THE CONVERSATION, these days, seems to be about how the electorate sent a message to Barack Obama that he needs to be more of a “centrist.” This is the corporate media’s self-serving interpretation, and it is DRIVEL. (This is the same corporate media that told you that the Tea Party movement was a “grassroots” phenomenon, that legacy-President George W. Bush was a “regular guy,” and that Iraq had WMD.)
THE CORRECTIVE: Barack Obama and the Democrats got spanked on Tuesday because they abandoned their mandate — not because they fulfilled it. They sealed their fate with their continuation of Bush’s no-strings bailout for Wall St, endless wars that erode liberty and fuel terrorism, and their unambiguous embrace of multinational corporations over democratic institutions. Barack Obama spent his first 18 months nominating Establishment culprits, capitulating to Republicans, and colluding with corrupt Senate Democrats to shape legislation to the liking of LOBBYISTS, giving liberals the finger, again and again. This president is no progressive — it’s time we were clear on this matter (he has caved to the right on GITMO and DADT; he has refused to acknowledge the criminal conduct of his predecessor; he devoted $300 billion of badly needed stimulus to tax cuts most Americans will never feel; in his signature achievement, he accomplished little more than Mitt Romney’s/The Heritage Foundation’s business-friendly health care prescription, when he could (easily) have broken the insurance trusts and reigned in PhRMA — two predatory industries Americans have come to revile for their unmitigated and remorseless greed…).
WHO GOT IT RIGHT? 1) Katrina Vanden Heuvel hit the nail on the head on the 11/2/10 “Live” election edition of the Colbert Report (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/364230/november-02-2010/indecision-2010—katrina-vanden-heuvel); 2) FAIR also gets it right in their 11/4/10 newsletter, asking the logical question: How is it that a president who (supposedly) governed like a leftist ideologue managed to so thoroughly alienate, insult, and disillusion his base… to the point that they stayed home in droves on election day? (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4190)