Apr
08
2011
President Barack Obama is asking for help. Not to resolve the conflict in Libya, or to persuade Republicans against forcing a government shut-down. President Obama is asking for help to bring him a victory in 2012 and four more years in the White House. On Monday Obama officially launched his reelection campaign. A website is already in place with an email list sign-up that asks, “Are you in?” and asks supporters to click on a red button that says, “I’m In.” The current federal budget crisis highlights the incredible obstacles the President has faced in his first two years. His agenda has been stymied at seemingly every turn by extreme partisan battles and the enduring recession. However Obama has also retreated from or contradicted many of his boldest, most progressive campaign promises. He compromised and extended tax cuts for the rich, his cabinet is bursting with former corporate and Wall Street big-wigs, and climate change legislation has been put on a remote back-burner. This leaves many of his ardent 2008 supporters wondering what they are “in” for, exactly, if Democrats win in 2012. A little over one year ago I spoke at length with journalist and author Sasha Abramsky about his book, Inside Obama’s Brain. In writing the book Abramsky attempted to learn who the President is, in order to determine where he is going, and his insights are especially relevant today.
GUEST: Sasha Abramsky, freelance journalist and a Senior Fellow at Demos, and the author of many books including Inside Obama’s Brain
The lack of substance in Obama’s campaign launch – and his first two years – is reminiscent of the re-election campaign of George Herbert Walker Bush. Bush senior’s lack of passion supposedly cost him the 1992 the election. The things he really cared about – his relationship with the Saudi royal family and the Carlyle Group and his off-the-books intelligence network, etc. – had to remain hidden. He pretended to care about the failing economy and health care system that the public were so upset about. However these weren’t real issues to him, so there was absolutely no passion.
We know even less about Obama’s past than Bush seniors, especially with Obama’s signing of Executive Order 13489 (the day after he took office), effectively sealing his pre-presidential past. I blog about this at “The President with No Past” at http://www.stuartbramhall.com.
In 2008, Obama presented himself as a transformational president and once he became elected his policies and decisions focused on his corporate political campaign donors – a huge disappointment for the change this country so desperately needs.
There must or should be a progressive/radical running in every democratic primary for the 2012 elctions. A primary battle that truly threatens the “moderate” politicians in that party.
The most important primary candidate will be who qwe choose to run against Obama. every ad will have a piece of one of his 2008 elction campaign speechs quoted. The populist agenda is just waiting for millions to come forward and work. An Egyptian like five million people gathering in Washington D,C. for fifteen to thirty days, a gathering of every one of the five to ten million who still care about being kind, loving, giving, and peaceful people that may exist in the most evil country in the history of the world, America. The beginning of the New Pilgrim Movement, a movment that acknowledges five hundred years of barbaric hisotory and wants to completley start over.