Obama Needs to Decide Which Side He's On: Corporatist or Populist. Time is Running Out.

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"Obama still has not learned that the Obama Movement that put him in the White House was not really about Obama. It was about a set of progressive policies that constituted “change we can believe in.”

  BRAVO!  RIGHT ON!   When Obama said "CHANGE!"  he clearly meant  "_I_ will now be a part of the Multi-Millionaire RULING CLASS, like clinton, clinton, cheney, and Bush Jr. before me." 

BOTH Clinton in '92, and Obama's election in 2008, were about the American public OVERWHELMINGLY REJECTING the  POLICIES of the "Washington Consensus" - the NY & DC autocratic "ESTABLISHMENT" ELITES who POWERED the Bush-1 and Bush-2 presidencies.  BOTH Clinton & Obama, because of their NARCISSISM & arrogant ego, convinced themselves that the elections were ABOUT THEM.

  They BOTH ended up buying into the NEO-CON LUNACY... the MILTON FRIEDMAN  "PINOCHET _DICTATORSHIP is a 'FREE MARKET'"  LUNACY  that is now gospel for the NEO-CON  'economists'  and Goldamn-Sachs financial swindlers!   

 (Greenspan, Bernanke, Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Gensler, Orszag, Lieberman, Bernstein to name only a few.)   They are all SHREDDING the American SOCIAL SAFETY NET  that took 100 years of blood, sweat, toil, tears, exertion, dedication, TWO world wars, and a Great Depression (AND the Cold War) to create! 

  BILLIONS of dollars (trillions $$ !)  of  taxpayer EXTORTED,   SOCIALIZED BAILOUTS for banksters... while simultaneously SHREDDING the Social Safety net -  IS  the Neo-Con agenda!! 

We all got totally punked in 2006/2008. Remember impeachment? Public option? Coddling BP? Actually expanding Bush's "unitary exective" (i.e. dictatorial presidency)?

Ken Salazar, Geitner, et al could just as easily have been appointed by a Republican.

You get NOTHING by electing Democrats, except driving off the cliff at only 50 mph instead of 75 mph. Same disastrous corporatist, anti-environment, anti-people direction. Any difference is too small to matter.

The Dumb-o-cratic Party HATES liberals. They DESPISE their own base! And they make no real attempt even to hide this fact (e.g. Rahm Emanuel).

LEAVE THE DUMB-0-CRATS!!

No real negotiation takes place unless your side is willing to walk away from the table. The left, dissed by the Dems for far too long, should leave. Period.

Then, and only then, will liberal ideas/policies be taken seriously by the once great Democratic Party, and will the U.S.A ever have a fighting chance to save itself from the cancer of conservatism.

Democratic Party.  It also has one play in it's playbook good for ninety yards and a TD everytime it runs it on progressive voters.  It's called fake left go right on change.

  Why can't Progressives do the obvious? Why can't we just form a "Green Labor" Party. Or "Progressive Green" Party? Or some variation that will simply stand for the people? We have the means (internet) and the desire. If the major constituencies can band together(Labor, Liberal/Progressives, Environmentalists, Minorities, and the Poor/Working Class) I believe that would constitute a majority. Or, at the least one hell of a voting block. One large enough to throw both houses of Congress into a gridlock that only that new party can break. We wouldn't even NEED to run anybody for President. At least, not right away. One rule is all we'd need. NO CORPORATE DONATIONS!! We don't need major media coverage. If the leaders of these constituencies can come together long enough and strong enough to create a party structure that can find and vette candidates, even just for the House, that's a start. Enough members in the House alone, and the R's & D's would have to start dealing. It's just a start, but a start is all we'd need.

The article is not about Obama. It is about remaking the Democratic Party in a populist, progressive fashion. The real action is going to be in every other level of government and all internal Democratic Party offices.

If you missed this basic point than you reacted just to the Buzzflash headline.... which is not the one I gave this article.

I was not a Mrs. Clinton booster nor an early Obama supporter. I stated that she was more progressive than her husband. She has basically progressive instincts that her husband does not seem to share. Neither are pro-union enough for me... but Mrs. Clinton has a better record.

I backed Obama over McCain. Obama sometimes gets it right and McCain never does post-2008.

My early Democratic Presidential candidate I liked best were Edwards and Biden mostly for different reasons.

Anyone who thinks hitching your support to an individual instead of a set of policy positions, ideas and values is always going to be bitterly disappointed.

Even my hero FDR was not always right on every issue. The New Deal was driven by a movement not just a man. Not one of you seemed to focus on the part of the article that says that the Obama Movement was not about Obama. It was policy based. The policy list was the "change you can believe in" not the man.

