In Defense of Obama

[pbrower2a]

Lacy Ledbetter.

...Economic stewardship is part of the job of President, at least since Herbert Hoover did such a poor job of it.

Barack Obama has gotten us out of the most dangerous economic meltdown since the autumn 1929- autumn 1932 calamity (really -- compare the first year and a half) and has allowed an economic expansion with no speculative boom. Sure, it involves low interest rates, but it has been driven by investment. That can continue until interest rates rise.

OK, so after Dubya we watch the President closely, and America started extremely polarized in 2009 and is just as polarized today. Has any President faced such relentless hostility from a large part of the media on a strictly partisan and ideological basis?  Liberals gave Nixon and Reagan credit when and where it was due. Dubya got the liberal consternation that he deserved when he failed or when he got caught -- which was often.


 

[pbrower2a]

I do not see Obama being known as a great president. He has not got Americas involved in nearly enough wars. The wars he did get America involved in (such as Libya) were short, professionally handled and not nearly enough quirky anecdotes were created. Also, no historian will look kindly on a president who actually thinks the U.S. military is not the answer to every foreign policy question. No, Obama will rank the middle of the pack and chill out with Gerald Ford and Chester Arthur. That should be a good conversation, though.

(Typos corrected -- please heed Spell Check!)

He will not be compared to Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, all of whom took a severely-divided country at extreme risk to domestic peace and fully resolved the situation.  I give him much credit for the end of the economic meltdown that threatened to be as severe as that of 1929-1933



(The graph is not mine, and I use it solely for illustration. Conclusions that I draw are mine).

In the wake of the financial collapse that resulted from gross mismanagement of the American economy, President Obama was unable to support any speculative boom that would create a veneer of prosperity over economic destruction as Dubya did. He did what FDR did -- he backed the banks -- but at an earlier stage in the meltdown. Because there is no Louisiana Purchase available on the cheap (Vladimir Putin is not going to sell us Siberia) he isn't Jefferson. His window of opportunity for major reforms of the American economic order, shut tightly in January 2011. But he did get major reforms in that window of opportunity.

Barack Obama rescued Corporate America. Unfortunately for his political power he also rescued the ability of Corporate America to buy every right-wing pol that it could.

Chester Arthur? A non-entity. Ford? Not prepared for an effective campaign for a nationwide election. Barack Obama got elected as resolutely as he was elected in 2008 because people who typically voted Republican for most Senate and House offices despaired of the prospect of a 1929-1933 meltdown of the American economy. He lost those people as he solved their despair, and he still got re-elected in 2012.

He wanted to become as great as Lincoln or FDR, and he has become more the new Woodrow Wilson, if without the bigotry.  

[pbrower2a]

The thriving progressive urban metropolises of San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver. The progressive cosmopolitan powerhouses in Chicago, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

Whether the white elite live in McMansions in far-lung suburbs or in expensive condominiums in the inner-city, they are dependent on the labor of Latino, Asian or Caribbean immigrants and would have no cultural materials without the tremendous influence of African-Americans on the heart and soul of America. Blacks, Latinos and Asians almost uniformly vote for Democrats because they see the injustice of a system that is dependent on them but uses and abuses them in every aspect of life. Their voting patterns are not an indication of anti-white racism but rather an indication that people of color wish to eradicate racism.

No, that's what silly white people tell themselves. Russel Simmons explained it once upon a time, when he was talking about the difference in rebel subcultures within white and minority demographics. He said white people fight to get out, and minorities fight to get in.

No. The minorities who want to get into the upper echelons of our society must contort themselves to show that their ethnicity is nothing more than an eccentric quirk, and generally try to show themselves as 'whiter than thou'. Those who fail at that and succeed at something else don't pretend to be anything other than what they are. The latter is far easier. It is safe to assume that the non-white parts of the middle class are in no way rebels. Maybe figures of entertainment and sports can get away with some rebellion, but they are rarely middle-class.

I see no reason to believe that black or Hispanic, let alone Asian, members of the American middle class are 'alienated' with middle-class life any more than are white members of the middle-class. They are liberals to the extent that they distrust right-wing extremists who would gut the public sector that gave them formal education or in many cases, a middle-class job. The black and Hispanic middle class are more likely than white counterparts to have a government job. Even if one is black or Hispanic and has a private-sector business or professional practice, one's clients are more likely to rely upon some form of government assistance -- food stamps or Medicaid.   

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The capitalist elite seeks economic, and not cultural, hegemony. So long as it gets complete control of the economy it does not care how debased American culture gets. It is willing to align itself with Christian fundamentalists to push pseudoscience and a world-rejecting view of the universe upon gullible people because it knows that it will be exempt from personal consequences.  It wants cheap, expendable labor that it can get productivity from with threats. If it can't reimpose slavery, then it can make debt bondage in all but name as the norm for people outside the elite. It would push workers into an arrangement analogous to the relationship between landowners and sharecroppers in the old South -- the employer offers sustenance on credit which must be met at the terms of the employer at some 'settlement' at the end of a term. Someone not working adequately at the terms of his employer can be punished by law. Of course such requires that the helpless wretch have no political power -- no vote.

That is a relevant model for America because it has existed in the past. Just look at all the credit-based rip-offs in America. All that is lacking is the disenfranchisement of those who have no property and a a police that harshly enforces the terms of peonage contracts.   

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What have Movement Conservatives done to merit trust by anyone other than themselves? They stand for the most rapacious, unprincipled plutocrats in America. They have succeeded in creating 'wedge' issues and promoting a political divide between poor whites and poor blacks, and offering 'pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die-to-those-who-comply' as a reward for miserable and miserable lives today. What they have yet to succeed at is ensuring that life will be so precarious and miserable that all that anyone not in the economic elite can look forward to is a contingent promise of 'pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die-to-those-who-comply'.

They would rather offer booze, prostitution, and pornography than social justice. The economic elite is utterly amoral.

[pbrower2a]

Middle-class Jews, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-American, and homosexuals act as if they distrust the Republican Party -- but middle- class white, straight Christians do trust the Republican Party.

It may be that the speculative boom in real estate in the last decade (the "Opportunity Society" of George W. Bush) fleeced Hispanics and then hurt them worst when it imploded. Mexican-Americans buy into single-family housing at lower levels of income than any other ethnic group, and they got burned. They probably fault Republicans where such happened, especially in California and Nevada. Not in Texas, though, even if the Hispanics there are heavily Mexican-American -- Texas has tougher lending laws as the result of the boom and bust of the 1980s.