[Peace-discuss] Fw: Obama, One Year On - Comment

[unionyes]

When are these stupid fucking liberals going to finally realize that Obama 
is the last great hope of the ruling class , NOT the hope and change he 
promised for the working class ( which is 95 % of us, rather you want to 
admit it or not ) !

Name me one thing that Obama has done that would repudiate the 
characterizattion that this is George Bush's 3rd term  ?

David J.

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Subject: Obama, One Year On - Comment


> Obama, One Year On Comment
>
> By Katrina vanden Heuvel
> The Nation
> November 4, 2009
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091123/kvh?rel=emailNation
>
> Barack Obama was elected president at a time defined by
> hope and fear in equal measure. It was a remarkable
> moment in our country's history--a milestone in
> America's scarred racial landscape and a victory for
> the forces of decency, diversity and tolerance. For the
> first time in decades, electoral politics became a
> vehicle for raising expectations and spreading hope
> while it mobilized millions of new voters. Obama's was
> a campaign built on the power and promise of change
> from below. At the same time, he was elected as the
> nation was rapidly sinking into the worst economic
> downturn since the Great Depression.
>
> The night Obama was elected, relief was felt around the
> world. There was a widespread feeling that the United
> States had turned its back on eight years of
> destructive, swaggering unilateralism and was re-
> embracing the global community. In many ways, the
> election was a referendum on an extremist conservatism
> that has guided (and deformed) American politics and
> society since the 1980s. The spectacular failures of
> the Bush administration and the shifts in public
> opinion on the economy and the Iraq War presented a
> mandate for bold action and a historic opportunity for
> a progressive governing agenda.
>
> A year later, it's clear we are a long way from
> building a new order and reshaping the prevailing
> paradigm of American politics. That will take more than
> one election. It requires continued mobilization,
> strategic creativity and, yes, audacity on the part of
> independent thinkers, activists and organizers. The
> structural obstacles to change are considerable. But at
> least we now have the political space to push for far-
> reaching reforms.
>
> Whatever one thinks of Obama's policy on any specific
> issue, he is clearly a reform president committed to
> the improvement of people's lives and to the renewal
> and reconstruction of America. Yes, his economic
> recovery plan was too small and too deferential to the
> Republican Party and tax cuts. But it has kept the
> economy from falling into the abyss, and it includes
> more new net public investment in antipoverty measures
> than any program since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
>
> We need a much more robust jobs program--without one,
> Americans will not believe this president stands with
> the working people. Obama would be wise to use his
> presidential pulpit and brilliant oratorical skills to
> explain that when one out of six Americans is
> unemployed or underemployed, our greatest fear should
> be joblessness, not deficits.
>
> Still, there's much to be praised. Obama has spoken
> eloquently of a new and progressive role for
> government. His first appointment to the Supreme Court,
> Sonia Sotomayor, was a strong choice--the first Latina
> on the Court and a powerful progressive jurist. In
> selecting Sotomayor, Obama has finally halted the
> Court's long drift to the right. The president says the
> labor movement is the solution, not the problem. (If he
> really believes this, he should act on it by pushing
> for speedy passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.) He
> has reinvigorated the regulatory agencies in
> Washington, from the EPA to the FCC (in doing so he
> has, ironically, fueled a full-employment program for K
> Street lobbyists). He has repealed the global gag rule
> on abortion, has spoken of the urgency of the climate
> crisis and has restored integrity to the government's
> scientific research programs.
>
> The president's quartet of major speeches abroad--in
> Cairo, Prague, Moscow and Accra--began to lay out an
> Obama Doctrine in international affairs: support for
> diplomacy and the UN; commitment to a nuclear-free
> world; a belief that democracy is strengthened not
> through US intervention but when people win for
> themselves their rights and liberties; and engagement
> and cooperation with, rather than antagonism toward,
> the Muslim world. However, the military-industrial
> complex Eisenhower warned against grows ever stronger.
> And so far Obama has been unwilling to rethink skewed
> priorities in this arena; he just approved a bloated
> military budget despite his rare cancellation of
> several costly weapons programs.
>
> And then, of course, there is Afghanistan. Historians
> have warned that wars kill reform presidencies. The
> most recent, and perhaps most relevant, example is the
> Vietnam War's undermining of the Great Society. Obama
> is wisely taking his time to make a decision about
> Afghanistan, but he appears to have excluded the one
> option that makes the most sense--a responsible exit
> strategy--and seems poised to escalate this unnecessary
> war. If he does so, he will endanger his reform
> presidency and squander funds needed to rebuild and
> renew our country.
>
> Obama could have used the moment of economic crisis to
> restructure the economy and rein in the financial
> sector, not simply resuscitate it. The taxpayer-funded
> bailout of the banks has contributed to a popular
> backlash. If Obama doesn't respond to the widespread
> anguish and anger with constructive support for those
> in need, the GOP will continue to channel it in
> destructive directions.
>
> There are other disappointments. I am sure you have
> your list. At the top of mine is Obama's failure to end
> the excesses and abuses associated with the Bush/Cheney
> national security apparatus; also on it is his
> unwillingness to push more strongly for a public option
> on healthcare reform. But instead of playing the
> betrayal sweepstakes, which promotes disappointment and
> despair, we'd be smart to practice a progressive
> politics defined by realistic hope and pragmatism. That
> is, simply denouncing the administration's missteps and
> failures doesn't get us very far and furthers what our
> adversaries seek: our disempowerment. We can't afford
> that. These are times to avoid falling into either of
> two extremes: reflexively defensive or reflexively
> critical.
>
> Remember that throughout our history, it has taken
> large-scale, sustained organizing to win structural
> change. There would have been no New Deal without the
> vast upsurge in union activism and unemployed councils,
> no civil rights legislation without the mass movement.
> We need to learn from those inspiring examples and
> build our own movements. And we need to start playing
> inside-outside politics too: engage the administration
> and Congress, even as we push without apology for
> bolder solutions than the ones Obama has offered.
>
> Progressives should focus less on the limits of the
> Obama agenda and more on the possibilities that his
> presidency opens up. Like all presidents, Obama is
> constrained by powerful opponents and deep structural
> impediments. Independent organizing and savvy
> coalition-building will be critical in overcoming the
> timid incrementalists of his own party and the forces
> of money and establishment power that are obstacles to
> change. But if we work effectively, we can push Obama
> beyond the limits of his own politics and create a new
> progressive era.
>
> * Copyright c 2009 The Nation
>
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