It's time for your close-up, Mr. President.
Now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) has announced he'll try to push through a health care reform
bill with a public option, liberals are turning their focus - and their
frustrations - on Barack Obama, the man who brought them to the
outskirts of the progressive promise land.
Just when many conditions seemed ripe for a progressive political
movement, the likelihood is fading fast. Concentrated corporate power
over our political economy and its control over peoples lives knows few
boundaries.
As Republican investor advocate leader Robert Monks puts it: “The
United States is a corporatist state. This means that individuals are
largely excluded both in the political and corporate spheres.”
No matter what the facts are, some liberal activists and leaders
persist in seeing President Obama as a principled progressive reformer
who lives and breathes the campaign rhetoric about "change you can
believe in."
When he compromises, it's not Obama's fault - it's the opposition.
Retreat is never a sell-out but a shrewd tactic, part of some secret
long-range strategy for triumphant reform.
He's been in the White House eight months. It's time for activists take
a harder look at Obama. And a more assertive posture toward him.
Corruption takes many forms in different countries and locations. Here in the United States
it may not be as common to pay off a judge or a customs official as it
is in most low- and middle-income countries, but we do have quite a bit
of legalised bribery, especially in the form of electoral campaign
contributions.
Needless to say that when you wake up one morning and find yourself the
subject of the lead editorial in the largest conservative publication
on the planet, it is a bit jarring.
The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.
The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks,
Gen. Stanley McCrystal, Obama’s version of Lyndon Johnson’s General
William Westmoreland, will be coming to him asking for more troops.
Things are getting hairier in Iraq too.
His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.
The last week or so has been the right-wingers-at-town-meetings moment,
and it looks like it's going to be supplemented by something similar
but different: rallies organized by fossil-fuel-supporting corporations
in these states: Texas, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina,
Ohio, Colorado, Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Florida, South Carolina, Alaska, Illinois, West Virginia, Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas.
I’ve started deleting them as spam.
I’m not talking about the enlarge-your-penis emails or
“You’ve Won the Lottery” notices.
I’m talking about the increasingly-urgent emails coming
for weeks from liberal Netroots groups calling for a “public option” for
healthcare – a government insurance plan citizens could choose to PAY FOR
instead of private insurance.
Here's the situation: President Obama maneuvered a stimulus package through Congress that, after being reduced to attract additional senators, has proven insufficient to stimulate the economy. Now, given the political calculus, it would be nearly impossible for him to introduce an additional boost. He also proposed a regulatory scheme for Wall Street that was so riddled with compromises and concessions that it was unlikely to prevent another economic meltdown.
