Less than three years ago, the Bush administration enjoyed tremendous popular approval. All questions about the legitimacy of the 2000 elections disappeared in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Today, with a little over three months before the presidential election, the Bush regime is in deep trouble.

The growing quagmire in Iraq, the failure to find "Weapons of Mass Destruction" or any credible links between the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the Islamists of Al-Qaida, the revelations of US torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners - together with an economic "recovery" that has restored capitalist profits, but not employment or wages for working people - have undermined the Bush administration's popular support. Currently, the majority of Americans believes that the war in Iraq was a mistake and question whether Bush deserves a second term.

Despite the Bush administration's falling support, the Democrats are having a hard time generating much excitement for their presidential candidate, John Kerry, the former anti-war Vietnam veteran and Senator from Massachusetts. A brief review of Kerry's politics helps explain the public's lukewarm response. Kerry, while bemoaning the strains in the alliance between the US and the European imperialist powers, supported the Iraq war, opposes US withdrawal and calls for an increased US troop presence in Iraq. Kerry voted for the USA Patriot Act, which curtails civil liberties for both people born in the US and immigrants and promises to pursue a more effective "war on terrorism" at home and abroad. He is a committed neo-liberal. Kerry supported NAFTA, GATT and, despite new found (and quite transitory) concerns about environmental protection and workers' rights, the FTAA. Kerry supported the dismantling of cash assistance for single mothers and cuts in other social welfare programs under the Clinton and Bush administrations. While claiming to support legal abortion - but not public funding for abortion for poor women - Kerry has made clear his "personal opposition" to abortion. On the issue of same-sex marriage - and the ability of gays and lesbians to enjoy the same legal rights as straight couples - Kerry supports "civil unions," which would continue to condemn gays and lesbians to second-class citizenship.

The official leaderships of the labour, women's, queer and black and Latino movements, however, are backing the Democrats. Since the 1930s, the officialdoms of the popular movements have hitched their wagons to the capitalist-dominated and -led Democratic Party. The Democrats appeared to be the party of "reform" through the 1970s as they actually responded, as did the Republicans, to the tumultuous social struggles of the 1930s and 1960s. The labour bureaucracy and the middle-class leaders of the social movements demobilized and disorganized these struggles to cement their alliance with the Democrats. The Democrats have not reciprocated, doing little for workers, people of colour, women or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered (LGBT) people since the 1970s.

After the collapse of the social movements of the 1960s and the beginning of the global capitalist crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, the Democrats moved right and abandoned even the pretence of reform. This had little effect on the leaders of the labor and social movements, who continued to pour millions of dollars and thousands of activist hours into the campaigns of Democrats who sought to continually distance themselves from "special interests" like workers, women, people of colour and gays and lesbians.

2004 is no different. After the half-hearted attempt by some unions and civil rights organizations to support the luke-warm anti-war candidacy of Vermont Governor Howard Dean failed, all the forces of official reform in the US are backing Kerry. In order not to "embarrass" Kerry or "divert energy" from his campaign, the leaders of the labour and social movements have opposed any mobilizations by their ranks. The mainstream gay and lesbian leadership helped derail a promising wave of direct actions, with hundreds of same-sex couples descending on city clerks' offices demanding marriage certificates. The AFL-CIO leaders are opposing the Pacific coast longshore union's call for a "million worker march" in Washington in October.

While the support of the labour officialdom and other reformist forces for the Democrats comes as no surprise, the support of the leadership of the anti-war and global justice movement for Kerry is a bit more surprising. Many who had supported Ralph Nader's anti-corporate campaign in 2000 have today embraced the battle-cry of "Anybody But Bush" (ABB). The inability of the massive mobilizations of Winter-Spring 2003 to stop the Bush administration's aggression against Iraq and the sharp polarization of the US electorate has convinced many radicals and anti-war and global justice activists that Bush must be defeated "at any cost." They are willing to embrace a candidate and party which they recognize is pro-imperialist and pro-corporate as a "lesser evil" to defeat the "greater evil" represented by Bush and his neo-conservative cabal. For many on the US left, the defeat of the "Bush agenda" is the first step in stopping the right-ward rush of US politics.

