I’d read something several months ago that stuck in the back of my mind, and I simply couldn’t retrieve it. I knew it had something to do with why Obama does what he does, but I couldn’t locate it, either online or in my brain.
I finally remembered. It was something at least reasonably credible that described a meeting Obama had with some multinational type, who carefully explained to him that he had to break the back of the American economy, driving us down to a low-wage, low-benefits society — so we could compete with Third World countries for jobs.
And you know, I really do think this is what is going on. The Harvard guy, easily impressed by the elites, dazzled by the fact that he’s one of them, and a man without clearly defined goals or vision, bought that version of reality.
Rather than do the hard work of bringing other countries up to our standards, he’s decided we have to be broken. And he thinks it’s what’s “best” for us. He’s doing it because he cares. He sees social programs as simply postponing the the day when the workers (not the special people, like him and his friends) are living in tin shacks without running water, and he wants to wean us off the safety net.
Notice how toothless these trade treaties are? They’re not benefiting us, but then, they’re not meant to help us. They’re meant to help corporations, which are the real constituencies.
There are ways to change this. He could stop the economic and trade policies that make it almost impossible for American manufacturing to compete. He could put money into public infrastructure. He could push for something resembling an international minimum wage.
He could be the president of the entire world, and make everyone’s lives better, instead of just the upper classes. But he won’t. He won’t push for those things because they might work.
We need to figure out what to do about that.
Susie – nail head, meet hammer. I just passed on your thought to FDL, and stoked the tip jar (Ive been remiss lately). When JEB! was misgoverning Florida and wrecking the public schools, I realized the Republican Party wanted to be dictators in a backward country, and it was easiest to make the US into one. Your analysis shows that it’s the Democrat’s goal as well.
I don’t think they’re all complicit. Look how many Dems are downright baffled by his decisions.
Since nobody’s biting on the general strike idea, who is going to primary Obama?
I have mixed feelings about Michael Lind, but his “Made in Texas” explained George W. Bush as the heir of the Confederate planters of East Texas, who never lost control of that state after the Civil War (and Texas was the most pro-secession state of all). Their ideal was a hierarchal society with a thin aristocracy, a resource economy, and a large, disenfranchised, dispossessed, poorly educated labor pool.
That doesn’t explain Obama, though. Mirowski’s “Road from Mont Pelerin” is not fun reading, but according to Mirowski an international group of free-market liberals met during and after WWII to plan the future, and basically they decided that freedom, the welfare state, and democracy were impediments to capitalism. Old 19th c. liberals believed in limited government, freedom, democracy, and a free market, but the neoliberals decided that an authoritarian government was required to protect the free market, which to them was the most important thing.
Yes, the “Made in Texas” book was quite revealing to me about Bush, and, perhaps in this also, Obama is extending and cementing the Bush/Cheney administrations.
Part of the plantation owner mentality is that working people are interchangeable and easily expendable. Thus, it is not important to be concerned about their health care or their work conditions. Use ’em up, throw ’em out.
Cheap Labor and Hurry Up and Die. Low or no taxes on the richie rich.
I’d be happy if he’d be president of the United States and adopt trade and immigration policies aimed at benefitting the jobs picture and well-being of American workers and other non-plutocrats.
Every nation that’s killing us in competition has the brains to adopt essentially protectionist policies on behalf of their own economies.
We need to do the same.
I think what you’re describing here is what Stuart Zechman calls the ideology of centrism. Obama (and much of the Village) doesn’t hold a smattering of conservative and liberal ideals and then operates as a politician when he compromises between them. He has a wholly separate set of principles – Centrism.
Part of this ideology is definitely that leaders in every field are there because they earned it and have the best ideas and skills. It’s a fetishism of meritocracy. These smart winners should be making the decisions. It is a form of hierarchical aristocracy in that these elite’s decisions are Right – even if they go against public opinion, history and liberal or conservative values.
