Obama as the savior

[bigbadwolf]

At dissidentvoice.org:

The final results are in on this historic November day. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars he raised, Barack Obama has lost the 2008 presidential election. American voters have boldly spoken truth to arrogance. Turned out that all those pre-election opinion polls that showed Obama’s inability to get over 50 percent support were prescient. Much of the public was never comfortable with Obama, though he clearly was so comfortable acting like he already was president.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are probably drinking champagne and having the sweetest time since Bill won his first presidential election. Hillary must now bite her lip repeatedly and resist saying publicly that “I told you so!” Hillary in 2012 will reveal that she learned her lessons well.
All that Obama audacity of arrogance from the smiling, glib politician finally died the death it so richly deserved. Too many pundits will blame his loss on his blackness and racist voters. But the larger truth is that sufficient voters saw through the many lies and deceptions. Obama always had a hard time giving a simple, short straight answer to tough questions. He was always mentally calculating exactly how to game his answers so that he would achieve all the benefits he had his eyes on. ... There were many reasons not to trust the calculating Obama to do anything he promised to do or, for some people, to fear he might.
Of course, now the nation must suffer through the ineptness, confusion and dementia-like dullness of the living-in-the-past John McCain, tough-talking but brain dead. Will the McCain presidency look like an extension of the incredible terrible George W. Bush White House? Of course.
Still living off a once-true characterization as a maverick, McCain must now surround himself with people who actually are smart and knowledgeable about myriad issues. Should be no problem finding enough lobbyists. Pundits will start speculating that McCain will be lucky just to stay alive for four years, but thankfully his vice-president seems more capable. One thing for sure: the power plutocracy that really runs the country will have little trouble pulling the strings behind the scenes and keep the puppet McCain dancing to tunes written by corporate interests.

 

[bigbadwolf]

At dissidentvoice:

It’s a pretty straight forward equation: centrist Democrats don’t
have a great track record of winning national elections. Voters want
simple, common sense approaches to handling the problems our country
faces today, not posturing and political maneuvering for the sake of
manipulation. For what it’s worth, John McCain shoots it straight. He
supports more war and doesn’t know much about economics. Voters know
exactly what they are getting if they punch the card for the old
Arizona senator.
That’s not the case with Obama who says he wants an end to the war
but has voted for its continuation and will leave troops and private
mercenaries in the country to deal with the so-called insurgents — even
threatening to shift US forces to Afghanistan and Iran, where he’s
promised to bully our enemies into submission.
Obama says he supports our civil liberties but voted to reaffirm the
PATRIOT Act and FISA. He says he will expand the Pentagon budget, and
on Israel he promises to do whatever it takes to protect the country
from “terrorists,” paying little to no attention to the plight of
Palestinians and their suffering in Gaza.
The good senator also wants to put Americans to work with a
neo-Keynesian economic plan, producing millions of “green jobs” across
the country. Our addiction to foreign crude surely needs to be dealt
with, but Obama’s call for diversified energy sources includes some not
so great alternatives, such as nuclear power, clean coal, and more
domestic oil production.
Obama also claims to speak for the underprivileged but has refused
to support a cap on credit card interest rates and has spoken little
about the ruthless prison industry, the war on drugs or the death
penalty — all of which unfairly affect the poor.
I would call all of these postures a huge betrayal. But they aren’t.
Obama has never been a true progressive. He’s another centrist Democrat
that has done his best to appease all sides of the political spectrum;
giving the corporate wing the hard evidence they need to trust he’ll
protect their interests, and the left-wing, rhetoric and political
bravado to ensure they won’t flee from the stifling confines of the
Democratic Party.

With friends like these, who needs enemies? Nader got it right when he called the Democrats gutless, spineless, and clueless. Do the world a favor: don't vote for Obama (and don't vote for McCain either).

 

[RWS]

Quoting "bigbadwolf": ". . . . Do the world a favor: don't vote for Obama (and don't vote for McCain either)."

Many of us would like to cast a vote in opposition to both major parties, rather than to abstain from voting altogether. The trouble is finding a decent independent or third-party candidate.

 

[sergio]

Why not vote for the Libertarian Party? Socially liberal; economically prudent. Libertarians believe in minimum government and non-interventionism.

 

[bigbadwolf]

For some reason, Alexander Cockburn doesn't quite seem to see Obama as a savior:

Whatever drawdown of troops in Iraq that does take place in the event of Obama's victory will be a brief hiccup amid the blare and thunder of fresh "resolve". In the event of Obama's victory, the most immediate consequence overseas will most likely be brusque imperial reassertion. Already, Joe Biden, the shopworn poster boy for Israeli intransigence and Cold War hysteria, is yelping stridently about the new administration's "mettle" being tested in the first six months by the Russians and their surrogates. Obama is far more hawkish than McCain on Iran.

