There is little practical difference between presidents Obama and Clinton (other than the personal one that Clinton seems more capable of critical analysis). The Obama presidency as it has played out was predicted by some on the left during the 2008 primaries (though I don’t think even those who warned against him imagined how bad it would be). The question now has to be: Is there a way that the Democratic Party can be a vehicle for economic justice and anti-militarism or do we need new institutions, including an independent party of the left, to more successfully organize behind progressive policies? Wouldn’t the Progressive Caucus in the House be much more effective, for example, if it were organized as the Progressive Party whose allegiance would have to be wooed by the center-right Democrats, instead of being taken for granted by them?

The academics have focused on Obama’s mindset and motivations but have not really delved into why the electorate votes the way it does. What makes a candidate appealing? All elections are delusional to a certain extent, each candidate responsible for their brand. Very few actual voters conduct historical due diligence, and the press – for the most part – certainly doesn’t, at least not in any forum that the average voter would read. Voters seem to be more interested in their gut feels about a person; as in George W Bush’s case, whether or not they could have a beer with him. The question is: what are the factors that inform that “gut” reaction.

In making changes, it would be more useful to development movements that focused on fundamental structural changes instead of personnel changes. The trick is electing those willing to assist with those structural changes.

Weird how the election of Barack Obama is making people finally look at America’s structural foundation. And I don’t think it’s Barack Obama that’s making more people pay attention, I think it’s the chaos of the Bush years. Barack Obama just happens to be the post-Bush guy.

I agree that Barack Obama knows how to take advantage of a system that’s been in place for the past few decades. Good for him. That’s what politicians do. I think to a certain extent some on The Left deluded themselves into thinking they were voting for Shaft instead of a complex human being.

BTW, Adolph Reed sounds completely disgusted with Barack Obama.

You know, it would be a lot easier to take you seriously if, in advance of actual events, you got something important right.

Where, for example, in 2008 and earlier is there ANY sense of just how badly an Obama Presidency would turn out? Where? Merely saying that you regarded his views as something rather centrist hardly does any justice to just how far to the right Obama’s policies have actually pivoted. Krugman gave Obama great flack over his praise of Reagan, and himself got great grief in return from Obama supporters for his views. Did you criticize Obama on this, or in any real way foresee how Obama would actually play out in terms of policy? Where is there any sense in whatever you may have said in 2008 of how deeply Obama would betray many of the ideals and specific policy proposals he espoused in his campaign?

And I happened to encounter one of your bloggingheads in which you were talking up — as if it were a very real possibility — the idea that Holder and Obama were going to go after the Bush gang for engaging in torture. You even presented an embarrassing “syllogism” to demonstrate how it surely will be so. Great call there, Josh. A fine political sense that little effort put on display. I should think that the very skeptical (if “purist”) Greenwald got this one a lot more right than you ever did.

And I repeat my earlier point: where is there in anything you said ANY indication that you understood the broad and pervasive disaster that “bipartisanship” would become? And you presume to lecture Krugman and Greenwald on their lack of political astuteness?

The very fact that you do presume to do so demonstrates that there is no justice in the world of pundits. Being importantly wrong only means you can go on to be importantly wrong again.

Obama had a prescience of what he would become in “Audacity of Hope”:

Increasingly I found myself spending time with people of means—law firm partners and investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. As a rule, they were smart, interesting people, knowledgeable about public policy, liberal in their politics, expecting nothing more than a hearing of their opinions in exchange for their checks. But they reflected, almost uniformly, the perspectives of their class: the top 1 percent or so of the income scale that can afford to write a $2,000 check to a political candidate. They believed in the free market and an educational meritocracy; they found it hard to imagine that there might be any social ill that could not be cured by a high SAT score. They had no patience with protectionism, found unions troublesome, and were not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives were upended by the movements of global capital. Most were adamantly prochoice and antigun and were vaguely suspicious of deep religious sentiment.

And although my own worldview and theirs corresponded in many ways—I had gone to the same schools, after all, had read the same books, and worried about my kids in many of the same ways—I found myself avoiding certain topics during conversations with them, papering over possible differences, anticipating their expectations. On core issues I was candid; I had no problem telling well-heeled supporters that the tax cuts they’d received from George Bush should be reversed. Whenever I could, I would try to share with them some of the perspectives I was hearing from other portions of the electorate: the legitimate role of faith in politics, say, or the deep cultural meaning of guns in rural parts of the state.