What are the principles and goals of Centrism? This is where I wonder if Centrism is an ideology or just a catch-all for the current form of elitism.
Obama doesn’t have bad intentions, he just has misguided policies and no philosophical underpinning that let’s him process reality effectively. He’s not trying to shred the safety net, he just doesn’t have the political skill or tenacity to be constructively confrontational.
He is resembling Jimmy Carter’s presidency more every day. While he hasn’t created the problems (like Carter), he inherited them (like Carter) he’s just not up to the task of dealing with them effectively (like Carter). He’s alienating his base (like Carter) and he’s going to be run over by events that he could shape in a more meaningful way (unemployment for Obama, hostage crisis/inflation for Carter) but just doesn’t have the will or the skill to deal with.
Bush was pathologically bad while Obama is just inept and weak (like Carter).
Carter’s staff never got the game they were in and Axelrod and Plouffe will get rich talking about the agony (2012) and the ecstasy (2008) without any real insight to their good fortune and their clear ineptitude.
I basically disagree. Obama campaigned on bipartisanship and an end to strife. That was a very bad sign; apparently he thought that the problem 2001-2008 was that both sides were being too stubborn, when really Bush was mercilessly attacking the Democrats. He also named Geithner and Summers to head his economic team, and that was another very bad sign.
I think that for some time we have been changing over from a worldwide system of nation-states (themselves a fairly modern European concept) into a new form of society organized around global corporations. Our problem is that they have globalized money and trade, but we have never globalized society to go with it. Money can flow freely across borders, but people can’t. The rights that people have under law in one place are not what people have in another place. Manufactured goods can move across the ocean, but ideas cannot. I think that instead of reforming immigration laws, they should be abolished, and people should be able to go anywhere they want and live there as fully vested citizens able to express all their ideas, hopes and demands for a better life. The wealthy are international citizens of the world able to take themselves, their families and their money anywhere they want. Why can’t we?
My point being that until we are able to do this we cannot resist their use of one country to crush down another.
Liberal and progressive democrats have to quit thinking that centrist Democrats would really like to be more liberal and progressive than they are. They do not. They are firmly committed to their own centrist path, and they do everything they can to keep the left wing of the party powerless. (Obama and Emmanuel have been aggressive about this.)
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. All you have to do is take the things they say seriously. They believe in what they’re doing.
The only reason there’s any confusion about this is that every two years the dominant Democrats come up to us and ask for our votes, because they cannot win without us. And their method is a combination of scare tactics about the Republicans, bullying and insults, and vague promises.
It’s very painful to realize how bad a spot we’re in and how few options we have. But let’s not try to fool ourselves about Obama. He’s a sincere and committed centrist, and he wants to defeat us.
Interesting thought and responses, but it’s unclear in my opinion that there’s much successful premeditation involved. I’ve always thought we’re on the natural trajectory of Late Capitalism. This is what happens when Captialism becomes the national religion; when “greed is good” goes from being a satirical comment to a guiding principle; when Ayn Rand is considered not a fantasy writer but a serious philosopher; when “Goodwill” is given a monetary value in corporate accounting that is used as security against debt; when the greatest tools for human knowledge and equality the world has ever known (TV, Internet) are monetized and privatized. What we’re going through is what a society that accepts these values is going to condemned to go through. It’s not this President, or a secret cabal. It’s a collective failure to care enough.
I’d really love it if you could find the article mentioned in the opening paragraph of this post. I suspect you’re right in your conclusion, but I’d love to read that article. Anyone else know which article the author is referring to–and could provide a link?
A few weeks ago you asked why your page hits were so much lower recently. As one who used to come here every day but today glances occasionally at best this post is the best example I can think of as to why.
You are seriously arguing that President Obama’s goal is to destroy the country as we have come to know it; to make it worse; to crush the lives of a couple hundred million people. Forget anything about Obama personally, just ask yourself this: why would anyone with the sort of healthy ego required to run for president in the first place have as his/her goal the destruction of the country?
