- Every four years, liberals and progressives are expected
to set aside their beliefs and stand foursquare behind the Democratic Party
candidate. This ritual is invariably performed in the name of party unity.
It doesn't matter if the candidate is a smooth-talking politician who's
willing to toss his pastor of 20 years overboard for a few awkward comments,
or whether he refuses to defend basic civil liberties like the 4th amendment's
right to privacy. All that matters is that there's a big "D"
following his name and that he shows he's willing to engage in some meaningless
verbal jousting with his Republican opponent.
-
- For nearly a year now, the public has been treated to
regular doses of Mr. Obama's grandiloquent oratory and his sweeping "Follow
me to Shangri-la" promises. These flourishes are usually followed
by "clarifications" on the central issues which identify Obama
as a center-right conservative with no intention of disrupting the status
quo. CounterPunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn summed it up like this in
a <http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07062008.html>recent article
on this site:
-
- "There have plenty of articles recently with headlines
such "Obama's Lunge to the Right". I find these odd. Never for
one moment has Obama ever struck me as someone anchored, or even loosely
moored to the left, or even displaying the slightest appetite for radical
notions, aside from a few taglines tossed from the campaign bus."
-
- Obama-boosters on the left simply ignore the facts because
the thought of the unstable John McCain in the Oval Office with his stubby
fingers just inches from the Big Red Switch is too much to bear. So, they
throw their support behind Obama and hope for the best. But Obama has done
nothing to earn their vote and there's nothing to indicate that he has
any interest in restoring the republic or putting and end to US adventurism.
He's just a one-term senator who doesn't want to rock the boat. That's
it. He'd rather keep his position on the issues blurry and rattle off lofty-sounding
platitudes than state plainly how he feels. Unfortunately, when he's pinned
down and has to give a straight answer, he quickly swerves to the right
where he feels most at home.
-
- Some Obamaniacs admit to feeling troubled from time to
time. They worry that behind the rhetorical fanfare, Barack is just an
empty gourd; a well-spoken pitch man with no moral core. Could he be another
Slick Willie, they wonder; another self-promoting politico as eager to
sell out his working class supporters as chase a frisky intern around the
Lincoln bedroom? No one knows, because no one has figured out exactly why
Obama is running. Does he really want to lift the country from the muck
of 8 years of Bush misrule or does he just want to gad about on Airforce
1 and make pretty speeches in the Rose Garden? What really drives Obama?
It's a mystery.
-
- But don't be fooled, Obama could turn out to be worse
than McCain, much worse. No one doubts that he is brighter and more charismatic
than the irritating senator from Arizona. And no one underestimates his
Pied Piper ability to galvanize crowds and stir up national pride. But
what good is that? Obama works for the same group of venal plutocrats as
Bush; a fact that was made painfully clear just last week when he voted
to approve the new FISA bill that allows the president to continue spying
on American citizens with impunity. Obama is a constitutional scholar;
he understood what he was voting for. He was sending a message to his supporters
that they don't really matter; that what really counts is the small gaggle
of powerful corporatists who run the country and believe the president
is above the law. That's what his vote really meant.
-
- So, why vote for him? We don't need a glamor boy to trash
the Bill of Rights. And we don't need another paper-mache president who
tries to conceal America's war crimes behind stuffy-sounding pronouncements
about "Islamofacism" and other terrorist mumbo-jumbo. What we
need is someone with enough guts and moral fiber to shake up the political
establishment, put an end to the wars and covert operations, and clean
up Wall Street.
-
- Obama has dazzled the media with his easy manner and
his savoir faire, but he's not the right man for the job. He has surrounded
himself with ex-Clintonistas who will continue the global onslaught with
even greater ferocity than Bush, although much more discreetly.(After all,
this is the empire's A Team) And just like Clinton, who bombed the bejesus
out of Belgrade for 87 days without batting an eye; Obama will keep the
war machine chugging along at full-throttle. No thanks.
