Greenwald nails it. In his article The myth of Obama's "blunders" and "weakness" he asks, "How anyone can claim in the face of all that evidence that the President was "forced" into making these cuts -- as opposed to having eagerly sought them -- is mystifying indeed."
I've long been calling for primarying this failed leader.
Some of you tell me we have no other choice. Some say he'll get better. How deep must Obama sell the middle class into third world status to the corporatists before it becomes clear he is the new Republican? The Tea Partiers are making the old guard Republicans-- politicians who were rational people who wanted to govern from a conservative perspective. The new GOP is a collection of radical extremist ideologues. And the new Republicans-- well, I think Obama is one of them. Lieberman is one, and the same senators who blocked the public option-- Landrieu, Baucus, Nelson.
Considering them Democrats is the new Delusion.
We don't have an article on it yet, but the word is that Democrats in California are calling for primarying Obama. Its a start. I think a decent Democrat could win against Obama. A real Democrat could beat any Republican challenger. We're not dealing with a real Democrat when it comes to Obama.
I know many of our readers are still loyal to Obama. If you are, then you must know that that "obama feet-to-the-fire thing" hasn't worked. He's consistently sold out the middle class and backed down in the face of conservative aggression.
A real defender of the middle class, who thinks about healing the economy in terms of jobs, not banksters is what America and the Democrats need. And it's what will inspire Independents.
That doesn't mean we give up.
Howard Zinn wrote, in his book, A POWER Governments Cannot Suppress,
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
We need to keep working at change. Sometimes it's a walk, sometimes a fight. But we can't give up hope and we can't settle anymore.
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