EDITORIAL

Mid-Term Elections:
Battle Between Paradigms,
Not Parties

by Susan Kokinda

[Print version of this editorial]

Aug. 26—In the countdown to November 6, 2018, one thing is clear: This will be a mid-term election unlike anything seen in the post-war period. Far from being a battle between the Democratic and Republican parties, what is playing out is a battle between the old imperial policies of war, globalization, and economic destruction, versus the emerging new policies of peaceful cooperation among sovereign nations, for the betterment of mankind.

Would that the November ballots gave voters a column for the old paradigm and a column for the new paradigm. They will not. Except in Texas and South Dakota, where LaRouche PAC-endorsed independent candidates are on the ballot, the columns will largely be defined in party terms. The LaRouche Political Action Committee has announced a national campaign to bring the real battle into focus and to challenge citizens to cast their votes from the strategic high ground.

On August 16, LaRouche PAC issued a national leaflet, entitled “Countdown to the Most Consequential 2018 Mid-Term Elections. We Must Take Charge Now!” The leaflet states, “This will be the most consequential election of our lifetimes. If the current crop of crazy-‘Resist’ Democrats takes the House, and the present, equally crazy free-trade, new Cold War loving faction of the Republicans joins them, President Trump will be impeached and the policies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and worse, will re-emerge, triumphant. The world will be back on a course for war with Russia and China—a war which the human race will not survive.”

The crazy-“Resist” Democrats and the equally crazy Cold War Republicans are both the political playthings of the modern day British imperial system, which is hoping to bring the United States back into its fold and save its dying system, by removing or crippling President Donald Trump. Most of the ground level anti-Trump politicos are as hysterical as they are clueless about what is bringing their world down. One of the most effective tools that a citizen has in dealing with the anti-Trump frenzy and defeating it is to understand what is driving it.

EIR Founder Lyndon LaRouche has put forward the proposition that an alliance of the four most powerful nations on the planet—the United States, Russia, China, India—would be sufficient to challenge and shut down the supranational British imperial system and replace it with a revived Bretton Woods credit system. Go back to the turn of the century, the chances were remote. Russia was being looted by the western bankers under the Yeltsin regime. China was recovering from the Cultural Revolution. India had suffered the loss, through assassination, of two Prime ministers, Indira Gandhi and, then, her son, Rajiv Gandhi. The United States was under a Clinton presidency besieged by Wall Street. But Lyndon LaRouche has lived his life, knowing the power of putting the right ideas out into the universe, if not for the present, for the future.

Today, in 2018, the Four Power Alliance which he proposed then, could now become the dominant planetary reality. Russia, China, and India are increasingly in sync, through the spirit of the New Silk Road. President Trump has forged a relationship with China’s President Xi Jinping. And when Trump finally met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin—well, let’s just say, the Empire struck back. The fury of the assault on the President, following the Helsinki Summit, is the real marker for what is at stake in 2018.

Those trying to prevent the election of an “impeachment Congress” will make a fatal mistake if they think the battle lines have anything to do with party. The unprecedented nature of the attacks on Donald Trump and the drive to unseat him are being driven by a desperate British imperial system, which knows how close it is to being overpowered—for the first time in history.

Going Door-to-Door with This Message

LaRouche PAC organizers on the ground in key Midwest industrial states, such as Michigan and Ohio, report that it is not party fault lines which reverberate among the Trump base. For one, they already know they can’t trust the Republican Party. In fact, at the August 25 Michigan State Republican convention, Republican delegates were openly saying they didn’t trust the Republican Party! And, at the huge Columbus, Ohio rally, addressed by President Trump on August 4, LPAC organizers found tremendous openness on the substantive questions of dealing with Wall Street’s about-to-burst financial bubble and relations with Russia.

Two “good old boys” at the rally found themselves in the middle of a political firestorm because they designed and wore t-shirts that said, “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat.” Neither one of them is on the Internet, so they were a little stunned to experience the ensuing reaction. Photos of them went viral, and one of them found a reporter camped on his front lawn. The other said, “I’ve been accused of treason, called a traitor and a Russian bot . . . well, maybe I’m just a Russian hillbilly.” Not exactly your father’s RNC Republican.

