The Democrats in the 2006 elections: the second party of reaction and war

Nine Senate contests have captured the greatest public attention—two Democratic-held seats, in Maryland and New Jersey, and seven Republican-held seats, in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia. A total of 33 seats are up for election this year, 15 held by Republicans and 18 by Democrats. Senators serve six-year terms and one third of the upper house is elected every two years.

While the tens of millions who will vote for the Democrats in the midterm election are undoubtedly motivated by opposition and even hatred of the Bush administration and its policies, above all the war in Iraq, the candidates of the Democratic Party by no means share those sentiments.

Many of them are running as political and cultural conservatives, all of them as supporters of Bush’s “war on terror,” and their criticism of the Iraq war is largely directed against the incompetence of the Bush administration, not the goal of seizing oilfields and strategic territory in the Middle East.

Below we profile three of the most prominent Democratic candidates for the US Senate, who are representative examples of the fundamentally reactionary character of this big business party.

Read More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/dems-n04.shtml