“…he’s decided we have to be broken. And he thinks it’s what’s “best” for us. He’s doing it because he cares. He sees social programs as simply postponing the the day when the workers (not the special people, like him and his friends) are living in tin shacks without running water, and he wants to wean us off the safety net.”
He cares so much he wants us living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro? That doesn’t even begin to make sense. If he succeeds he can’t possibly be reelected. So I’m supposed to believe this egocentric politician has as his objective to go down in history as a one-term president who destroyed the American way of life? Hmmmmm, kinda hard to buy off on that one.
I’m really, truly sorry that your preferred centrist, DNC/DLC corporate Democrat lost the nomination to the other centrist, DNC/DLC corporate Democrat but perhaps the time has come to return to what this site used to offer: intelligent, insightful analysis of America’s political landscape. The snark about “best president evah” and claims that Obama’s goal is to turn America into a third-world hell-hole are beneath you.
And who knows, you might just get some of your old readers back.
He also named Geithner and Summers to head his economic team, and that was another very bad sign.
You don’t know! Cabinet of rivals! Wait and see!
“We have plenty of external threats, enemies across oceans, but we have a threat inside as well. This is something that I’ve never felt. I never feel that we had a president actually governing against the country, against the will of the people. I know we’ve had liberals. Clinton and Hillary were, and are. They’re pedal-to-the-metal liberals. But they didn’t want to destroy things. This bunch does…
Why aren’t we growing jobs in this country like we used to? Why aren’t we? It’s not hard to do. There’s all kinds of textbook evidence, real-life historical evidence of how to do it. We’re not doing it; we’re not doing it on purpose. It’s payback time. ”
Rush Limbaugh
And that is the exact same analysis you offered up.
Hi Bob,
Susie may end up being wrong, but the signs in no way point against her conclusion at this time. What would you offer up as evidence that Obama’s not committed to austerity, to shrinking the safety net that buttresses the middle class? It’s important to remember that the situation in America prior to the SS Act of 1935 was not unlike the slums of Rio de Janeiro for the poor, the elderly, or the sick. Take away the safety net–even if it is “just a little bit at a time”–and by any rational thinking-through, we’re headed back to a time when the middle class, for all intents and purposes, didn’t really exist.
No, it isn’t. The disgruntled keep reducing this to “You just wanted Hillary instead!” Really? You think if Hillary Clinton was president, I wouldn’t be upset about being unemployed for three years, and watching people lose their homes and health care? And now you’re comparing me to Rush Limbaugh. Sounds like you really need to believe this rationale you’ve constructed.
Or we could primary him.
The article you are trying to recall sounds like something from lambert strether and the gang at Corrente.
They are correct, and you are now correct. DISemployment is the plan, and the policy goal is to force working people in the USA to compete with the developing world on developing world terms, for the benefit of multinational corporations.
Hi to know
How about the fact that for the first in the history of the country all citizens will have health insurance? How is that absent from this discussion? How does it buttress a claim that Obama’s goal is to dismantle the safety net?
Susie:
Congratulations on reading an entire response which makes several substantive points – points you can agree or disagree with of course – and reducing it to some lame “you’re bitter” diatribe. You made a serious argument that Obama’s goal is to destroy the lives of several hundred million people. I pointed out how counter that would run to a man with a massive ego – not exactly a compliment to Obama – and how absurd it to believe his goal is to do something that would make him unelectable. And all you could muster up in response was a dismissive wave of the hand over the pretense that all I wrote was “you’re bitter.”
As for the comparison to Rush Limbaugh, all I did was add a quote of his, which is the perfect summation of everything he has said about Obama’s economic policy, and point out that it is identical to the analysis of Obama’s economic program you just offered. If you disagree, please explain the differences between the Limbaugh quote and your post, because I sure don’t see any.
