Primary Obama Now – October 7, 2011

When he was running for president, Obama promised hope and change. Four years later, what is the situation? Obama has shown a pattern of selling out his own supporters, and often directly attacking their interests. Democratic primary voters should judge whether he deserves the chance for a second term, with the risk that the entire Democratic Party will go down in flames as it did with Carter in 1980. With Carter, the result was a Democratic Party crippled for a generation. What will be the aftermath of Obama’s failure?

Obama’s spring 2009 stimulus was fatally flawed because it relied too much on tax cuts, as demanded by right wing Democrats and reactionary Republicans. Nowhere near enough money was put into national infrastructure projects like rebuilding the interstate highway system, the rail system, the electricity grid, water and canal systems, schools, hospitals, libraries, and public buildings. Only after he had lost his congressional majorities did Obama remember these issues – when it was too late.

Obama re-nominated Bush appointee Ben Bernanke for another term as head of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke has lent $16 trillion to banks, credit card companies, hedge funds, money market funds, and other parasitical financial interests. But no Main Street Credit Facility has been created, and not one dime has gone directly to tangible, physical production of necessary commodities in industry or agriculture.

In December 2010, Obama reneged on his election campaign promises and allowed the extension of the widely hated Bush tax cuts for the rich, making the deficit worse, and leaving the United States vulnerable to the attacks of corrupt ratings agencies and predatory speculators.

In the 2011 budget confrontation, Obama approved the infamous “Satan Sandwich” of genocidal budget cuts in programs upon which the young, the sick, the elderly, the unemployed, and other parts of American society depend. He could have fought the Republicans to get a better result, but he chose to surrender before the battle had even begun.

Obama promised us healthcare, and said that his personal preference was a single-payer system. But he abandoned the hope of Medicare for all before the haggling even started. He then refused to fight for a public option, no matter how much it was watered down. He promised drug manufacturers that the US government would not be able to bargain to get lower prices, and that safe imported medicines would not be allowed. The Obama health bill then cut $500 billion out of Medicare, a cut that some elderly Americans will pay for with their very lives. In the end, Obama settled for a health bill which forced Americans to buy shoddy, overpriced health insurance from private, for-profit companies, with greedy and incompetent executives equipped with golden parachutes. This was not a health bill, rather a bailout of insurance companies that had gone bankrupt speculating on derivatives.

Obama never had anything to say about the repeal of the union-busting Taft-Hartley law, which allows some states to virtually ban unions. Instead, Obama promised card check, a poor substitute designed to make it a little easier to organize. Obama has put zero effort into getting card check through Congress, and this measure can now be considered dead.

Obama never promised relief from foreclosures, and he has never delivered any, even though the problem has gotten much worse on his watch. In October 2010, a scandal erupted when it became obvious that Bank of America and other lenders were using robo-cops, robo-judges, and robo-signers to steal the homes of American families who either had no mortgage at all, or who were perfectly up-to-date in their payments. This was an issue which could have saved some Democratic seats in the Congress, but Obama would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. He gave the banks exactly what they wanted.

In the Middle East, Obama promised to stop illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories on the way to the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state. Now that his poll ratings have sunk, he has betrayed both the Palestinians and the cause of peace by groveling before the demands of the reactionary aggressor Netanyahu. The US is threatening to veto Palestinian independence at the United Nations, and no longer says a word about Netanyahu’s impudence in ordering new settlements. Netanyahu had obviously been briefed that Obama was a coward and a wimp who would not fight back, and that profile has proved accurate time and time again.

Obama promised to end the Iraq war, but tens of thousands of US troops remain in that country, and it is clear that they will not be out by the end of the year. Instead, a huge new US embassy has been built which those troops will have the state to defend.

Obama made no secret of the fact that he was a warmonger when it came to Afghanistan. He has now expanded that war to the point where the US is now on the brink of open hostilities with Pakistan. Obama’s West Point speech of December 2009 added up to a declaration of war with Pakistan. There are now reports of frequent shooting incidents between US troops and Pakistani forces along the Af-Pak border.

Hiding behind a hypocritical mask of human rights, Obama has even given us a totally new war with Libya, where NATO bombings approved by Obama and attacks by Al Qaeda terrorist rebels have killed tens of thousands of civilians. Obama spouts the rhetoric of human rights, but it is clear that this aggression, just like previous ones, is all about oil and geopolitics.

Obama announced that he would provide meaningful regulation to stop the worst excesses of Wall Street bankers and hedge fund operators. Instead, Obama and congressional Democrats have come up with the toothless Dodd-Frank law, which represents a surrender to Wall Street demands up and down the line. Many provisions will not take effect for years, and by then Wall Street speculators will have figured out ways to go around them. Obama had the chance to name the energetic Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren as the head of the new consumer financial agency, but he showed his cowardice once more by backing off when the Wall Street zombie bankers raged against her nomination.

