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Instead of condemning Obama and congressional Democrats, Lerner worries mostly about "a full-scale Republican return to power in 2012." A "disaster" he said, given their economic policies and environmental record, as well as disdain for social justice and world peace.
Clearly, Lerner's been largely AWOL during the past two years, mindless that Obama's extremism exceeded Bush and that Democrats overall are as hardline as Republicans. Their rhetoric alone differs. On core issues like war and peace, corporatism, police state repression, and environmental pillaging, there's not a dime's worth of difference between them, what Lerner and other progressives should understand, highlight, repeat, and preach to their faithful, not believe leopards can change spots.
He does, wanting Obama to be "the candidate whom most Americans believed they elected in 2008:" the myth, not the man whom James Petras calls:
"the perfect incarnation of Melville's Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives thanks as he packs you off to" imperial wars. The "first Jewish president," he "unconditional(ly) support(s the) pro-Israeli Lobby and the colonial expansionist and bellicose policies of the Jewish state."
Liberals, progressives, and intellectuals who "support a politician who publicly and openly embraces new wars, billionaire bailouts," and mass privatizations, including essential services like healthcare, Medicare, education, perhaps Social Security, and more are "what C. Wright Mills called 'crackpot realists.' " Their followers are what Walter Lippman described as the "bewildered herd," clueless of the world around them, mostly how gravely they and their loved ones are harmed.
No matter. Lerner, and others like him, want Obama's presidency saved - "by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unequivocally commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with" his.
Those Democrat, however, don't exist, and progressive independents aren't welcome in a party embracing Democrat Leadership Council (DLC) extremism. As neocon as Republicans, they're anti-populist, anti-environmental sanity, anti-labor, anti-welfare, anti-peace, pro-business, pro-privilege, pro-war, pro-Israeli belligerency and occupation, and pro-imperial zealotry for global dominance.
They support super-wealth and oppose social justice for Blacks, Hispanics, Latino immigrants, Muslims, working Americans, the poor and disadvantaged, consumer protections, populism, progressivism, honest elections, human and civil rights, and democratic values.
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