- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
In the primary campaign, Barack Obama promised change. So where is it? Obama apologists at Salon have been doing double duty pointing out that he never promised "progressive" policies. OK, right. But he promised change, and now he is delivering the thud of sameness.
It turns out that the Democratic primary was just a beauty contest after all; that there really was no difference between Obama and Clinton. All that talk about change was a lie, and Obama is just another oily politician. That will disappoint not just "progressives" but independents and libertarian defectors who voted for Obama.
Obama has kept the Israel lobby in charge of our foreign policy, which means $ trillions more in proxy war expenses and homeland security scams. By his financial picks, he signals no change in the Wall Street bail-out strategy, which has so far tagged $700 billion just in the form of TARP, plus hundreds of billions more that will pop up in the Fed's greatly expanded and increasingly junky balance sheet, and in Fannie and Freddie (especially once sympathetic congressmen start handing out mortgage modifications like candy.) And they want to bail out the black hole that is Detroit, without any concessions from the UAW (which means permanent subsidy, in the manner of the pre-Thatcherite UK). And the Obama team wants to spend $700 billion on fiscal stimulus. But not raise taxes. All these trillions need to be borrowed from foreigners who already have that sickly feeling that they lent us way too much already. It's not going to work. Push will come to shove, and Obama's vision of sameness will implode.
There is a reason people voted for change. It's necessary. By failing to deliver it, Obama is not just disappointing people; he is writing his own political epitaph.
P.S. All this talk about Obama in charge is quite the laugh. Who thinks Billary Clinton will take orders from Obama? All that remains is for Obama to call himself the "decider."
