Barack Obama will most likely go down in history as a "Flat Line"
president. Looking back I ask myself just why Obama made the effort
to run at all? If he truly believed that he could make gains through
Compromising with Republicans, after four years he surely must have
gotten the message. Still, even though the American White banned
together to block just about everything Obama attempted to do, he
managed to sell the working class Americans out to such corporations
as the Health Insurance industry.
For 8 years Obama paid his dues, and now is reaping the rewards for
being a "good Lackey".
I wonder if he ever goes back to those folks in Chicago, where he
first expressed such concerns over their well being?
Carl Jarvis
On 3/23/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Let's Not Whitewash or Mythologize Obama
Former President Barack Obama speaks at the My Brother's Keeper Alliance
Summit in Oakland, Calif. earlier this year. (Jeff Chiu /
<http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obama-Utah/a30de0810a0441e3b97fe14cd
cb00e24/13/0> AP)
With former Vice President Joe Biden seemingly ready to join the
presidential race, a Washington Post reporter recently wrote: "Biden and
his
allies picture an election that poses a choice between four more years of
Trump disruption and a chance to restore the Obama administration."
Ah, the hope of an Obama restoration!
But is a "return to normalcy" truly enough? After decades in which giant
corporations have amassed huge political and financial control while racial
and economic inequities kept widening-and with climate scientists now
telling us that
<https://www.axios.com/un-report-warns-time-is-running-out-global-warming-ac
tion-00c54c44-2bca-4ffc-be91-b79a9641eed5.html> planetary survival requires
radical reforms?
And what about the real danger that a return to Obama-style, go-slow
"corporate liberalism" would lead to the next right-wing faux-populist
upsurge, this time commanded by someone far smarter and slicker than Trump?
Given what Trump has done to our country and world, it's no wonder that
many
Americans long for Obama. He was not a bigot or insult artist. His
administration was not rocked by major scandal, with top aides off to
prison. He was level-headed:"No Drama Obama." He didn't deny science.
President Obama was smart, with a vocabulary clearly
<https://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and-fury-smart-genius-obama-774169>
exceeding that of a 4th-grade child. He was hip.
That's what millions of people remember.
I, too, remember all that. But we should also recall the political
substance
beyond the pleasant image.
We need to remember the
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/09/24/mystique-free-market-guy-obam
a> vacillation-and worse, the
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/get-ready-for-the-obamago_b_37045
8.html> opportunism and
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/hillary-clinton-banks_b_5584870.h
tml> corporatism. As well as cause and effect: that Obama's tenure paved
the
way for the rise of Trump.
Progressive analyst Matt Stoller made that case in a
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/democrats-cant-
win-until-they-recognize-how-bad-obamas-financial-policies-were/?utm_term=.b
c4ec32fba78> well-documented Washington Post column on the eve of Trump's
inauguration, headlined "Democrats can't win until they recognize how bad
Obama's financial policies were: He had opportunities to help the working
class, and he passed them up." Stoller wrote of the Obama administration
enabling nine million home foreclosures and anti-consumer corporate
mergers,
including dangerous consolidation in health care, partly caused by
Obamacare's "lack of a public option for health coverage." Noting that most
new jobs in the Obama years were temporary or part-time, along with the
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/life-expectancy-for-white-americans-declines-1
461124861> decline in lifespans among whites, Stoller concluded: "When
Democratic leaders don't protect the people, the people get poorer, they
get
angry . . ."
Back in 2008, I was delighted when Obama defeated the Clinton machine,
seemingly for good. (If only!) But I wasn't taken in by his "hope" and
"change" rhetoric.
Obama's first presidential run offered reasons to be skeptical-for example,
how he broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. Once in office,
<https://therealnews.com/stories/cohen0126pt2> those ties hamstrung his
economic policies.
I remember the opportunism of that campaign: How Obama and his team sought
the endorsements of antiwar celebrities in 2007/2008 by saying, "All of our
advisers opposed the Iraq invasion and all of Hillary's supported it. Why
are you on the fence?" And I remember that, as soon as Hillary was out of
the race, Obama chose one pro-war associate after another, including
running
mate Joe Biden, probably the single most important Democrat in
<https://fpif.org/biden_iraq_and_obamas_betrayal/> enabling the Iraq
invasion.