You seemed sincere a few weeks when wondering why your page hits had dropped so much. Reread my post: was I snarky? Dismissive? Obnoxious? I answered your sincerity with sincerity. Rather than respond in kind and try to make any sort of case as to why I was wrong in my response you reduced it to a strawman regarding my first post and feigned outrage without any argument as to the merits of the comparison between the two quotes – not the people who made them – regarding my second.
If you want sycophants for readers that’s your business. Enjoy them.
What I said was that Obama believes he’s helping people by destroying the economy now.
@Bob I was very much for Obama over Hillary in 2008. My husband and I gave the full $$ during the primary, convinced other people he was a better choice and I even phone-banked and door knocked. (Oh yeah, wore t-shirts, had a bumper sticker, commented in blogs…) I’m a person who now sees Obama the way Susie does, but I sure as heck wasn’t a Hillary backer.
I think you are reading more into her statement than she meant missing some important ideas about what may be motivating Obama. Also it made you argue against a strawman:
Susie said: ” He sees social programs as simply postponing the the day when the workers () are living in tin shacks without running water, and he wants to wean us off the safety net.
You responded: “He cares so much he wants us living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro?”
That’s not what she said. In fact it’s the opposite of what she said. She said that Obama thinks that our social programs are hurting us and that if leaders don’t wean people off of them, we will end up like the slums of Rio.
I don’t agree that believing Obama is a ideological Democrat frustrated by the messed up Washington scene is accurate. I think Susie is on to something and will keep coming to Susie’s site.
So the only thing I disagree with you, Susie, was: “He won’t push for those things because they might work.” It really usually is incompetence rather than malice. I think it’s more likely that his team and his instincts say those things won’t work.
This gets back to Stuart Zechman’s Centrist ideology concept. One of its tenets seem to be that the system’s winners (e.g. Obama, Geithner, Bill Gates …) have the right answers, not polls nor history, nor scruffy guys like Krugman.
Bob, its not true that all citizens will have health insurance. All citizens will be required to buy an insurance policy or pay a penalty. I will be making my decision on that by comparing the cost of the premium to the penalty. I am expecting that the decision will go for the penalty, because the insurance will be useless to me since I will not be able to afford the deductibles and co-payments. You forgot to mention DADT and the financial reform law which is being undone as we speak by the treasury department and the SEC. I don’t think the president wants to break us down to be a third world country. But I think that he has no intention of doing anything to stop the multi-nationals from breaking us. It doesn’t really matter to him if he is not re-elected because he will be well taken care of for the rest of his life.
I can’t believe people like Bob refuse to see what’s in front of them:
What you see is what you get. Ignore the blah blah blah of day to day and take a look at what we get. Shit. That’s what. So, perhaps shit is indeed the desired result or else this administration is the most inept of all time and I don’t think that’s the case Bob. Obama has not followed through on one campaign promise and now he says SS and Medicare need to be cut because “both parties need to get out of their comfort zone”. No, the plan is shit Bob and it’s working. I said over a year ago that it looked like there was an effort to lower the US to the same standard as the third world. Well, that’s where we’re headed Bob. The elites are just making sure they are ready for it. I also think that if the number of readers and or commenters has dropped off here it’s because people are just fatigued from all the shit. I know I am.
