No matter his platform, Obama was elected to do five things 1) End USer military adventurism overseas; 2) create Universal Health Care ; 3) restore the civil liberties stolen by the Busheviks in the name of national security; 4) bring alternative energy resources to parity with conventional sources , and 5) to restore economic health to the middle and lower class. When we voted for him as president, those were the five major themes that voters wanted him to pursue.Unfortunately: 1) he has said he merely wants to move the base of operations to Afghanistan and ENLARGE the military; 2) he has said he merely wants to bring 'insurance' to the uninsured, and not even all of them; 3) he voted to sustain the FISA, and to RENEW the fucking Patriot Act; 4) he has said he's for that toxic oxymoron, "Clean Coal", and ethanol for fuel, and 5) he voted for the Big Banker's Bail-out. This record does not inspire hope, because:
Each and every one of those challenges involves conflict with wealthy, embedded, CorpoRat interests to whom he is beholden. He got their "quid" (campaign money, support); now he's gotta do the whole "pro quo" thing. These are not folks who are gonna roll over and show their bellies just because his election was 'historic.' It was, but it wasn't a "landslide" or anything like it. FDR, LBJ, Nixon (in 72), Reagan (in '84): those were landslides...Historical or not, his popular vote margin is too slim to effect real change against the prevailing currents of the hegemonic interest or to compel their cooperation or even their passivity....even in the (imho unlikely) event he actually meant to accomplish them...
We don't need a new New Deal. A "New Deal" with the same deck--the cards dirty, as well as marked and shaved--is gonna turn out the same way it already has.
We need a whole new deck.
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