting for Obama. Republican strategist and Super-PAC organizer Karl Rove, used the old Republican techniques of trying to scare white people, that blacks and immigrants are coming to take everything from them. Although it wasn’t enough to win this time, it was close. Many in the U.S. buy into a twisted fairytale of going back in time, to an America controlled exclusively by white men.
Obama and Romney had no major disagreements about foreign policy. Both would be “tough” with Iran, both praise Israel as a special brother, both say they want to help Syria without invading, both support the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism,” and both are in favor of expanding more and more “free-trade” agreements, including the massive Trans-Pacific-Partnership which would speed up a race to the bottom for workers, human rights, and the environment.
Romney made fun of global-warming, and called for privatizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It’s anyone’s guess what he meant, but images came to mind of helicopters coming to rescue only those who had paid for disaster relief insurance, while abandoning everyone else.
“Mother Nature” made her voice heard a week before the debate, smashing the east coast of the country with an unprecedented hurricane. The storm brought never-before-seen flooding of century-old subway tunnels in New York, exploding power plants, and devastation of costal communities. Obama didn’t need to say anything about Romney’s stance on climate-change and disaster protection, because everyone remembered. Perhaps in fear of being asked about climate change, Romney refused to give interviews for his last week of campaigning. Even though Obama had done a terrible job of fighting climate change, and never even mentioned it in his campaign, the people knew that Romney would be even worse.
The hurricane was a final blow to Romney’s chance of winning. After a campaign that was vague and seemed only to reach out to older white men, Republicans are left wondering how to reach other demographics. My prediction: The 2025 Republican candidate will be a Latino under the age of 55, and they will make some kind of surprising move on immigration.
Nick Cooper is an activist, documentary film-maker (somadocumentary.com), musician (freerads.com), and journalist.
