I walked away from the debate
Wednesday night ready to vote for Jill Stein.
I live in a safe state, and I didn't like the feeling of being abandoned
so thoroughly by the Democratic nominee.
I listened to the pundits
briefly after the debate, and I have read numerous responses online. Many people were saying that Romney had the
winning style, but Obama had the substance.
So for people who are won over by substance -- and admittedly, this may not
take in a large majority of Americans -- people said that Obama may have
performed well.
I don't agree with that
interpretation. I thought that Obama was
weak on style and even weaker on substance.
Obama showed himself to be
the panderer and capitulator that we have seen throughout his presidency. What we saw Wednesday night was the president
who took the public-healthcare option off the table before negotiations began;
the president who has refused to consider prosecuting a single banker for
fraud; the president who refused to hold anyone in office accountable for
torture or for starting a war under false pretenses. We saw the president who began his presidency
by appointing people whom the voters had just defeated in the election, and who
announced during his inaugural address that his mission was going to be to
build alliances with the Republican Party.
We saw the first president
since the New Deal who put Social Security cuts right on the table, something
that George W. Bush was unable to do.
And who then credited Mitt Romney with wanting to preserve Social
Security, when Romney's running mate has declared that Social Security was
"collectivist."
We saw the president who
continually seeks the approval of the reactionary right wing and of corporate
wealth, but who had no hesitation in mocking his base, the ones who financed
his campaign and worked their feet off for him, dismissing us as the
"professional left." Obama didn't pay us
the time of day until the Occupy movement started to show its strength and
Campaign 2012 got under way.
What substance? Mitt Romney said that his program for the
presidency was about jobs. Then he
stated openly in front of 70 million viewers that, as a capitalist, he shipped
jobs overseas, but that unfortunately he might have missed out on that lovely
tax deduction for doing so. Obama was
delivered an opening at his feet to make the obvious point that Mitt Romney
doesn't exactly have American jobs at heart, does he? What happened to that campaign ad, "Mitt
Romney's not the solution. He's the
problem"? "I'm Barack Obama, and I
approved this message."
I didn't expect Obama to tell
the American people about the urgency of ending fossil-fuel consumption immediately
or the need to ban nuclear weapons. I
didn't expect him to come out in favor of single-payer health insurance, a New
Deal jobs program, a new War on Poverty, an end to drone attacks, or a thorough
investigation of 9/11. But I did expect
him to expose Romney for the way he hoards his money in overseas tax shelters,
or ships jobs to foreign countries, or has something very, very big to hide in
those tax returns. I expected him to
point out what we all saw in the 47% video.
I expected him to point out the gender issues and the Jim Crow laws that
the Republicans have been embedding into their election platforms. I expected him to point out that the
Republicans in Congress have obstructed everything he wanted to do to improve
the economy, and refused to vote for any of his proposals on general principle,
because they wanted to hold a bad economy and human suffering against him. And yes, he could have talked about global
heating, instead of trying to have that both ways.
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