Every politician, good or bad, is an ambitious opportunist. But beneath this topsoil, the ones who make a constructive dent on history have some bedrock of fidelity to some central idea. In Obama's case, this "idea" is the ultimate distillation of identity politics: the idea of his blackness. Those who claim that if he were white he would be cantering effortlessly into the White House do not understand that without his most salient physical characteristic Obama would be seen as a second-tier senator with unimpressive credentials.

As a political organiser of his own advancement, Obama is a wonder. But I have yet to identify a single uplifting intention to which he has remained constant if it has presented any risk to his progress. We could say that he has not yet had occasion to adjust his relatively decent stances on immigration and labour-law reform. And what of public funding of his campaign? Another commitment made becomes a commitment betrayed. His campaign treasury is a vast hogswallow that, if it had been amassed by a Republican, would be the topic of thunderous liberal complaint.

Obama has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of the candidates with Washington lobbyists. He has been fearless in offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful.

Likewise, Michael Yates doesn't appear quite as star-struck as one might have thought:

[SIZE=-1]

But there is more to the antipathy that some in the white working class in the rust belt have for Obama. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]What exactly does Obama have to say to them? Is he going to fight for their lost pensions? Make sure that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has adequate funds? Is he going to do battle for their health care? Is he going to get the unemployment insurance system fixed? Is it possible to believe that he will go afer all those anti-worker trade agreements? Will he ensure that social security is never privatized? That it be made more generous, as it easily could be? Is he going to reverse the Bush administration’s draconian labor policies? Put people on the National Labor Relations Board who take the purpose of the labor laws—to promote collective bargaining—seriously?

[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Will he make the Occupational Safety and Health Act a real law and not the dead letter it is now? Will he engineer a public works program that rebuilds the infrastructures of these forgotten towns and puts their citizens to work? Will he look for creative ways to bring these places back to life? Will he do something about public education and get rid of the corporate-inspired and ultra authoritarian No Child Left Behind legislation? Will he fight for college grants for those with little income? Will he bring home the working class wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters from Iraq and Afghanistan? Stop wasting billions of dollars on these criminal wars? Demand that unions be made legal in Iraq?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]Obama has failed to say anything meaningful about these matters, and as the campaign drags on, he moves ever further to the right....

[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]I doubt that we will get much from Obama to inspire working men and women, of whatever part of the country, of whatever age, race, or ethnicity. Now he has chosen a pathetic old hack, Joe Biden, to be his running mate. What exactly has Biden done for workers in his more than thirty years in the Senate? That a man who has been in this elite body (whose members’ stock portfolios have performed better than almost anyone else’s) this long can be called 'working class' by Obama himself tell us just how lame U.S. politics are.

[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]Obama is going to win: this is almost a foregone conclusion now, even among Republicans. And nothing is going to change. The audacity of hope, indeed.
[/SIZE]

 

[bigbadwolf]

There are just 4 days to go and we will see history in the making in the most important elections the world has ever seen.

I don't see what's important about it. It's attracted the usual media hype. Luckily I'm in Europe at the moment so I can sleep through the damned thing. I'll keep my TV off the next day as well. I really don't want to know or care. It's not as if there's any great difference between the two. Real historical events are things like the Russian Revolution or the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad. Not some charade of a media circus like the campaign between almost indistinguishable candidates for supreme figurehead of the US imperium.

 

[JG]

I concur with the person who said "I do not believe someone's political opinion regarding U.S. politics is really appropriate for this site. This forum is about Argentine issues and living in Buenos Aires, not someone's personal disdain for a Presidential candidate.'

Moderators should spend less time censoring me after i go to the trouble posting my experience and more time sending threads like this one to the trash heap, which is a pretty good description of buenos aires if you ask me.

 

[bigbadwolf]

In the Times:

Barack Obama lays plans to deaden expectation after election victory

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.


The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

Yeah, well, we knew this all along. Happens each time. Nothing changes -- or if it does, it's because of external stimuli such as financial crises or reverses abroad rather than because of a bogus political process, an utter sham.

 

[Grazie]

A few of you will wake up to the news that the US of A has elected a new president. Barack O. is the new guy. It was a drizzling day in Southern California but people went out to vote. Regardless of their choice of candidate (Obama won in California) people went out to vote. Every race was represented were at the polling place. And this election brought alot of first time voters. And those that have not voted in the past election, came out and voted this time.
Now we wait and see what 2009 and forward, bring.
California had some "interesting" propositions on the ballot. And I was glad I came to participate.
I guess, since McCain lost there won't be a lot of Americans headin' to BsAs, like predicted?

 

[bigbadwolf]

It's the beginning of a new era, where all that is noble and sublime will be realised.