[The following article appeared in the March 23-29 issue of Rouge, the weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Traditionally, the American presidential elections are held between the representatives of the two big bourgeois parties, Republican and Democratic. It will be the same this year. Until June, primaries will be held in each of the states to choose among the candidates for the nomination.
Voting is open to all citizens who, when they registered on the voter rolls, indicated their party affiliation. On the basis of these local votes, delegates are selected to the national conventions that will be held during the summer.
On the Republican side, the nomination of Ronald Reagan for a second term appears assured. But the situation is quite different in the other clan. Divided, unable to present itself as a credible alternative, the Democratic Party sees its spokesmen going up against one another in an orgy of hollow promises, each more demagogic than the next. That is the norm in an election contest across the Atlantic, where they try to draw in certain sectors of the electorate, the better to forget the programs once victory is ensured.
Walter Mondale, Carter's former vice president, who is supported by the unions and the party apparatus, is facing Gary Hart, the proponent of "new ideas," the contours of which remain singularly fuzzy.
Alongside the official scene, another campaign is developing, the campaign of independent candidates. As in each contest since 1948, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is taking part. Mel Mason, a Black activist and city councilman from the small California town of Seaside, and Andrea González, a Puerto Rican from New York who is secretary of the YSA (the youth organization of the SWP) will be its standardbearers.
Mel Mason and Andrea González are trying to utilize all the legal possibilities of the campaign to expose the warlike policies of the principal imperialist power and its threats against the Central American revolutions and to put forward the independence of the working class.
"We say," explains Mason, "that the workers who constitute the majority must break
Steven Fuchs/(P
MEL MASON
IP
ANDREA GONZÁLEZ
with the Democrats and Republicans and form their own party. A labor party, based on a democratic and fighting union movement, or an independent Black party would defend the workers — and not just during election campaigns — whether or not it is in power."