Significantly, the Democratic Senators failed to question Comey about his announcement on October 28, just days before the election, that the FBI had reopened its criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. This act of electoral meddling, which the former Democratic candidate herself maintains was a central reason for her defeat, was far more damaging than the allegations levied against Russia and Trump.

    The claim that Trump is blocking a legitimate investigation is based on the antidemocratic assumption that the FBI has the “right” to launch investigations against whomever it chooses while hiding the supposed factual basis from the population. In the 1990s, the Republican Party whipped up similarly baseless “scandals” out of Bill Clinton’s personal life in an effort to carry out a shift in administration policy. The central difference is that the Democrats are currently pressuring Trump to carry out a belligerent shift in foreign policy that threatens to bring the US to war with nuclear-armed Russia.

    The comparison between those hearings and Comey’s testimony yesterday is a measure of the political degeneration of the Democratic Party. Only an organization as bankrupt as the Democrats could develop a campaign opposing Donald Trump from the right.

    The section of the ruling class associated with the Democratic Party, separated from the masses by a vast chasm of wealth, is not fundamentally opposed to Trump’s reactionary social policies. They fear he is undermining the long-term interests of American imperialism and they will quickly warm up to Trump if he accedes to their foreign policy goals. They are equally aware that the election of Trump has only deepened social opposition, and they fear the prospects of a social explosion. Their anti-Russia campaign is in part aimed at directing this opposition along reactionary, nationalist lines.

    The working class must conduct its opposition to Trump on an entirely different basis. Millions of workers in the US and worldwide will be devastated by the attacks on migrants, the proposals for massive cuts to social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the tax breaks for the wealthy, the proposals to deregulate and privatize major industries, the ongoing mass surveillance, and the belligerent military actions worldwide.

A fight against this reactionary agenda must not be contaminated by alliances with the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Democratic Party. It must be based on uniting disparate struggles of the working class worldwide, drawing workers everywhere into a common fight for socialism.

Editor: Zhong Yao

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/06/09/pers-j09.html