There is an inconvenient truth that for some reason escapes many who seem to willfully deny what is going on in the world. There is a labor arbitrage going on with China and India (and others) and capital flows to where it’s treated best. This is not some horrific thing to posit on this blog. Think about it. Put yourself in the picture. Let’s say you own a company here the the US, in a union state. Your labor costs are clearly must be considered if you’re running the place. You, as owner of the business, have a competitor in a right to work state (say, TX). Your competitor has lower labor costs and, therefore, beats you in the market place every time. Seriously, you will not be in business long if your labor cost prices you out of the market. Econ 101. But, if you maintain that the solution is for ALL states to be union states, you gotta be kidding. With the example of TX, don’t take my word for it, go look at the recent predictions posted all over the web as to where the job growth is now and for years in the future. Every city on the list is in a right to work state. The top cities are Austin, San Antonio and Houston. People are flooding to TX because there jobs there. Now, go look at any union state and see how things are going. Then go back to the hypothetical of YOU owning a business and having to compete in the market. It’s just not that hard. Now, extrapolate all this to global economics and it’s just as easy to understand. There is NO WAY to impose a world wide minimum wage. It will never happen, so get over it. By the way, in case you think I’m some sort of troll simply because I mention economics and how things really work in the real world, you’re dead wrong. I’ve been a staunch progressive and voted for Obama. If Obama is breaking the backs of workers, he’s the most powerful human being in the history of mankind. It’s absurd to think one president can do such a thing. I’m sure the comments to my post will be predictably bitter, angry and filled with ad hominem attacks. So be it. That won’t change the reality of what’s going on in the world.
pragmatic realist @10: the level of freedom in a society is inversely proportional to the distance to the nearest frontier. As a planet, we’re running out of frontiers. (Anthropogenic climate change will open up a bunch of former tundra in Alaska and northern Canada.)
Bob @15: We won’t exactly be living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Where we’ll be living is Pottersville. Because the real constituency of the Obama administration is the banks. Note that not one banker has gone to jail for any bit of known malfeasance and fraud.
The irony of the Limbaugh quote is that if Obama actually proposed any of what we know works, Rush would immediately re-engineer himself into an endless loop of the word “soshulizm” in response. Of course he’s also lying about Clinton and Hillary being pedal to the metal liberals– Clinton signed the deregulation bills that let Goldman Sachs eat everybody else’s lunch.
Bob has been pretty well answered, but I caucused for Obama and campaigned for him. I doubt that Hillary would have been much better, but Obama has been a massive disappointment. And there were plenty of warning signs; I already thought of him pretty much as a lesser evil, a centrist neoliberal, when I caucused for him. But he’s been even worse than I feared.
Mel, no one said that Obama is doing these things single handed. There are leaders who resist the trend, often quite successfully as in Sweden and France, and there are leaders who give the trend, like Obama.
And you are some sort of troll. You’ve given up, to begin with, and you’re pushing a steamroller neoliberal argument, for another. And you’re whining about attacks that hadn’t even taken place. And you’re being The Smartest Man in the Room, which everyone in the world finds annoying. You did a pretty good job of stating the problem, or one of them, but your choice of surrender as a response doesn’t contribute anything.
So now at least you have a reason to whine.
Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkqmtc953mI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Mel, there are things that can be done to prevent jobs from going to where things much worse for the workers. However, in every way the rulers in this country have refused to do that. Taft-Hartley springs to mind internally, and the refusal to put anything in our free trade treaties to protect the rights of workers in third world also comes to mind. The change in the conditions of the people in this country isn’t something that is happening as part of some sort of evolutionary process that just happens. It is happening because of specific policy decisions made by specific people.
At any rate if it makes you feel better I really find this post convincing and I’m adding you to my bookmarks.
10 and 11, pragmatic realist.
I have to agree with Mel at 28.
It is neither pragmatic nor realistic to pin your hopes on impossible dreams of global democracy and global progressivism.
The only way for progressives to defend the ordinary people of America is through revival of the power and will of the American state to dominate Big Money with exactly that in view.
To surrender to the idea that economic globalization is an inevitable force of nature is to swallow a capitalist lie identical in spirit to the idea that the market is natural and not a social contrivance resting on coercive power.
To refuse economic nationalism is to reject realistic and pragmatic policies that would actually be beneficial to the American people in favor of imaginary policies to benefit everybody in the entire world who isn’t a Wall Street plutocrat, with the result that actual policies benefit capitalists almost exclusively, and overwhelmingly to the cost of the American worker.