Those hawkish appointees ultimately included Hillary Clinton at the State
Department; they steered Obama to continue-and in some
<https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01-17/obamas-covert-dron
e-war-in-numbers-ten-times-more-strikes-than-bush> actions,
<https://www.thenation.com/article/obama-moving-war-terror-africa/> areas
and <https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-aumf-trump-al-shabab-2016-11>
powers, expand-the
<https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0315-bacevich-countering-islami
sm-20160315-story.html> ineffective and
<https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/>
immoral "War on Terror" inherited from Bush, and passed on to Trump.
Two days after Obama's 2008 election, I remember how even my small sliver
of
hope evaporated when he selected Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff-a
stridently pro-corporate, pro-war Democrat despised by progressives since
he
worked in the Clinton White House and helped lead legislative campaigns
that
pushed through the NAFTA trade pact, the 1994 crime bill, and welfare
"reform."
Like Emanuel, Obama's next two chiefs of staff
<https://dailycaller.com/2012/01/10/obamas-third-chief-of-staff-like-first-t
wo-got-rich-on-wall-street/> also came out of big finance: William Daley
from JPMorgan Chase and Jacob Lew from Citigroup.
It's well-documented that Obama loaded his
<https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/henhouse-meet-fox-wall-street-
washington-obama/> team of economic advisers with Wall Streeters. So it's
no
accident that Wall Street was bailed out rather than underwater homeowners
during
<https://money.cnn.com/2010/01/14/real_estate/record_foreclosure_year/> the
biggest foreclosure wave in US history. The inside story of Obama's
semi-regular capitulation to economic elites is told in
<https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/books/review/confidence-men-by-ron-suski
nd-book-review.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all> Ron Suskind's book "Confidence
Men:
Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President." Largely with
GOP
support-and over the objections of most Democrats in Congress-Obama
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/business/international/trans-pacific-par
tnership-obama.html> kept pushing the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade deal until his last months in office.
Obama appointed
<https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/obama-supports-food-incs-world-domi
nation-and-all-we-get-white-house-garden> Monsanto executives and allies to
key food and agriculture jobs. While he acknowledged the science of climate
change and talked of the need for action, Obama's tenure coincided with a
boom in U.S. oil
<https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/21/investing/trump-energy-plan-obama-oil-boom
/index.html> production and
<https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/america-has-built-the
-equivalent-of-10-keystone-pipelines-since-2010-and-no-one-said-anything>
lethal infrastructure, and his administration
<https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/america-has-built-the
-equivalent-of-10-keystone-pipelines-since-2010-and-no-one-said-anything>
fervently promoted fracking worldwide.
His health care reform, which originated with the conservative
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-th
ink-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/#53822b836187> Heritage
Foundation,
expanded health coverage largely by enriching private insurance firms and
Big Pharma, whose
<https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-administrations-deal-with-the
-pharmaceutical-lobby-0223> lobbyists were allowed to
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/13/internal-memo-confirms-bi_n_25828
5.html> obstruct cost controls. Obamacare did expand Medicaid and
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/29/upshot/obamacare-who-was-hel
ped-most.html> increase coverage in poor and rural communities and to young
people, but it still left millions uninsured.