-
- What the world really needs is a five or ten year break
from the United States; a little breather so people can unwind and take
it easy for a while without worrying that their wedding party will be vaporized
in a blast of napalm or that their brother-in-law will be dragged off to
some CIA hellhole where his eyes are gouged out and his fingernails ripped
off. That's what the world really needs, a temporary pause in the imperial
violence. But there won't be any sabbatical under Field-Marshall Obama;
no way. As Bill Van Auken points out in an article on the World Socialist
web site, Obama may turn out to be the point-man for reinstating the draft:
-
- Obama has "lamented the failure of the Bush administration
to issue "a call to service" and "a call for shared sacrifice....There
is no challenge greater than the defense of our nation and our values,"
said Obama. We "need to ease the burden on our troops, while meeting
the challenges of the 21st century," which, according to Obama, will
require an "increase US ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000
Marines.'" ("Obama continues lurch to the right on Iraq war and
militarism" Bill Van Auken)
-
- Is that why the political establishment is so enthusiastic
about Obama, because they need a better recruiting sergeant than the uninspiring
McCain?
-
- No one has followed Obama's rightward drift with greater
interest and bemusement than the editors of the Wall Street Journal. They
have faithfully chronicled all the vacillating, obfuscating and backpedaling
and they've made up their minds; Obama is marching straight towards the
welcoming arms of the Republican Party. That's right; he's gradually embracing
the conservative platform and abandoning any pretense of liberalism. Two
weeks ago the WSJ ran an editorial that summarized Obama's metamorphosis
in an article titled "Bush's Third Term":
-
- We're beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps
protesting so vigorously against the prospect of 'George Bush's third term.'
Maybe he's worried that someone will notice that he's the candidate who's
running for it.
-
- Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after
they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn't merely 'running to
the center.' He's fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly
and so rapidly that he's embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush's
policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned
Bush agenda?
-
- That's fair enough. Obama has changed his position on
his "support of a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive
immunity for telecommunications companies". He has wormed his way
out of a definite commitment on withdrawing the troops from Iraq.
(which was a real lesson in Clintonian triangulation) He's backed off on
his promise to rewrite the NAFTA free trade agreement. He's thrown his
support behind Bush's "faith-based" social programs which provide
state money for religious organizations. He's sided with the majority
on the Supreme Court on gun rights and whether to ban the death penalty
for rape. How can anyone support a candidate who is on the same ideological
side of legal issues as Antonin Scalia?
-
- In the past few weeks, Senator Switcheroo has blasted
Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while, at the same time,
heaping praise on our "good friend" Israel. Obama even has a
two paragraph commentary on his campaign web site lauding Israel's devastating
attack on Lebanon a year ago which killed 1,500 civilians and reduced much
of the country's vital infrastructure to rubble.
-
- Still think the "peace candidate" does not
have the warmongering bone fides to do the empire's dirty work?
-
- Think again.
-
- Many of us who have criticized Obama are being dismissed
as cynics, but that's nonsense. The truth is that the left Obama supporters
have projected their own values onto their candidate and are trying to
make him out to be something that he is not. They put words in his mouth
so they can continue to hold on to the crazy notion that the system really
isn't broken and that it can be fixed by simply pulling a lever on election
day.
-
- This is just the lazy-person's way of ignoring the real
work that needs to be done to restore American democracy; the organizing
of groups and networks, the building of labor unions and working coalitions,
the focussed determination to root-out corruption and entrenched corporate
power. The system has to be rebuilt from the bottom-up not the top-down.
It'll take a revolution in thinking and lots of hard work. There's no quick
fix. Freedom isn't free anymore; deal with it. Voting for Obama and keeping
one's fingers crossed, is not a sign of hope. It's a sign of self-delusion.
-
- Mike Whitney lives in Washington state and can be reached
at
- fergiewhitney@msn.com
-
-
|