Cosmopolitan liberalism is a fantasy that has helped kill the New Deal coalition and paralyzed the Democrats in the face of the naked class war fought by the Republicans in DC and in the states.
And things will just get worse until and unless the progressive movement gets over its internationalist daydreaming.
We need to get clear.
Our aim has to be to defend and strengthen the position of American workers, the ordinary people of our own country.
That is something we actually can do.
The other is something no one can do.
Bob at 15, yes, that is the goal of both parties, these days.
And Hillary would have been no better, I suspect.
Kucinich would likely have been, though his fair trade policies would only slow but not stop American decline.
Anybody really close to American labor would have been better.
Susie at 23.
OK, but then O is like the deranged father lately divorced who shoots his kids to save them from the awful life he thinks awaits them without him at home.
And I don’t actually believe that.
I don’t think he somehow thinks that letting the American people down is good for them.
I think he’s just a cosmolib who thinks that Americans are just a lot better off than they should be in fairness to Indonesians, Malays, Chinese, and Guatemalans.
He thinks trade and other policies intended to shore up the position of ordinary Americans are unjust to foreign business and labor.
He probably thinks right to work laws are fair and just and that policies aimed at preventing businesses easily replacing union labor with non-union are unjust and unfair to both businesses and non-union labor.
He is so far from being a socialist that he’s not even an ordinary New Deal liberal.
If it hadn’t been for Vietnam we would be lamenting there are no more LBJs.
He was the last Democratic president not afraid of the idea that a Great Society must rest on Big Government supporting and supported by Big Labor.
Was it the Cold War that prevented liberals of those days from sacrificing the interests of ordinary Americans to those of an imaginary community of all global humanity?
Just one more post to avoid misunderstanding.
That I support economic nationalism for the US does not mean I oppose it for others.
Generally if not exceptionlessly, if and when the day comes when the comparative advantage of production in one country over another is not due even in part to the workers in the former being more exploited than in the latter those two countries can and should consider the merits of free trade as between themselves.
But until then the nation with the better off workers cannot do that.
This entry is the ramblings of someone with delusional paranoia. Seriously, this is an insane world view. This won’t stop other crazies from reinforcing it, unfortunately.
Feel free to present an alternate view that explains all these questions — one that doesn’t include 11-dimensional chess.
I think O’s motivation is even simpler. His personal/political history shows a recurring, defining pattern: an eagerness to ingratiate himself with the power-elite of the next rung up the ladder. His ‘principles’ have thus morphed which each step up the political tower, in perfectly predictable ways. As president the only power centre left to aspire to is the global economic elite, and as a result, we see… all this, the Goldman Sach’s umbilical cord, the constant echoing of the positions of the Serious People, the bewildering attacks on his own base. Workers, the middle class, the poor, these were never more than a temporary constituency. So, as odious as it sounds, I don’t think O’s end game is the creation of a global underclass. It just happens that creating one is the next step in his psychological progression. So that’s okay with O. In fact, I would hazard he couldn’t imagine it being any other way.
Sycophant and petty careerist? Could be. Fits the evidence.
Dear Susie: you are an utter nitwit.
That is all.
Dear Susie, you are far from a nitwit.
I read you daily, mostly at C&L.
Love your work.
riots?
CayVoo @ 24: Thank you for responding to the actual issues I raised rather than resorting to dismissal or sleight of hand, as so many here seem wont to do. Regarding your interpretation of the key sentence in Susies original post I vehemently disagree with you. Look at it this way:
Major Premise: He sees social programs as simply postponing the day when the workers are living in tin shacks without running water.
Minor Premise: He wants to wean us off the safety net.
Conclusion: Because he believes what he supposedly believes in the major premise he will act as stated in the minor premise resulting in most of the population “living in tin shacks without running water” today rather than at some vague future date.
