We have heard from members of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that Obama's victory has given him a mandate from the people to pursue progressive policies. Whether the American people want progressive policies or not, it is a bit incredulous of the liberal Democrats to suggest that Obama will reform the United States.
Only in America could President Obama pass for a liberal. It is incredible that he is almost universally described on both the left and the right as an extremely progressive politician. Other than his waving the talismans of LGBT rights and universal health-care, one must use the same electron microscope to see his liberal policies that Noam Chomsky once suggested one needed to see Obama's contributions to world peace.
Even Obamacare and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) hardly pass for even moderately liberal. Outside of the rhetoric of some solipsitic right-wing blocs in US LGBT rights and public health-care are not exclusively policies pursued by progressive parties. One must not forget that David Cameron the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has become the champion of Gay rights in his country and even in the GOP has a LGBT interest group in the Log Cabin Republicans. Furthermore, there is no right-wing party outside of the US that would openly propose to make health-care the exclusive right of people can afford it.
The reality behind Obama's flagship liberal policies is that they are not liberal. Far from being a socialist empowerment of the working class and minorities in America Obamacare is a highly conservative response to a rapidly decreasing ability of segments of American society to continue to have health-care that previous provided it for themselves which egregiously protects the current power structures. One would have to be a political neophyte not to mitigate the huge amount of discontentment that would be generated by allowing all but a tiny fraction of the ruling class to have health-care where within living memory it was previously the possession of all but the destitute.
DADT had become an embarrassment to the United States that during the recent wars had hardly been implemented. To repeal DADT was little more than recognizing that the opinions and social constructs in the US military had already changed.
Obamacare and repealing DADT were reflex actions that would have been acceptable to any right-wing party other than the GOP, but disguised in the language of popularism and the New Deal, these neutral and necessary reforms have passed for the application of leftist ideology.
Obama is not a progressives. By his actions his administration has shown itself to be the avowed enemies of liberal thought and practice. Far from breaking the mind-forged manacles which corporate propaganda uses to control the American people; the President has given every sign in his first term that he will further oppress the people.
During President Obama's first four years we have witnessed the assassination of United States citizens on the orders of the executive, the willful violation of international sovereignty, the expansion of extra-judicial policing and surveillance, and the re-buttressing of the corporate state. These are not policies of a liberal or progressive administration; rather, they are the tale-tale signs of a recalcitrant right-wing establishment waging a determined class war.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that when the BBC ran an op-ed on its website questioning whether Obama is ideologically similar to the Tory Party the author came to the conclusion the the President would fit quite comfortably in the party of Thatcher and Churchill. Yet, even after four years of complete durth of liberal policies emanating from the White House John Nichols as a guest on Democracy Now! expressed high hopes that Obama will be a progressive juggernaut reforming the staunchly conservative Federal Government.
It is self evident that that those expectations are as groundless as the hope that Barak Obama would redress the grievances of the African American community and undo centuries of racism and institutionalized disenfranchisement.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Presidential Election many commentators lauded the realization of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream in President Obama's election. Many suggested that this was the start of a new era in American history where African American can stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brethren enjoying the same rights and opportunities.
The centuries where an African American was a second class citizen had finally come to an end. No longer did a black person count for two-thirds of a white person. A sentiment among the African American community best expressed by Michelle Obama's remark that this is the first time she was “proud of her country.”
But this new found equality turned out to be little more than a chimera. As the banners and confetti of Inauguration Day were swept away so too the hopes and dreams of a new America for the African American community. Rather the criminalization of African American life continued unabated and extended further to other minority communities.
Dr. King's socialist dream of economic and political equality for all people regardless of race and socio-economic standing has become a corporatistic nightmare.
With disproportionate numbers of African American males in US prisons and education and employment statistics far below the national median describing the status quo as even fair for the African American community is a sick joke. It would have been more reasonable for a pundit to talk about the equality of African American communities with their poor white counter parts in the middle of the Jim Crow Era than it is now.
The average black man cannot even walk down the streets of his own community without fear of being stopped by police for no crime other than living in a dangerous and depressed community or being murdered by local vigilantes under the guise of protecting personal property. While they are villainized in the media for being born into conditions that were beyond their control or the control of their parents.
The Travon Martin shooting may have only been an incident between two people in one community, but the vociferous responses on both the left and the right are indicative of social tension that exist throughout the United States and not just Stanford, Florida.
The Obama administration has done nothing to improve the conditions of the African American community. The President has turned a blind eye to the poverty of the community that started his political career and championed the interests of the establishment. Obama hasn't governed as an African American. He isn't even the friend of the African American. In fact no president since the 1920's has been able to get away with being as indifferent towards the African American community as the current President has been.
The African American community should weep that Barak Obama has won a second term. The white establishment can now sleep well at night with a whitewashed conscience secure in the knowledge that in electing a Black man to be a two term President that they are not racist. But sentiment isn't freedom, and the same old policies re-branded won't put food on the table.
I am not suggesting that a Republican in the Oval Office would have been kinder to the African American community. That is most certainly not the case, but that it is a travesty that Obama has inadvertently taken African American interests off the political agenda. Just as Clinton double crossed the working class with his support for NAFTA and globalization, Obama has betrayed African Americans through his indifference.
If there is anything that the progressive community should have learned during President Obama's first four years in office it is that the even an African American Democrat in the executive office isn't going to produce anything more than moderate right wing policies.
Is progressivism in the United States so dead that we praise the less offensive of two conservative oppressors as a guardian or our values? Shall we mimic the Roman Senate that after the death of Cato fawned to the autocratic Augustus and lauded him as the protector of traditional values of the Republic?
If liberals and progressives sacrifice their principles to elect candidates that simply do not revile us we will become nothing more than hypocritical conservatives—saying one thing but granting our tacit approval to an increasingly inegalitarian and unjust status quo.
This is what the Party of FDR and JFK has devolved into. Obama has shown us that Democratic Party has become a right-wing party elected with the votes from the liberal American populous. It promises to protect us from the outrageous policies of the GOP, while doing nothing but translating those policies into realpolitik.
By voting for the Democratic Party the liberal voice has been silenced. Experience has shown liberals that they cannot force the hand of the ruling elite that controls the Democratic or Republican Parties to change those parties, but liberals can unite and show the two main parties that neither of them have the tacit approval of the liberal vote without pursuing liberal policies. If progressives want their voice to be heard they have no choice but to abandon the Democratic Party as thoroughly as they have abandoned the Republican Party.
