How Obama Is Neutralizing the Left and Tilting Rightward

[NorthCarolina]

By James K. Galbraith
Alternet

Obama is no progressive

The debt deal will make things clear. The President is not a progressive – he is not what Americans still call a “liberal.” He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result.

What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all.

To see the arc of political strategy, recall that from the beginning Obama handed economic policy to retainers recruited from the stables of Robert Rubin. From the beginning, he touted “fiscal responsibility” and played up the (economically non-existent) “problem” of the budget deficit. From the beginning his team sabotaged economic recovery with optimistic forecasts and inadequate programs – in the clear interest of protecting the banking system from reform.

As the presidency moved along, false claims of economic recovery supported a transition toward obsessive focus on debt and deficits, validated by a federal commission and constantly reinforced by a Washington propaganda chorus funded by Peter G. Peterson, for many decades a billionaire campaigner against Social Security and Medicare.

<---snip--->

Link: http://www.alternet.org/economy/151949/how_obama_is_neutralizing_the_left_and_tilting_rightward/

If I was a praying man, I would pray for a decent honest Liberal/Progressive Primary Challenger to Obama....although it is likely far too late to change the path we are on.

[elocs]

1. What exactly would a "a decent honest Liberal/Progressive Primary Challenger" do

to change anything?

Obama will win the nomination. If you are disappointed in Obama and believe he has lied or misrepresented himself, then in the course of the primaries he will do or say anything to reassure you and win your support.

[jeff47]

2. Provide pressure from the left.

Right now, Obama doesn't have to care about "the left". We have nowhere else to go. A primary challenger gives us somewhere else to go.

That challenger will lose the nomination even if Obama doesn't change course, which is the main reason it's hard to find someone who will do it. But a tough primary isn't good for an incumbent. So to neutralize the danger of a tough primary, Obama would have to move left.

[elocs]

5. What is pressure from the left going to do if Obama will tell them what they want to hear

and then do whatever he wants to do later?

Also remember that a primary challenge will leave that person deeply in debt unless they quickly drop out.

Obama would simply move left for the primaries, then move back to the right for the general election. Pretty common strategy.

[jeff47]

9. Because you can't just tell people what they want to hear when you're an incumbent.

You're already in office. Making a nice speech doesn't help, because you have a record. If your pretty speech doesn't match what you've actually done, the pretty speech won't work.

[elocs]

10. Yes he certainly can. He will promise the left whatever they need to hear.

He will promise to be more progressive in his second term. Just wait and see. He promises.

Yes, a pretty speech will work. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

[jeff47]

11. Your conclusion doesn't match your assertion.

"The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior."

Voters know this. It's why challengers can run on whatever they feel like, and incumbents can't.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[xchrom]

3. recommend

[swilton]

4. His bi-partisanship

is a fig-leaf that he hides behind to do what he wants to do..

[Vincardog]

6. Bingo : a fig-leaf that he hides behind to do what he wants to do..

[primavera]

7. What's tragic is that...

... Obama is what Americans call a liberal. Unfortunately, we've allowed the political spectrum to shift so far to the right through our constant concessions and compromises with a right wing that never surrenders so much as an inch, a "liberal" in this country is what the rest of the world calls a right-wing conservative.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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