It seems difficult to foresee any alternative outcome to the November US Presidential elections other than a Democratic victory. The fragmented and crisis-ridden Republican Party is being punished in the polls after two terms of Bush’s presidency.

With no end in sight to the $1 trillion occupation of Iraq, and with the US heading deeper into recession, meaning ordinary Americans are facing housing foreclosures, job losses and crises in health and other services, US workers, young people and minorities are desperately hoping for a change.

Barack Obama, who is tipped to be the Democratic candidate for president, has built up his support on repetition of the empty slogan of "time for change". As an African-American, Obama has attempted to present himself as standing outside the establishment. Many commentators are evoking a sense of history being made with the potential of the election of the first black president on the cards.

In reality, Obama is a more than acceptable candidate for Presidency from the perspective of US big business and the US ruling class. During the protracted Democratic Primaries, Hillary Clinton and Obama have been falling over each other in an attempt to masquerade as more to the "left" than the other. American workers and youth have had endure such disingenuous posturing from two candidates who are at the heart of a party that is tied hand and foot to big business and the establishment.

Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama have tried to cloak themselves in a thinly woven veil of radicalism in order to try to win support amongst American workers who are politically shifting to the left. American workers and youth, have an increasingly anti-corporate, anti-war consciousness, due to their concrete experience of declining living standards and serious worries about the future.

Obama and the Democrats have nothing to offer ordinary Americans and are in fact backed politically and financially by large sections of the big business elite. According to the Federal Election commission, investment bankers favour the Democrats by a margin of two to one, over the Republicans. John McCain, the Republican candidate, is drawing in less funding than either of the Democratic hopefuls, with Obama now taking in more money than Clinton.

Some of Obama’s backers include Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the US, Rubert Murdoch’s New York Post, a billionaire casino developer (despite Obama’s decrying of gambling’s "moral and social cost"!) and the director of General Dynamics, a military supplier whose profits have soared since the Iraq war. Washington Post 11 April 2008.

Obama continually emphasises his original vote in Congress opposing the Iraq war. However, he has repeatedly voted to increase spending on the occupation, in effect voting in favour of over $300 billion in additional funding. As opposed to having any fundamental disagreements with the Republicans in terms of foreign policy, Obama himself has come out with rather hawkish statements. The reality is that he wishes to manage US capitalism and imperialism in a different manner.

For example, he supports expanding the size of the US army, (let’s not forget that the 2008 US military budget is already larger than the rest of the world’s military spending combined) and proposes redeploying some troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. He has no intention of genuinely putting an end to the murderous occupation of Iraq. He likes to paint himself as the voice of reason when it comes to foreign policy – the bald truth is he is just more skilful than the bungling George W. Bush in articulating the will of the US ruling class.

If Obama is elected President in November off the back of raising the hopes of ordinary Americans for some change, he is in for a rude awakening. With the US plunging into recession, he will pursue further attacks on workers in an attempt to cushion the blow for US big business.

An estimated $1.5 trillion dollars a year are needed to repair the country’s ailing infrastructure. US workers and youth will not easily accept further attacks on their living standards. With the prospect of an upturn in class struggle, the basis can be laid for the building of a new party of and for working people, youth, minorities and the poor as opposed to the multi-nationals and rich elite, a party committed to building a struggle for socialism in the United States.

The reality of the race to replace George W. Bush is taking place against a worsening economic and social crisis within US society. Literally tens of millions of Americans are suffering the consequences of occupations carried out abroad, massive financial speculation and attacks on living standards.

George W Bush’s domestic record as a two-term president can only be described as that of a latter day "Sheriff of Nottingham", robbing and stealing from the poor in the name of the rich.

The most blatant example of this is the tax cuts Bush introduced in 2001 and 2003. Specifically designed as a stimulus package to stave off the threat of recession in the wake of the dotcom bubble crashing and the September 11 attacks. These tax cuts mean that in the year 2008-09 households with an income of over $1 million annually gain $164,000 that would otherwise be paid in tax, while the bottom 20% of US households get $45 each. These tax cuts while supposedly temporary could become permanent if Bush has his way.

Healthcare in the USA is rightly seen as a disgrace; most Americans come into daily contact with the medical profession through advertising on TV! Forty seven million Americans have no medical care because of a lack of health insurance. Bush’s presidency has seen wide ranging attacks on healthcare, the latest one being that $196 billion will be cut from both Medicare and Medicaid (both federally funded programmes to assist with healthcare for the elderly and those in need). Lower taxes under Bush have seen ordinary Americans worse off due to cuts such as these.

Living standards are under severe attack in the USA, according to NAACP President Julian Bond there are now 37 million Americans below the poverty line in contrast to 32 million in 2001. Rising food prices and the growing cost of paying for petrol are hitting the poorest hardest. Petrol for instance now stands at roughly $4 a gallon and in a country with little public transport apart from in major cities this is a huge issue.

Linked to the decline of living standards has been the collapse of manufacturing jobs with three million lost during the Bush presidency. More and more Americans work two or three jobs and on average work two weeks longer than workers in Europe. The average 35 year old worker now has an income 12% lower than that of a similar worker in the USA in 1978. Despite proposals by Bush’s economic statisticians no one will believe three million jobs at McDonalds, Burger King, etc are "manufacturing" jobs!

Nelson George, an African-American author and film maker leaves no doubt as to where gang culture in the USA has come from:

"There were factories out in South Central (a suburb of LA), construction work, manual labour. A lot of people moved to California after the war because of all these jobs. . . . Since the 70s, the jobs went away, overseas and to Mexico. So the kinds of jobs that their grandfathers and fathers had just disappeared. The crime industry and gangs filled that vacuum. The gang problem in LA – and eventually around the country – was exacerbated by crack."

Also, over the last year the housing market has collapsed. Home foreclosure filings in the US jumped 60% during 2007. The hardest hit are those on low incomes who the banks and mortgage lenders gave money to without caring if they had the means to pay them back. These people are now the ones losing their homes.

The rise of house prices during Bush’s presidency offset the stagnation and decline of real wages for ordinary Americans; this now threatens to completely unravel, leaving millions homeless. Household as well as government debt is at record levels in the USA and only one thing is certain, working class Americans will be told they must bear the brunt for the excesses of Bush’s two terms as President.

The super wealthy elite have gorged themselves during Bush’s rule as president. The arms manufacturers have made hundreds of billions from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The oil companies and financial parasites led by the banks and the hedge funds have made billions of dollars in profit from the speculation of the last decade whether through the occupation of Iraq or betting on the price of oil, gold and other commodities. Barrack Obama for all his rhetoric is no modern day "Robin Hood", but George W. Bush will go down in history as a modern day "Sheriff of Nottingham."