In one lengthy, link-filled sentence, journalist Nathan J. Robinson
<https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/the-obama-boys> summarized the
progressive critique of Obama:
He deported
<https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-deportations-behind-obama-l
evels-241420> staggering numbers of immigrants, let Wall Street criminals
<https://theintercept.com/2016/07/12/eric-holders-longtime-excuse-for-not-pr
osecuting-banks-just-crashed-and-burned/> off the hook, failed to take on
(and now proudly <https://www.apnews.com/5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2>
boasts of support for) the fossil fuel industry,
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-administration-
arms-sales-offers-to-saudi-top-115-billion-report-idUSKCN11D2JQ> sold over
$100 billion in arms to the brutal Saudi government,
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/killing-of-americans-deepens-
debate-over-proper-use-of-drone-strikes.html> killed American citizens with
drones (and then made <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKG6ZmgAX4>
sickening jokes about it), killed lots more non-American citizens with
drones (
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/yemenis-seek-justice-wed
ding-drone-strike-201418135352298935.html> including Yemenis going to a
wedding) and then
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/05/do-not-believe-the-u-s-governments-off
icial-numbers-on-drone-strike-civilian-casualties> misled the public about
it, promised '
<https://www.propublica.org/article/trying-to-get-records-from-most-transpar
ent-administration-ever> the most transparent administration ever' and then
was '
<https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/cjp_report_on_us_press_freedom.php
worse than Nixon' in his paranoia about leakers, pushed a market-friendlyhealth care plan based on
<https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2017/02/looking-at-the-conservative-herit
age-of-some-core-aca-features/> conservative premises instead of aiming for
single-payer, and showered Israel with both public support and military aid
even as it systematically violated the human rights of Palestinians.
Yes, Obama faced intense Republican obstruction in Congress. But it wasn't
Mitch McConnell who stacked the Obama administration with corporatist
appointees
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/07/24/obama-not-caving-corporate-in
terests> and policies.
In pure math, Obama's tenure was
<https://fair.org/home/wapo-warns-dems-that-progressive-policies-could-bring
-them-many-victories/> a boon to the GOP-Democrats lost their big
majorities
in the U.S. House and Senate and
<http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.
aspx#Timelines> nearly 1,000 state legislative seats, while the 50
governorships shifted from a sizable Democratic margin to strong Republican
majority.
My point is simple: It's not good enough to "restore" Obama-ism. Look at
the
recent pattern of presidential history: When corporate-beholden Democrats
win the White House and implement cautious, status-quo policies while
inequality worsens, two things happen: 1) Right-wing Republicans quickly
take back Congress, and 2) An even more dangerous GOP president follows.
The last two Democratic presidents gave "hope" a bad name. First, Bill
Clinton, "the man from Hope (Arkansas)," and then Barack Obama, whose
iconic
campaign poster featured the word. Both made it difficult for their
successor to be a Democrat.
To break this hopeless cycle, what's needed is the election of a
progressive
president who will fight to radically shift power and wealth away from the
corporate 1 percent toward a multi-racial coalition of the 99 percent and
toward environmental sanity. Bernie Sanders would fit the bill. So might
Elizabeth Warren. But tepid Democrats who preach moderation and
bipartisanship-and seek to restore
<https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-considered-moderate-rep
ublican-1980s/story?id=17973080> Obama-era incrementalism-never will.
The outcome in 2020, as in the last presidential election, may well hinge
on
Midwestern voters and two essential questions: 1) Will youths and people of
color be
<https://democraticautopsy.org/voter-participation-and-the-party/>
inspired enough to turn out in big numbers for the Democratic candidate? 2)
Will working-class whites swing back to the Democrats?
I learned a bit about white, working-class voters in the "Rust Belt" while
co-producing a new documentary movie, "
<http://www.whitepinepictures.com/project/the-corporate-coup-detat/?v=7516fd
43adaa> The Corporate Coup D'Etat," on the simultaneous, 40-year rise in
both economic inequality and corporate political power. Our film team
interviewed corporate-loathing Ohioans who'd voted for Obama, chose Bernie
over Hillary in the Democratic primary, and then flipped to
populist-sounding Trump in the general election as an alternative to the
dreaded status quo.
Winning back these voters-and inspiring voters of color and youth-will
require a Democratic nominee who is a forward-looking, progressive
populist.
While it's true that "any Democrat is better than Trump," reverting back to
the Obama era is a return to a status quo that stopped working for millions
of voters long ago.
<https://www.truthdig.com/author/jeff_cohen/> Jeff Cohen
Jeff Cohen is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca
College. He co-founded the online activism group RootsAction.org in 2011
and
founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. He.
