THE GUARDIAN: A Third Obama Term Would Be A Disaster
If progressives let Biden replicate Obama's sellouts, then a fascist worse than Trump could win in 2024. The good news: the progressive movement is in a much stronger position today to prevent that.
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There is a truth that is not allowed to be spoken among MSNBC-watching liberals, but as you can see in my new piece in The Guardian, it remains the truth: when Barack Obama was elected, many liberal voters, activists and advocacy groups disengaged and deferred to the new president, and then Obama’s capitulations and surrenders to his big donors created a presidency that propped up corporate power, rather than fundamentally changing the economy. That series of events ended up creating the backlash conditions for the rise of Donald Trump.
There is another truth that also needs to be spoken: If liberals once again go back to brunch right now and let Joe Biden similarly sell out to his donors, then we should expect an even worse, more reckless Trump to win the White House in the next election.
One way to think about it is this: if 2021 becomes 2009, then we should expect 2024 to become 2016. Another way to put it: a third Obama term could create a first term for President Cotton — and that would be a disaster.
In today’s edition of The Guardian, I review the history of what happened in the Obama years, and how liberal groups and Democratic lawmakers repeatedly backed down and went to sleep, as Obama’s administration at times bullied them into silence.
But there’s some good news — as the piece recounts, the progressive movement is in a stronger position than it was in 2009. There is not only hindsight from what happened more than a decade ago, there has been more organizing and there is more legislative representation willing to try to force a new Biden administration to deliver on its promises, rather than pulling an Obama and immediately abandoning them.
Can the party return be forced kicking and screaming to return to its New Deal roots that delivered real gains for the working class, warded off fascism and created an era of Democratic supremacy? That is the big question right now.
Click here to read the article in The Guardian, and then post your thoughts below.
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David - I just read your Guardian piece. It is good recap of just how bad the Obama administration was, but you left out any mention of his disastrous foreign policy. Shortly after collecting his Nobel Peace Prize Obama expanded the two wars he inherited into five, or six, or seven, depending on how you count them. Certainly the disasters in Libya, Syria, and Yemen are all on him. He also effectively pardoned the war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and others. He failed to close Guantanamo, and prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president. He also became the Drone Assassin-in-Chief even targeting American citizens without due process.
Since Biden’s economic policies are likely to be much constrained by a Republican Senate, his power over foreign policy is certain to be where he can best exercise his presidential authority. For that reason, the Left needs to begin demanding and end to the wars, withdrawal from the Middle East, a drastic reduction in the Pentagon’s war budget, closing many of our worldwide military bases, and negotiating new nuclear arms treaties that drastically reduces their numbers. Please keep this in mind as you continue writing your valuable posts.
Until Dim-o-crats get over their cult worship of Obama and the Clintons nothing will change. The neo-liberal/identity politics shit sandwich of Biden/Harris combined with the politically incompetent and completely tone-deaf mis-leadership of Pelosi and Schumer is an iron-clad guarantee that the corporate-military state will continue to dominate and most "liberals" will go back to brunch and jerking off their "smart" phones to view inane tik-Tok videos in blissful ignorance.
Since Obama's first and second terms were essentially George W. Bush's third and fourth terms an Obama third term with Biden in the WH will surely be a disaster. The Dim-o-crats have their ideal setup. They can blame McConnell and the SCOTUS for their failure to not only do anything but to not even try to do anything. I get so fucking tired of them telling us that Trump is the devil but at the same time setting nearly $100 million on fire backing a pro-Trump Democrat to challenge McConnell's Senate seat (her pitch was that McConnell wasn't supportive enough of Trump). Telling everyone that Trump was the only problem and everything would be OK once he was gone just led voters to split their tickets down ballot which is why the Dim-o-crats won't get a majority in the Senate and lost seats in the House. Oh, that and not making a deal for more stimulus before the election.
I split my ticket another way. I voted Green for President but also voted for my Congressman, Jaime Raskin, who actually backs M4A and is one of the few Dim-o-crats I can stomach. I don't apologize for not voting for Biden who in my opinion is, and always has been, one of the biggest pieces of shit in Washington and Kamala the Khameleon who is completely unprincipled and untrustworthy.
How I see this all playing out is Biden trying to make bad deals with McConnell that Pelosi, Schumer and the idiot MSM will try to shove down our throats. Then the Republicans will wipe out the Dim-o-crats House majority and take a huge lead in the Senate in 2022. Then in 2024 Kamala gets nominated after Biden dies in office or steps down and wins only 10-20 electoral while Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley ends up in the WH.
So while all the rubes were popping champagne this weekend all I could think of is how fucked we all are.