In the openly imperial foreign policy chapter of his 2006 campaign book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama criticized "left-leaning populists" like "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez" for thinking that developing nations "should resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony" and for daring - imagine! - to "follow their own path to development." Such dysfunctional "reject[ion] [of] the ideals of free markets and liberal democracy" along with "American" ideas like "the rule of law" and "democratic elections" - interesting terms for the heavily state-sponsored U.S. effort to impose authoritarian and corporate-state capitalist policy imperatives on impoverished nations - will only worsen the situation of the global poor, Obama claimed.
Obama did not comment in "Audacity" on the remarkable respect the U.S. showed for "democratic elections" and "the rule of law" when it supported an attempted military coup to overthrow the democratically elected Chavez government (because of his opposition to the U.S neoliberal agenda) in April of 2002.
Obama also ignored a preponderance of evidence showing that the imposition of the "free market" corporate-neoliberal "Washington Consensus" has deepened poverty across the world in recent decades. Billions are forced to live in ever-more extreme poverty as Obama audaciously instructs poor and exploited states that "the system of free markets and liberal democracy" is "constantly subject to change and improvement."
Those who have the time and energy to examine the overwork-plagued U.S. "homeland" might want to note the ever-escalating inequality of U.S. society and the related, ever-deepening insecurity experienced by American working people. Such is the ugly reality of "life," even in the U.S. - home to what Obama obsequiously called "a prosperity that's unmatched in history" - under the rule of the neoliberal doctrine that big business upholds.
Obama's domestic economic and social policy agenda has been straight down the regressive "free trade" corporate-neoliberal middle from the start of his presidential campaign and before. As one expression of that business-captive centrist, he appointed centrist (corporate-neoliberal) Democratic Leadership Council and University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee as his chief economic adviser during the primary campaign. His health care, economic stimulus and mortgage/foreclosure crisis proposals were all positioned to the right of those of John Edwards and even the centrist Hillary Clinton, not to mention Dennis Kucinich, the only actually Left candidate in the primaries [7].
Obama's notion of "universal" health care has from the start fallen far short of the single-payer system supported by most Americans for decades. It leaves the leading insurance companies in ultimate charge of medical coverage and rates. This is consistent with his role in watering down and killing efforts toward universal health coverage in Illinois - a role for which he received praise form insurance industry lobbyists [8].
It's not for nothing that Obama has attracted the $89 million in contributions of $1000 or more - just $8 million less than McCain's total take from contributions of any and all sizes. Obama's grateful top contributors include leading Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs (#1 at $571,000), UBSAG (#3 at $365,000), JP Morgan Chase (#4 at $362,000), Citigroup (#5 at $358,000), Lehman Bros. (#7 at 4319,000), the information giant Google (#8 at $318,000), the multinational corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP (#10 at $294,000)and the nuclear energy powerhouse Exelon (#15 at %236,000) [9].
Such is the harsh centrist capital- and military-pleasing reality of Obama's "leftism" prior to his supposed "shift to the center."
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