Tag: Campaign 2012

What does “Winning The Future”, the inept slogan of the Obama 2012 campaign, really mean for the middle class and poor, especially the African American, Hispanic and other minority communities? What would re-electing Obama in 2012 mean for the economy? For Glenn Ford at the Black Agenda Report, it means a further economic decline, especially for the Black community where unemployment is still more than twice that for Whites.

“Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president.”

Black wealth has virtually disappeared. Data gathered prior to 2007, when the full scope of the subprime mortgage catastrophe was just becoming known, showed median Black family wealth at about $5,000, one-twentieth of the median white family’s $100,000 holdings. Since then, the bottom has fallen out from under whole communities, with Blacks hit by far the hardest. By the second quarter of 2010, Black home ownership had declined from its 2007 level of 48 percent to 46.2 percent, a 3.7 percent drop, and still falling – a guarantee that median Black household wealth is well below the $5,000 registered in 2007. (Median wealth for single Black women at the top of their earning capacity, ages 36 to 49, was precisely $5 – five dollars! – in 2010.)

Barack Obama must bear direct responsibility for the relative Black decline, both as candidate and president. As election year 2008 began, Obama took the most pro-banker, laissez faire capitalist position on home foreclosures of the three major Democratic presidential candidates. John Edwards backed a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on interest rates, while Hillary Clinton supported a “voluntary” halt and $30 billion in federal aid to homeowners. But Obama opposed any moratorium, mandatory or voluntary, and balked at cash for homeowners and stricken communities.

Perhaps it would be in the best interests of the majority to not re-elect Obama, as Ian Welsh argues,

America is in terminal decline.  There may be a lot of ruin in a nation, as Keynes said, but that amount is not infinite.  The next chance you get to turn this around you will be starting from a much worse position.  A lot more pain will be unavoidable.

Obama is not turning things around, what he is doing is negotiating with Republicans how fast the decline will be, and how much and how fast it is necessary to fuck ordinary Americans in order to keep the rich rich.  If Obama wins another term, he will continue to negotiate the decline, then, odds are very high, a Republican will get in, and slam his foot on the accelerator of collapse.

This is why Obama must lose in 2012. I would prefer that he lose to a Democrat in a primary, then that Democrat wins, but he must lose regardless.  If he loses to a Republican, then 2016 you get a chance to put someone in charge who might do the right things (or even just some of them.)

No, those odds aren’t good. They suck.  Every part of them sucks.  And even if you get a Dem in 2016, you’ll probably choose the right most candidate, just like  you did last time, and he’ll go back to negotiating with Republicans over what parts of the corpse of America’s middle class they should dine on next.  “No, no, eat one kidney first, they only need one to survive, so that’s not too cruel.”

But it is still your best chance. Otherwise you’re looking at full, Russian-style collapse.  What comes out the other end, I don’t know, but  you really won’t enjoy getting there.

Look at what is happening now in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio where the state governments where turned over to the Republican Tea Party. Even moderate Republicans and Independents are in revolt. What is happening there is happening now at a Federal Level. Reclaiming the House and throwing out the right wingers in the Senate, replacing them with more progressive, liberal representation is our best hope and needs to be our focus. It is the only ay to counter the right wing agenda of the White House.

In case no one has yet recognized this little point of fact, just take a look at his right wing, Wall St, banker, corporations, protect the wealthiest staff. From the flat out obnoxious Rahm Emanuel to his latest addition of former GE CEO, Jeffrey Immelt to head his jobs council, Obama has surrounded himself with the people that he was voted into office to keep out of government. Obama’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina (not the singer), who never saw a right wing idea he didn’t like, was appointed to head Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. If you don’t know who Jim Messina is, you’re not alone unless you are a member of a progressive group that has tried to work with this White House, like Campaign for America’s Future, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) or Servicemembers Legal Defence Network (SLDN). Messina came into the Obama circle in June of 2008 after having service as chief of staff for corporations favorite Democrat, Sen. Max Baucus (MT) as the campaign’s chief of staff (with David Plouffe remaining the top dog). In a Mother Jones‘s article in by David Corn questioned:

As the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, Obama is now the leader of a political entity that includes idealistic, reform-seeking, public-interest do-gooders as well as corporate-minded professionals connected to the pay-to-play system deeply rooted in the nation’s capital. (I’m not saying Messina is one or the other.) Unifying such a party under the banner of change will have its challenges. Obama’s campaign is now being partly run by a fellow (presumably a talented political operative) who served a Democrat who helped enact major legislation Obama depicts as harmful to the nation. Is that a sign Obama can reach out to those with whom he disagrees, or is it an accommodation to the ways of Washington?

I think we have the answer to that question and in The Nation, Ari Berman writes an in depth article about Messina as Obama’s “enforcer”:

In March 2009 the Campaign for America’s Future, a top progressive group in Washington, launched a campaign called “Dog The (Blue) Dogs” to pressure conservative Blue Dog Democrats to support President Obama’s budget. When he heard about the effort, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, who was regarded as the Obama administration’s designated “fixer,” called CAF’s leaders into the White House for a dressing down, according to a CAF official. If the group wanted to join the Common Purpose Project, an exclusive weekly strategy meeting between progressive groups and administration officials, CAF had to drop the campaign. We know how to handle the Blue Dogs better than you do, Messina said. Not wanting to sour its relationship with the White House at this early date, CAF complied, and the campaign quickly disappeared from its website. Despite Messina’s assurance, however, the Blue Dogs would remain a major obstacle to the realization of the president’s legislative agenda.

These were the same tactics used to stifle GLBT organizations during the campaign to repeal DADT (which is very apparently still in effect). Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog Gay points out Messina’s role in putting DADT repeal on the back burner of the Obama legislative agenda:

Gay rights was another major issue on which Messina clashed with Obama supporters. The relationship between the administration and gay rights groups was strained from the outset, when Obama chose Rick Warren to deliver his inaugural invocation. “It is difficult to comprehend how our president-elect, who has been so spot-on in nearly every political move and gesture, could fail to grasp the symbolism of inviting an anti-gay theologian to deliver his inaugural invocation,” wrote Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in the Washington Post.

After reading the op-ed, Messina sternly rebuked Solmonese during a meeting at the White House. “I’m never going back to another meeting like that again,” Solmonese angrily told his staff afterward. From then on, HRC, to the consternation of other gay rights groups, toed the administration line.

With Messina as a top liaison to the gay rights community, the White House was reluctant to make repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) a key legislative priority. “The White House, under Rahm and Messina, suffered from political homophobia,” says Joe Sudbay, who writes about gay rights issues for AMERICAblog. “They’re not homophobes in the traditional sense of the word, but they think it’s dangerous to do gay issues in politics.” Groups that questioned Messina’s strategy, such as the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, were frozen out of key White House meetings. “I felt like he was constantly angry with those of us who would not fall in line,” says Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United (no relation to SLDN).

It’s pretty clear to anyone not blinded by Obama’s so-called “light” that Messina was appointed to throw any of the progressives and liberals that had helped elect Obama in ’08 under the bus to protect Obama right wing corporate agenda. Starting with Clinton and now Obama the Democratic party has been turned into the party of Reaganomics and big money. Obama’s re-election will certainly seal the deal to sell out America.