heless, within the confines of the current U.S. electoral setup, his decisive victory represents a significant and healthy shift to the left.
Exit polls taken during election night offer a snapshot of the current mood in America: 37 percent said "change" was the number one issue on their minds. 79 percent think the country is going in the wrong direction. 68 percent of new voters, 66 percent of Latinos, and 90 percent of African-Americans voted for Obama. People who had previously never had any interest in politics suddenly felt they had something worth voting and hitting the streets for. Such was the support and enthusiasm he inspired on the campaign trail, that had Obama won the popular vote, yet lost the electoral vote, and therefore the election itself, there would have undoubtedly been unrest on the streets.
Film maker Michael Moore calls it the end of 28 years of rule by Republicans and Democrats who act like Republicans. At long last! The Bush years of war, terrorism, Enron, Katrina, domestic spying, mass layoffs and off shoring, raids and deportations of immigrant workers, attacks on the unions and declining living conditions are over! Or are they?
As we have explained time and again, on all fundamentals, Obama represents the same interests as Bush and McCain. The only real difference is greater his charm, eloquence and intellect. A cunning politician who knows full well whose interests he has been elected to defend, he will, like Bill Clinton before him, be used to carry out attacks on the working class that even the Bushes couldn't get away with - albeit with a warm smile on his face and a charming twinkle in his eye. Obama was above all elected on the basis of what people want to see in him, not what he really represents. "Hope" and "change" are powerful words in these times of turmoil and uncertainty. But sooner rather than later, Obama's true colors will be revealed. He may be riding high for the moment, and millions of people are elated, but we can predict that in the not-too-distant future, increasing numbers of his supporters will begin to feel confused and betrayed, bitterly disappointed, and then angry. They will be looking for answers and a way out of the crisis that still confronts them, and will be increasingly open to the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and socialism.
The most important issue on American voters' minds is the economy. No wonder. The instability on the stock market is having a very real and very immediate effect on the real economy and on the lives of working people, who will be the ones who suffer for the crisis of the system. It's always the same: during the boom times, the rich benefit, and during the hard times, working people and the poor have to foot the bill and tighten their belts even further.
The housing market has collapsed, trillions of dollars have been wiped off the stock market, and the official unemployment rate - kept artificially low by changes in the way data is reported - is now 6.1 percent, the highest it has been since just after September 11, 2001. When you count the long-term unemployed and the under-employed, the real figure is far higher. The economy lost 159,000 jobs in September alone, the biggest loss since March 2003. The economy has now lost 760,000 jobs since January, not including October. When you consider that the economy must generate 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with the growing workforce, the picture is even worse. According to Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight: "My view is that [unemployment] will be near 8 or 8.5 percent by the end of next year." That would be the highest unemployment rate since the recession of the early 1980s.
In just the last two weeks, the following companies have announced mass layoffs: Merck, Yahoo, General Electric, Xerox, Pratt & Whitney, Goldman Sachs, Whirlpool, Bank of America, Alcoa, Coca-Cola, all the Detroit automakers and nearly all the airlines. In September alone, 2,269 employers announced mass layoffs, which means they fired 50 or more employees at a time. This was up sharply 