Still, I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality, and frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population—that is, the people that I’d entered public life to serve. And in one fashion or another, I suspect this is true for every senator: The longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions. You may fight it, with town hall meetings and listening tours and stops by the old neighborhood. But your schedule dictates that you move in a different orbit from most of the people you represent.

And perhaps as the next race approaches, a voice within tells you that you don’t want to have to go through all the misery of raising all that money in small increments all over again. You realize that you no longer have the cachet you did as the upstart, the fresh face; you haven’t changed Washington, and you’ve made a lot of people unhappy with difficult votes. The path of least resistance—of fund-raisers organized by the special interests, the corporate PACs, and the top lobbying shops—starts to look awfully tempting, and if the opinions of these insiders don’t quite jibe with those you once held, you learn to rationalize the changes as a matter of realism, of compromise, of learning the ropes. The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought.

Dorian Warren: :: The DOL is doing incredible wage enforcement work not seen even under Clinton. On the other hand, other agencies have clearly been captured by Wall Street: SEC, Commerce, Treasury, etc. And obviously I’d be the first to criticize BHO for never going to bat for labor law reform, even though he gladly took labor’s money and ground game. But then how do we square the difference between the SEC and the NLRB? ::

Easy. Obama needs active union support for his re-election, and to avoid any independent moves by labor. He’ll get it because they do understand how effective DoL and NLRB have been, and he’ll promise to push for card check in his second term. As worthless a promise as any of his others, but the actual progress inside DoL will keep the unions believing…

Re this Capitulation tag that progressives seem determined to pin on Pres Obama. It seems to me that the real capitulators are Dem voters who basically “gave up” last fall, opting out of going to the polls because they were “disappointed” about one issue or another. I heard Alan Grayson say that only 40% of Democratic voters showed up at the polls in FL in November, compared to 60% of Republican voters. Voters who went with the Tea Party got mad, but instead of staying home like Dems, when they got mad they organized and voted. Dems got mad and stayed home. Tea Pary control of Congress was a choice; it’s not like they’re extreme views weren’t one display for all to see BEFORE the 2010 elections.

My main point: a lot of people are heaping blame on Barack Obama’s shoulder. But Democracy requires participation, not just every 4 years. Voters are responsible for the government they get. Congress passes laws; the House brings legislation to the floor. The election of Barack Obama didn’t change/alter that process. He didn’t get extra powers. Democratic voters capitulated last fall, added by progressive neurosis.

No Naomi Wolf and no Chomsky. There are many other missing voices on this thread, ostensibly voices from the left.

Lafer agrees with Adolph. They both agree that Obama is a wholly unprincipled neo-liberal. It’s a label. Does it help soothe our injured psyches to call him that? Austerity as a political tactic, at this time in history, is designed to preserve the prerogatives of the very powerful, who need not practice it. My very conservative Republican brother-in-law will vote for Obama. He considers him a very, very pleasant surprise, although distasteful because he’s from Chicago and has a sordid political past. He was, after all, a Democrat. He will hold his nose, when he votes.

Jeff Cohen of Fair pretty much lays it out: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7125

This is pretty much all one needs to know. It was obvious at the time, too, that this is what the O admin would do.

The only important questions are what to do about it. Anything else, strictly speaking, is a waste of time and energy.

“We are where we are,” writes TS up there, because Obama dazzled progressives in publishing. Nonsense, we have been on our way here since late 1970s and Obama was not chosen for this until some time along in the progress. It’s startling – or perhaps not – that progressives here don’t consider that before Obama’s victory, the progressives with portfolios panicked when they were told the sky was falling (in 2008) and started shreiking “bail! bail!” as passionately as the ruling class could desire. Some here should remember, being among them. It was that baseless panic that set the stage for the wildly emotional takeup of the Obama brand, the widespread public attachment to him as to an eleventh hour saviour – and endowed it with the intensity of fan loyalty that has been so useful.

But this fascination with guessing at what’s inside BHO ( a Simon Critchley, Oprah Winfrey sort of obsession) tells its own story. The worst thing it signals is the short time frame fragmentation in which progressives are choosing to understand the ruling class war. Most discouraging – and most gratifying for the marketing experts hired to manage public opinion – is this the progressive decision to view reality the way the lawyers for the defence determined the jury should see the video of Rodney King’s assault. Because if the big factor is President Obama’s personal emotional life, then clearly the current ruling class policy is not being perceived in the context necessary to explain it, but is being mistaken for an effect of the interaction of that personality and a set of unforeseen circumstances.

