[Peace-discuss] Obama and the Left

[C. G. Estabrook]

	OBAMA AND THE LEFT
	Doug Henwood
	delivered at the Brecht Forum, New York, June 19, 2008

I must say, I thought I'd have to do some work to assemble an updated
indictment of Barack Obama (the only presidential candidate in this
long campaign whose name my 2-year-old seems interested in saying,
whatever that means). But the candidate has done most of my work for
me in the past couple of weeks. There's something about the shift
from primary to general that brings out the worst in a Democrat.

First, there was the appointment of Jason Furman as a top economic
advisor. Furman, as I assume almost everyone knows by now, is famous
for having done some apologetics for Wal-Mart. He actually argued
that raising Wal-Mart's wage levels would force Wal-Mart to raise
prices, and thereby hurting the working class as a whole more than
helping it. "Hurting those it aims to help" is almost pathognomonic,
as they say in medical science to describe a symptom that is almost a
definitive diagnosis of a disease, of orthodox center-right thinking,
much like using the phrase "law of unintended consequences." That's
not to say Furman's a right-winger. It is to say, though, that he's
sort of a DLC-style Democrat, someone out of the Clinton/Rubin/
Summers mold. I'm not so sectarian that I think that that mold isn't
a little less moldy than the Bush/Paulson/Feldstein mold, but it's
nothing to get passionate about.

And remember that Furman joins Austan Goolsbee, the DLC's top
economist, on the Obama economic team. Goolsbee, opponent of a
mortgage foreclosure moratorium and eulogist of Milton Friedman.

Then Obama appointed a gang of foreign policy advisors. Among that
collection of ghouls: Madeleine Albright, perhaps most famous for
saying that the half a million Iraqi children killed by the Clinton
administration's sanctions was a price worth paying -- not, of course,
that she was paying it; Lee Hamilton and David Boren, two
Congresspeople noted for their protective attitude towards the CIA;
Tony Lake, Clinton's national security advisor; William Perry, whose
resume includes, along with a stint as Defense Secretary under
Clinton, jobs with Boeing, Martin-Marietta, and the Carlyle Group;
and Susan Rice, another Clinton leftover, and a cheerleader for the
invasion of Iraq [and Sudan --CGE].

I can't say I'm surprised by this, since I never doubted that Obama
would be anything but a loyal servant of empire, but it should give
pause to anyone who thought he'd represent some sort of fresh start.
If the AIPAC speech didn't convince you, this probably won't either.

Oh, and there's his statement to Joe Klein, reported in Time
magazine, that he'd love to have some Republicans in his cabinet,
especially in national security positions. He likes people who push
him out of his comfort zone, he says. But only when they're pushing
him to the right, it seems.

And I haven't yet mentioned his meeting last week with Franklin
Graham, son of Billy, who famously denounced Islam as a wicked
religion. No wonder his TV people insisted that no women with
headscarves would be allowed to sit behind the candidate -— it'd convey
the wrong image, you know. It's sorta like a few months ago, when one
of his media people issued a call for "more white people" on the set.

Today, he announced that he was foregoing public financing because
he's been able to raise so much money on his own. Sorry, that's not
the reason. The stated reason is that his supporters have allowed him
to declare independence from a broken system. Isn't that rather
conservative, that appeal to individual initiative as opposed to
public funding? Yes, he's been able to raise gobs of money from small
contributions over the web -- but he's also been raising gobs of money
from Wall Street. I see no reason why that won't continue.

I'm guessing that in the coming weeks and months, Obama's rightward
flirtations will inspire some extravagantly generous interpretations
from his fans on the left -- interpretations so baroque that Talmudic
scholars will turn green with envy.

[Henwood is the editor of the excellent "Left Business Observer."
He has a longer piece on the subject from March on that site:
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Obama.html>. --CGE]