THE US midterm elections are being held under conditions of escalating political crisis. Whatever the outcome, the elections will set the stage for a further shift of US politics to the right.
In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump has intensified his drive to develop a far-right movement, making an increasingly open fascistic appeal. He has delivered a series of speeches attacking migrants fleeing the consequences of US imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation in Central America. Some 15,000 troops are being deployed to the US-Mexico border, in violation of US law, amidst threats by Trump that the military will meet the refugees with murderous violence.
The president has declared his administration’s determination to abolish birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, enacted after the Civil War to ensure full rights for freed slaves and their children.
The Trump administration’s appeals to violence have already had horrific consequences. The pipe bombs sent by a Trump supporter to prominent Democrats and supporters of the Democratic Party were followed just over a week ago by the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, leaving 11 people dead—the worst act of violence against Jews in US history. In justifying his rampage, the accused killer used language drawn directly from Trump’s campaign speeches, combining anti-Semitism with anti-immigrant chauvinism.
Trump brings to a head a combination of protracted processes. His administration is the political outcome of a quarter-century of unending war in the Middle East and Central Asia, and all of the crimes—torture, rendition, drone assassinations—with which these wars are associated. It is the product of decades of rising social inequality, financial parasitism and government criminality. It is the vomiting up of the undigested barbarism of American capitalism.
That Trump is not an aberration in an otherwise healthy political system is demonstrated by how the Democrats have conducted their own campaign—what they say and do not say, and who they are running.
The Democrats are going out of their way to adapt themselves at every stage to the Trump administration, while the media downplays the significance of Trump’s actions and the dangers they present. As Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi explained, they want to “show voters that Democrats are a governing party, not the leftist mob that Mr. Trump describes—and to extend an arm of cooperation to the president after an electoral rebuke.” They hope, as they have hoped throughout the two years of Trump’s administration, to reach an accommodation on foreign policy, the better to pursue the basic agenda of the ruling class at home and abroad.
>> Read the Full Statement on the WSWS
Sincerely,
Joseph Kishore
SEP National Secretary | 