It still is.... the policy change list remains and is separate from the man. If you commented without getting that point then you are commenting out of ignorance.

Obama in my opinion will react to populist pressure if it starts changing the political players in the Senate, House, Governorships, state legislatures and Democratic Party offices. If he does not, he will be toast in 2012.

Either way, Presidents never last more than 4 years so if you want to change the system, then go after all the other elected offices. the changes you make last long after the Presidents are gone from power.

Going third party is guaranteed defeat unless you first push for fusion balloting. The Working Families Party gets this but the Greens do not. If you are an economic populist and want to go third party, then check out the Working Families Party.

I like the Greens but they elect absolutely nobody and do not seem to have any winnable strategy to change that situation. This is why rich Republicans often fund efforts to get the Greens on the ballot. they are doing it in Texas today.

You are not hurting the corporatists by going Green. You are just giving them even more power. You do hurt them by capturing the power institutions they use to rig the game. In the Democratic Party, the grassroots already far outnumber the corporatist elite. It would be relatively easy to influence current government policies by taking over the Democrats.

The Arkansas primary race was a near miss for the progressive community. Lincoln is already toast for the general election. The Sestak win in Pennsylvania was a huge win for progressives. 

Most of you are really off on tangents based on the Buzzflash title. You really do not seem to understand a critical article as critical because you are wrapped up in your own ideas that mostly are not relevant to what I wrote.

In solidarity,

Stephen Crockett

Host of Democratic Talk Radio & Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com

It is difficult to label the real enties that have been and still are at war since at least the birth of the country. We know now that the Boston Tea Party was one of the first skirmishes -- that local tea merchants objected to the tax exemption that King George gave to the East Indian Tea company, considered the first corporation. So one side could be labeled The Corporation. The other side? It's We the People, The Democracy. Corporatist and Populist will serve. BTW, let's look for favorable resolutions to that war, taking all opportunities to have another successful overthrow of The Corporation -- and not get hung up in the Obama issues.

Dear Mr. Crockett:

I do not mean to sound mean-spirited, but your argument here is either hopelessly naive or else you yourself are working for the corporately-owned DNC.

You suggest that Obama should decide which side he is on, but in everything from Geithner/Afghanistan to his handling of BP, he has clearly shown not just that he has been on the corporatist side, but that he was groomed for the presidency by those same corporations.

The progressive community knows all that, so now, you are promoting Hillary as the goddess of beauty and truth, and you are trying to resurrect that tired old notion about saving the Democratic Party's soul. That's Dennis Kucinich's signature line as well, and a lot of progressive organizations also subscribe to it. They get a lot of existentially confirmatory Martyr/Victim-Points in doing that, of course, but not much more.

Thanks, but no thanks. Problem is that the Democratic Party has no soul. Or, alternatively, if you want to really save it's soul, you'd first have to drive a stake through it's heart, stuff its mouth with garlic and cut off its head. You're not wanting to do that, however. Instead, you're continuing to bang on the two-party drum.

I'm wondering if Karl Rove wrote your talking points, sir. Or Hillary? Or perhaps Obama himself?

I have voted Dem all my life--a progressive who was always snookered by the "lesser of two evils" argument--and I'm in my 60s. Never again. No way. Moreover, I will not vote for the most progressive local or state Democratic politicians either, as long as they identify as Democratic.

Not after Obama. Not after what amounts to the biggest betrayal in my lifetime.

Yes, I'm willing to sacrifice the 2010 election in order to prevent Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck from ascending to the Executive Branch in 2012. My hope is that the Democratic Party withers at the root after the November 2010 elections. I wouldn't mind it losing every seat in Congress. I will do everything I can to bring that about in November, even if it means holding my nose and voting for the opposition.

Here, I am being purely strategic, not reactive. Why do I say that? Well, there is a saying that nature herself abhors a vacuum. That is why if progressives really wanted to organize a third party for 2012 in the wake of a soul-destroying Democratic defeat in 2010, it could be **huge**.

We cannot organize a third party under the DNC banner, however.

Tactical Proposal:

I have written progressives ranging from Kucinich to McDermott/Grayson saying that the only way a politician will get my vote if s/he is currently Democratic is  if s/he **publicly repudiates** the party and resigns from it.

If just seven progressive senators or congressmen did that--think Bernie Sanders, not Dennis Kucinich--it could start a landslide. That's a way forward and at this juncture, it may be the only way forward from a purely tactical point of view.

