[Peace-discuss] What Obama's done, & what we should do

[C. G. Estabrook]

Obama’s sell-out leaves Americans defenceless
Alexander Cockburn:
If the Democrats have any sense they’ll vote for Mitt Romney in 2012
AUGUST 4, 2011

He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on 
its debts on August 2, Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them.

All he had to do was announce that he'd trudged the last half mile towards a 
deal but that there's no pleasing fanatics who reject all possibilities of 
compromise, who are ready and eager to shut down the government, to see seniors 
starve and veterans denied their benefits.

So, Obama could proclaim, he was invoking the 14th Amendment to the US 
Constitution which states that the "validity of the public debt of the United 
States... shall not be questioned".

Obama could have done that, but he didn't. At the 11th hour and the 55th minute 
he threw in the towel, and gave the exultant Republicans 95 per cent of what 
they wanted: cuts in social programmes, a bipartisan congressional panel to 
shred at its leisure what remains of the social safety net.

As America plummets into phase two of the double-dip recession, Obama's deal has 
stripped the country of all available remaining defences: no jobs programme, no 
hope of stimulus money for stricken states and cities across the country.

It's as bad as the Republicans' onslaught on Franklin Roosevelt's programmes 
prising America out of the great Depression - an onslaught that launched the 
terrible downturn of 1937, from which America was extricated only by the vast 
war spending after Pearl Harbor.

Why did Obama do it? Like all first-term presidents he thinks first and foremost 
about re-election in 2012, and the thinking in the White House is that the 
all-important independent voters are eager for deficit reduction, however 
ruinous it may be for the economy.

If Obama and his advisors think that the sell-out will yield rich political 
rewards, current polling is not encouraging. Eighty per cent of Americans think 
the country is on the wrong track and a majority think Obama is doing a bad job 
- scarcely surprising since 30 million Americans are without work or on short time.

But beyond coarse political calculation, it's plain enough that Obama is a 
quitter by nature. As someone joked bitterly last week, he turns up for a strip 
poker session already down to his shorts. In the crunch, the weapon he snatches 
from its scabbard is the white flag, which he flourishes at the bankers, the 
Pentagon, and America's billionaires.

It was plain in 2006 - the first time I looked at his record - that Obama was 
gutless and devoid of principle. By 2008, before his victory, he was already 
reassuring the establishment that he was set to "reform" Social Security and 
Medicare - ie. to hand these entitlement programmes over to Wall Street and the 
insurance industry.

Indeed, the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for 
McCain, Obama's Republican opponent. Under Bush's two terms the spirit of 
opposition throve; the antiwar movement was flourishing; the labour movement 
fierce in its organising; blacks militant. Bush's hopes to gut social programmes 
were dead within months of the start of his second term in 2004. But since 2008 
a Democratic president has neutralised all these constituencies.

Even after last week's frightful betrayals, there's been barely a fretful bleat 
from Democrats about running a challenger to Obama in the primaries such as the 
late Ted Kennedy mounted against Carter, another Obamian sell-out, in 1979.

The time to launch a third party left challenge to Obama was back in January of 
2010 when the writing was on the wall. In these very columns I remember 
imploring ousted left Senator Russ Feingold to do just that. Now it's all far 
too late.

In 2013 we could be faced with Republican majorities in both houses and the 
prospect of Obama spending four years catering obediently to their requirements, 
defusing all liberal and left opposition. We need a Republican in the White 
House. Who?

Michele Bachmann is popular mostly with Tea Party ultras, Jon Huntsman with the 
Washington elites. Governor Rick Perry of Texas has yet to enter the race and is 
loathed by the Bush clan. The only candidate within reach of Obama is Mitt 
Romney, the Mormon millionaire businessman whose nomination bid fizzled in 2008.

Romney kept quiet through most of the recent brouhaha about raising the deficit 
ceiling, aside from a pro forma nod to the Tea Party ultras near the end, 
designed to placate them in early primary states like Iowa.

On casual inspection he doesn't seem to be marked for greatness, but greatness 
is not required of him - just the tenacity to win the White House and drive 
Obama out of national politics and destroy his appalling vision of 
bipartisanship as the way forward for America.



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