Obama pledged to close the infamous US concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Instead, Guantánamo Bay is still going strong and will be in business for many years to come. Under Obama, illegal kidnappings known as renditions and illegal prisons known as black sites are thriving in Europe and across the Middle East. Obama has gone farther than Bush in demanding the right to assassinate US citizens outside of the country without any due process of law, and he has already put this threat into action.

Obama has launched more killer drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries than Bush ever did. The US is now building drone bases at various points in the Middle East – all on Obama’s watch.

Obama has betrayed environmentalists by giving up on anti-pollution regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning that more Americans will die needlessly from lung cancer and other preventable diseases.

Obama’s budget expert Peter Orszag suggested the creation of a Tobin tax or Wall Street sales tax to make bankers pay part of the damages they had caused, but Obama allowed this idea to be shouted down by the Wall Street bully Larry Summers. When the Europeans proposed a Tobin tax of their own, Obama sent Treasury Secretary Geithner to threaten them with US retaliation if they go ahead.

Obama promised Hispanics and other groups comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, this administration has deported more undocumented residents than any in the past, including Bush. In many cases, families are cruelly torn apart.

Obama promised help to the LGBT community in asserting their inalienable right to equal protection under the laws. Progress in this direction, limited as it has been, has mainly been accomplished without Obama or against him, and not thanks to his efforts.

When Wisconsin workers fought for their rights against the attacks of the fascist governor, Obama did nothing more than damn them with faint praise. He could have held a town meeting in the public square in Madison, but he did not. He could have sent his Secretary of Labor and Attorney General with plenty of US marshals and FBI agents to put the fear of God into the tinhorn Governor Walker and his gang, who were violating the civil rights of many citizens. Instead, Obama extended no real help to these beleaguered workers.

Obama has presided over the death of the US manned space program, leaving no way for Americans to go into orbit for the first time since President Kennedy. NASA must now pay Russia to put astronauts or cargoes into orbit. Soon the Chinese will be on the moon, and the United States will still be wallowing in the mud of Obama’s austerity and failure.

In November 2008, the United States and the Democratic Party needed a new Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is clear we did not get one. The signature or achievement of FDR is the Social Security Act of 1935, with its old age and disability pensions and unemployment insurance benefits. Obama has been an implacable enemy of Social Security, with his constantly preferred option of cutting the FICA or Social Security payroll tax for his own short-term political benefit in ways that threaten to undermine the medium-term and long term financial stability of the program. Republicans want to kill Social Security right away, but Obama is killing it slowly, on the installment plan.

Concerning unemployment insurance, Obama has never done anything for the 99ers, the long-term unemployed who have exhausted their benefits.

Obama, in short, is the anti-FDR.

If John F. Kennedy’s signature achievement in the age of the New Frontier was the Apollo moon shot, then Obama’s demolition of the US manned space program makes him the anti-JFK.

The high point of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society was the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid. Obama has already cut $500 billion out of Medicare, and is constantly scheming to cut more – as for example in his so-called Grand Bargain of July 2011, when he offered the reactionary Republicans no less than $4 trillion worth of genocidal budget cuts at the expense of the American people. Medicaid, which provides health care for poor people and also helps seniors who must live in nursing homes, has been brutally cut as part of Obamas Sequin Sandwich.

Obama is also the anti-LBJ.

Obama is a failure as a leader. When the right-wing extremists of the GOP insisted on taking the United States to the edge of catastrophic bankruptcy and default in early August 2011, it was Obama’s responsibility to obey the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and make clear in advance that, whatever the result of the negotiations, there would be no United States default, since the 14th amendment charges the president to maintain the US public debt — no matter what else happens. Obama could then have tried to bargain in good faith with the Republicans, but without the Damocles sword of extortion and blackmail hanging over the head of the country. There would have been no chance for the bandits at S&P to downgrade our country. Instead, Obama saw the debt limit confrontation as a way to obtain more genocidal cuts budget which he wanted anyway. Not exactly JFK and RFK facing down Roger Blough, US Steel, and the House of Morgan.

Obama has capitulated to the Republican demagogy that claims that the big problem of the United States has to do with spending, deficits, and the public debt. This is a big lie. The current crisis began with a world derivatives panic in 2008, which had nothing whatsoever to do with government budgets or debt. The main problem we have now is a world economic depression with very high levels of unemployment. About 30 million Americans now need jobs. Even if we accept Obama’s scoring, his current job plan might produce at most 2 million jobs, while inflicting tragic damage on Social Security and other parts of the social safety net.

Obama, in short, is the new Jimmy Carter – and worse. Democratic elected officials and all patriotic citizens need to appreciate the danger posed by a reactionary Republican takeover of Washington in 2012. Republican policies might bring the country to the verge of civil war. Obama has irrevocably lost the confidence of the nation. It is therefore imperative that we find a Democratic primary challenger who can offer the American people an alternative to the present Hobson’s choice of either Obama or the crackpots and extremists of the Republican field of candidates.