It is within these shifting political sands, that LaRouche PAC’s 2018 Campaign to Win the Future challenges citizens to “take charge now” and to fight from the high ground of a new paradigm replacing the old.

That was already implicit in the 2016 Trump victory. The two big game-changing policies upon which Donald Trump won the 2016 election were: first, his commitment to work with Russia, China, and other nations to end decades of perpetual warfare; and second, his commitment to end globalization and rebuild the U.S. economy and labor force. That is what brought blue-collar Democrats and independents over to the Trump side, and delivered the election.

But a mere rerun of 2016 will not be sufficient, not with an enemy pushing the extremes of hate-filled vitriol and demonization. What was implicit in 2016 must become explicit in 2018. The LaRouche PAC statement spells out the pledges to which voters must hold their candidates and themselves:

First, stop the impeachment drive.

Second, understand and fight for Lyndon LaRouche’s full program for economic recovery.

And, third, “work with Russia and China and other nations on areas of mutual interest, particularly conquering terrorism, joint ventures to develop infrastructure for the world’s developing economies, and exploring space. President Trump has attempted this program for peace. He has been blocked at every turn by the City of London and Wall Street and politicians who profit from perpetual war and the cheap labor regimes of globalization and free trade.”

LaRouche PAC organizers have begun distributing the leaflet at political gatherings. Local political officials and citizens are sharing it on social media, discussing it with their networks and committing to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods.

Case Study: Michigan’s 11th CD

Michigan was one of the key, swing states in the Midwest which delivered the Presidency to Donald Trump. As one Trump supporter said to me recently, “the minute I saw Trump had won Michigan, I went to bed. I knew we had it.” Voters in traditional blue collar districts continued to support their incumbent Democratic Congressmen, but cast their votes for Donald Trump in the Presidential election. Translating that national political shift into local Congressional races is not a given.

Michigan’s 11th Congressional District (made up of the western suburbs of the Detroit metropolitan area) features a race for an open seat in Congress, a race which is already drawing national focus. Lena Epstein, a Trump Republican, is running against Haley Stevens, who chaired Barack Obama’s auto task force. Besides being two women running against each other, in this “the year of the woman,” the contrast between the new Trump insurgency and the old paradigm politics of the Obama/Clinton Democratic Party couldn’t be clearer. But, look at the numbers: The turnout in the Democratic primary in the district was 4,000 votes more than the Republican turnout (both primaries were hotly contested). And, state-wide, 140,000 more Democrats than Republicans voted in the August primary.

The mission that LaRouche PAC has taken on, especially in key districts such as this one, is to ensure that voters understand the historic importance of this election, and do not go on a partisan-auto-pilot and end up with an impeachment Congress committed to war and Wall Street.

LaRouche PAC has a unique advantage in the 11th. In 2012, LaRouche PAC-endorsed candidate Bill Roberts ran in the Democratic Congressional primary, calling for Barack Obama’s impeachment. He won 40 percent of the Democratic vote. Besides his signature “calling-card” posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache, Roberts prominently featured a return to the economic development policies of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Roberts recalled getting petition signatures in one area: “All I had to say to people is that I’m a Democrat who wants to impeach Obama and rebuild the country and people would sign up.” Those Democrats who voted for him are the swing base which must be activated and mobilized around the pledges spelled out in the LaRouche PAC statement.

And so it must be around the country. As the statement says, “What if the citizens of our country actually take charge—assuming the role that our Constitution envisions for them? What if we educate ourselves and tie our vote to a program which can actually restore this nation’s greatness and ensure that an ever better and happier life is lived by our children? What if we tell any politician that our vote is based on their running on and implementing this program and nothing else? What if we, together, build a movement based on this pledge? Only such a movement can actually achieve the dramatic change for which citizens voted in the 2016 elections. If you think President Trump, backed by a ‘silent majority’ and forced to compromise for pure political survival, can do this, you have not grasped the actual situation.”