Just a quick look at the up coming convention.  About the only thing that I like about the Democrat situation is the Biden addition.  At least he chose one of the few non-millionaires in the Senate.

With the Democratic National Convention set to convene in Denver, Colorado next week for the formal nomination of Senator Barack Obama, the party and its presidential candidate have made it clear that they will present no genuine alternative to the politics of aggressive war and social reaction that have prevailed in America over the whole past period.

Having won the Democratic primaries through an amorphous appeal to the desire for change and a disingenuous attempt to cast himself as an antiwar candidate, Obama has over the past few months voted in favor of police-state spying, fully embraced militarism, and given assurances to Wall Street that its profits will remain sacrosanct, no matter how severe the crisis confronting millions of working people.

The Democratic convention itself—a carefully scripted and corporate-funded media extravaganza—is to be the culmination of a systematic shift to the right by the Obama campaign.

He has spelled out the real significance of his primary campaign rhetoric about an end to the war in Iraq, making it clear that his call for withdrawing “combat troops”—16 months after taking office—envisions leaving a “residual force” consisting of tens of thousands of US military personnel and mercenaries to continue the colonial-style occupation.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on August 14, Obama’s principal economic advisors presented a plan that would hike capital gains and dividend taxes for those making more than $200,000 a year to only 20 percent, from the current 15 percent. The Democratic candidate had been expected to nearly double the capital gains tax—returning it to the rate that existed under Reagan and Bush as well as during the first term of the Clinton administration—and increase the tax on dividends to 40 percent.

By ruling out any materially significant increase in taxes on finance capital, Obama and the Democrats have effectively precluded any measures to improve living standards, increase public spending or boost employment. A Democratic administration in 2009 will spell a continuation and deepening of the attacks on living standards as American capitalism continues to confront its deepest crisis since the great depression of the 1930s.

Obama has repeatedly made it clear that the real thrust of his domestic policy will be the demand for fiscal responsibility. Under conditions in which the budget deficit will be approaching $500 billion by next year and with continued massive military spending, this can only mean stepped up attacks on working people.