Unfortunately, support for the Democratic "lesser evil" candidate actually facilitates the right-ward movement of politics in the US. The major elements of the "Bush agenda" (imperialism and neo-liberalism) are shared by Kerry and the Democrats. The US left and social movements have, since the 1930s, consistently sacrificed building their own independent struggles and political organization in favor of supporting the Democrats. As a result, Democratic politicians have felt less and less pressure from the only forces that can push politics to the left: the labour and social movements mobilized in the workplace and streets.

Pressure From Below

With no pressure from "below," and secure in the loyalty of workers, racial minorities, women and queer people on Election Day, the Democrats have followed the Republicans to the right. In 1992, Bill Clinton, a "liberal" Democrat, was elected on the same platform that Richard Nixon, a right-wing Republican, had campaigned for in 1972: "welfare reform," "managed health care" and "free trade."

The results of "ABB" will be much the same in 2004. Many in the anti-war and global justice movements are trimming their politics so as not to challenge Kerry and the Democrats. At the Boston Social Forum, held during the Democratic National Convention in July, many activists refrained from criticizing Kerry's pro-war and neo-liberal politics, focusing solely on the "Bush agenda." The organizers of what promise to be massive protests at the New York Republican National Convention in August, in particular the leadership of United for Peace and Justice, are also toning down the politics of the demonstrations. Rather than raising the demand for US withdrawal from Iraq or the defeat of the FTAA, leaflets building these actions proclaim that "the world says no to the Bush agenda." We are very likely to see a sharp downturn in anti-war and global justice protests through the November elections, which may extend into the spring of 2005 if Kerry is elected.

The emergence of an independent, anti-war and global justice presidential campaign in 2004 has been fraught with difficulties. The Green Party, which has ballot access in over twenty states and ran Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000, was sharply divided over the 2004 elections.

Many Green activists wanted to run a national campaign with Nader, whose forty years of anti-corporate activism and 2000 campaign gave him a national profile. However, a significant layer of Green party members gravitated to the candidacy of David Cobb, a Texas Green who advocated a "safe-states" strategy: the Greens would only run a presidential campaign in the states where the Democrats had a clear majority. Although many Cobb supporters rejected the "safe states" strategy, which many pro-Nader Greens saw as a version of "ABB," others found his long-term commitment to building the Green Party a refreshing change to Nader's refusal to join or be accountable to the Greens. At the Green Convention in Milwaukee in June, Cobb secured the endorsement despite broad support - especially in Green primaries - for Nader.

Nader himself has put some obstacles in the way of rallying the support of radicals and anti-war and global justice activists. He refused to seek the Green Party nomination (instead seeking merely "endorsement"), reinforcing his image as a "loose cannon" among Green activists. He has also been appealing to "disaffected conservatives" who are disgusted with Bush's war in Iraq and the repressive USA PATRIOT Act. Nader has gone as far as accepting the endorsement of the Reform Party, which had run the right-wing, anti-immigrant populist Pat Buchanan in 2004, but whose leadership has become pro-Nader and pro-immigrant rights since the last election.

There are, however, some important hopeful signs that the Nader campaign will be able to again pose a clear left-wing, anti-war and global justice alternative in 2004. After several months of silence on the war, Nader has made his call for US withdrawal from Iraq a central element of his campaign since March, appearing at anti-war rallies and calling for Bush's impeachment for lying about "weapons of mass destruction" and ties between the Iraqi regime and Al-Qaida. Nader has also chosen Peter Camejo as his running mate. Camejo, who ran as a revolutionary socialist in the 1976 Presidential election, ran two successful campaigns for Governor of California in 2002 and 2003, winning 3-5% of the popular vote. Camejo has also been central in recruiting immigrants and people of colour to the Greens in California, helping to change the image of the Greens as a primarily white, middle-class party.

Most promising has been the emergence of "Greens for Nader-Camejo." Originally organized to secure the Green Party's endorsement of Nader, "Greens for Nader-Camejo" has become the backbone of the grass roots campaign in 2004. This grouping of several hundred Green activists, including long-time and prominent left-wing Greens, is spearheading petitioning for ballot status, organizing campaign meetings and rallies and speaking at meetings across the country. More importantly, the "Greens for Nader-Camejo" will build the Green Party while campaigning in 2004, recruiting activists, building new party locals and developing new candidates for local and state elections.