Even if you accept Susie’s unsourced, undefended, ad hominum argument – that Obamas intended goal is to destroy the economy now rather than later (who but a psychopath would believe he was helping 200 million people by hurrying the day when they lived in “tin shacks without running water.”?) HOW would that jibe with his obvious desires to be A. reelected and B. be viewed historically in a positive light? Imagine the kind of mind necessary to believe you could throw 200 million people into poverty today rather than wait for it to happen at some vague, distant future point AND believe by doing so those very same people would vote for you for reelection and remember you fondly after you leave office.
Susie is not describing a rational human being: she is describing a psychopath. I think on balance Obama – like Bush before him – has done a terrible job. That being said I don’t believe for a minute either one of them had as a goal the destruction of the lives of 200 million people.
We need to stop this cheap, dime-store psychoanalysis and stick to policy. I brought Rush Limbaugh into this @ 17 for two reasons: because he and Susie are making the same argument and because that sort of rubbish is his stock and trade. I would like progressives to rise above such absurdist melodrama and stick to what matters: the laws politicians actually pass.
Susie @ 23: What is “the economy”? You aren’t accusing him of intentionally trying to ruin some meaningless abstraction with no real world consequences. If he destroys the economy he throws tens of millions to 200 million people into poverty. If he isn’t a psychopath how can he possibly view that as a good thing? How can a politician with one eye on reelection and the other on his place in history consider that a good idea?
Obama is, very simply, fitting in. Acceptance by the elite is what he wants and his actions fit in with that goal. He didn’t fit in anywhere as a child, was fatherless and did not have a distinct country, race or class.
He was a community organizer until he no longer needed them. Went to a church until they became a detriment to his career. Joined in the Democratic party since the Republican party never would have accepted him despite his lack of liberal ideals.
It’s not that he wants US workers to fail. It’s that he wants the elite to succeed, he wants to help them and be accepted by them. Someone who will do anything to get his way, including breaking the back of the people he supposedly represents, could be a psychopath but that does not fit the facts; he does have deep emotional reactions to stimulus. No, he is just willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, prove his worth, become accepted by the Harvard-educated group that his father wanted to be part of.
And now I have read #39 and he/she is quite right. Look at what he did–push his way up the ladder, pulling it up behind himself. Look at who he considers his peers, leaving him free to insult the liberal base. Look at what he does, not just what he says.
Of course it’s too late now to do anything about it. Obama rose up the career ladder only because he gave the elite what they wanted. He’s done his job. His next job is to get reelected so he can destroy Social Security, which the elite tells him we can’t afford, and which he will choose to believe so he can remain in their good graces.
Susan of Texas: Obama, like anyone in a position to actually become President of the US, is going to serve the interests of the elites who made it possible for him to get elected. All we can hope is once in office a candidate will also serve the interests of the masses, ala FDR or LBJ (both of whom did a lot for the workers but neither of whom was any sort of enemy to the elites). If they do, great; if they don’t, criticize. But criticize based upon what they accomplish or fail to accomplish. Your “insights” into Obama the human being were cringe-worthy and are the exact same garbage that is served up every night on Fox News or every day on the Rush Limbaugh show.
“He didn’t fit in anywhere as a child, was fatherless and did not have a distinct country, race or class.”
Thanks for dismissing the millions of people in our society who fit that same description.
Btw – he had a distinct country – the USA. Until now I thought only right-wing crackpots believed him a Kenyan or just somehow vaguely alien. Or are you firmly in the “Hawaii isn’t part of the US” camp? He also had a distinct race – if you think he was ever treated as anything other than African-American you really have a lot to learn about race relations in the US. And he had a distinct class – upper working/lower middle class, like half the population. Otherwise spot on.
You might want to read what Obama has written about himself and his family.
I have. And it was a lot more nuanced than the ridiculous caricature you reduce it to.
Of course his books were more nuanced than a few sentences on a blog.
My criticisms are based on his actions, his actions are based on his character as well as each situation. If you wish to continue to tell me that a post on the internet is neither comprehensive or nuanced, knock yourself out.