An strongly anti-corporatist/progressive third party probably wouldn't result in a marginal 5% number in November 2012. There is reason to hope it might result in a 30-35 percentile standing, which could be enough to take the presidency away from the likes of Sarah Palin who, in any event, is unlikely to capture much more of the vote than that.

Hitler won office with just a minority standing, however, so the stakes for all of us in 2012 could not be higher.

If Buzzflash readers like this idea, please give it legs and circulate it freely. Write to your elected officials and tell them that you're tired of playing the same old game. Enough is enough. Begin instead to talk out loud about mass resignations from the Democratic Party.

Mr. Crockett, your suggestion that Obama should "decide" is not a way forward. Nor is trying to get people to save the Democratic Party's soul. You may as well have exclaimed, "Goodness gracious me" and encouraged us all to join a knitting circle.

I, for one, am not ready to sign on to that approach.

Like the continuation of the illegal, immoral, unwinable "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan? (And now, the evil has spread to Pakistan.)

Like touting single-payer universal health care as a candidate, then shoving a drug and insurance racketeers' wet dream down our throats?

Like making noise about economic reform while kissing corporate ass?

Like soft pedalling BP's criminal behavior while one of our greatest national treasures is being ruined?

Like not prosecuting the bush crime family for multiple capital crimes while the evil bastards BRAG about them?

You mean THOSE changes?

For all Republicans & way too many Democrats, wealth does indeed trump all else. We already have an oligarchy that essentially controls "our" government. I was an Obama for Senate county co-ordinator in 2004 & voted for the first time for Ralph Nader in 2008. How could this happen? While still fighting Hillary in the primaries, Obama very strongly fought against an up-coming FISA Bill that would free the Bush Crime Family from their numerous Constitutional violations. Hillary concedes & Obama does a 180 to vote for the bill. I then removed the rose tinted glasses & allowed the progressive rhetoric to pass through my ears. Obama is a fake. The best that can be said for him is he isn't McCain. Come to think of it, no one is John McCain except John McCain. The MSM, owned by Corporate America, isn't going to allow any politician to be at the top of either wing of the American Corporate Party that isn't in the corporate pocket. Look no further than Obama's economic team to see which side he's on. As a progressive, I will not vote, nor support corporate owned politicians. Obama needs a (C) after his name & Sam Walton's business needs to change its name to China-Mart.

The only way I could think of voting for a Democrat in 2012 is if there is a REAL Democrat as the candidate.  We've had Republicans in the White House since 1980. I am sick and tired of the Democrats turning their backs on the poor and middle-class while shoveling billions of dollars to the wealthy via tax breaks and corporate welfare.  The Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans when it comes to accepting campaign contributions corporate bribes and they have to return the favor...only the favors come out of OUR pockets, not theirs. 

IMHO our two party system is beyond repair.  I'm voting Green for REAL change.

That Barack Obama was more republican than democrat, at least for anyone who cared to see. Being bamboozled by TV, and elite agenda politicians, has become the new normal for the american electorate. We are in a pathetic state that will only continue to spiral down the drain until something so insanely crazy happens it will get these pavlov dogs off the couch. Until then, the electorate will watch stupidly as they are robbed of everything needed to sustain life, and drool on cue from the TV box. Very sad indeed.

When one reads a commentary such as this, one wonders if the commentator fell asleep on election night and has just awoken from a deep slumber. Apparently, Obama supporters find it difficult to accept the fact that one can't believe what their beloved leader says. Obama is no statesman and therefore, just like every other politician, it is neccesary to watch what he does, or does not do, as opposed to being beguiled by his rhetoric. There's no doubt that he can talk a good populist game, but when push comes to shove, it becomes apparent to the less smitten amongst us that Obama knows which side his bread is buttered on. 

Any doubt about where Obama truly stands should have been long gone by now. One cannot mention "corporatist" without a consideration of this country's foreign adventurism, commonly referred to as "imperialism" during the Cold War. Any hope that Obama would be an agent for peace in the world was dashed by the escalation of the civil war in Afghanistan. Once more, as in Vietnam, this nation's military is involved in a conflict in support of an unpopular regime. While it is always couched in terms of a continuation of the "War on Terrorism", it has always been about the OIL and America's oil companies getting their grubby hands on more of the world's supply.

Perhaps the time has come for the voters to realize that the United States is no longer a democracy and that no matter who controls the White House, entrenched, powerful forces will unobstructedly pursue their own myopic agenda and short of tearing it all down and starting over, the decent people of this nation are now and forever will be SCREWED.

The real dilemma is whether or not to vote and whom to vote for. Is it better to not vote and let a sleazy, corporationist Republican win, or vote for a sleazy, corporationist Democrat who at least throws a few crumbs the say of the working folk?