If he were 100% cgi this would be as useful a debate as it is now. Obama was cast in this role and a public image was constructed for him to facilitate, among other things, this kind of pointless debate; the view that he personally (due to the qualities that suited him to play this part and spurred him choose this career) is the catastrophe, and that determining his interior experience is of moment, is as childish as the view that he personally would lead and indeed embody the working class struggle to push back some of the ruling class gains made under the Bush regime 2001-2008. The veneer of “progressive” – his brand – is a (perhaps necessary, perhaps merely useful) veil of legitimacy for the policies, radical and in many instances illegal, or newlegal or postlegal, those not illegal enabled by the postlegal environment and the credulity of progressives who buy one story of unforeseen disaster after another because it soothes the powerless managerial elites to believe they are smarter than those who rule over them and terrify them.

Obama’s persona is an asset to the ruling bloc of the ruling class, just his predecessor’s was, and Clinton’s, and Reagan’s. It was a costly and time-consuming creation. But should he fall in a hole, you could have this conversation all over again about someone else. This is big ruling class strategy – big big big, the biggest, long planned and much risked for. It doesn’t depend on this man – the strategy was there before the man was chosen. He’s very suitable – his brand was designed to do exactly this – but not determining. The focus on the question of how he personally got into this role in the transition from capital to the next thing is an indication of the unwillingness of progressives to recognise the strength and dangerousness of the class now dominating humanity. And this unwillingness is partly due to being terrorised and partly due to needing to rationalise ongoing complicity – and preparation for complicity in even more heinous ruling class crimes – for the shrinking rewards.

Obama has a job and he has patrons/employers/sponsors/backers and he’s doing the job for the rewards they guarantee. It doesn’t matter whether he believes bottom to top wealth transfers are good for propertyless people or “the economy”, it matters only that he knows doing his job for the leading bloc of the ruling class elevates him and his children to their ranks, the untouchable global elite.

Obama is the first black president of the United States but no one seems able to think what that implies. If you look at his record the implications would seem to be confirmed.

Obama is the product of the Daley machine. He didn’t come out of black politics and if he had he would never have gotten this far. Harold Washington was the product of Chicago politics both black and white. Obama grew up in the white world. He rarely shows anger, because anger is threatening. He learned very young that the road to popularity and success was cool negotiation. Maybe Adolph Reed can enlighten the rest of you on the politics of performance.

It’s been out there out in the open the whole time, but liberals have a hard time dealing with race.

“I hate the Communists and have for many years and don’t feel right about giving up my career to defend them. I will give up my film career if it is in the interests of defending something I believe in, but not this.”
Careerism was Mr. Kazan’s philosophy! Mr. Richard Schickel’s apologetic biography, rather filmography overlaid with selectively chosen personal information, only confirms that destructive self-interest. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of my favorite movies.
StephenKMackSD

The slogan “the personal is political” has been popular on the left for some time. I think this is the less savory side of that. I’m thinking also of the things in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus about tmolecular individuals vs molar aggregates and how the two are not and by necessity can not be congruent. Ultimately the whole is not the same as its parts. Self-interest in the neoliberal, Randian sense is not enough either. It’s amazing how such a simplistic conception of human psychology can be taken seriously in 2014, but then again those ideas aren’t popular because they’re accurate, they’re popular because they give necessary ideological support to a particular set of social and economic relationships. Basic Freudian psychoanalysis already conflicted with this conception of human behavior. Even back then it was understood that people were not merely driven by the pleasure principle, there was also a death drive, a drive which made humanity desire a return to the inorganic which was every bit as strong as the libido. It’s worse for “rational self-interest” than merely capturing half the picture though. It’s cruder and more narrowly defined than even the pleasure principle, which at least allows for individual conceptions of jouissance rather than some sort of tyranny of the rational dictating to you what you can and can’t enjoy.

I say this not excuse Kazan for selling out his friends. He could have stuck to his principles. Under the right circumstances most anyone can coerced into doing something against his or her wishes. Sometimes the saddest part of an event like the Red Scare is just how little it takes to buy people off or how much people will give up for even the most illusory chances of saving themselves. A realistic politics needs to take into account the fragility of human psychology rather than simply passing judgement and chastising people for not adhering to a specific set of ethics.