I originally predicted that President Obama would be a one-term Chief Executive in a TMV post dated 11/8/10 that was picked up by a number of prominent blog sites. I even started questioning his chances of re-election in other earlier 2010 TMV posts. Today respected long-time independent blogger Charles Hugh Smith made the same prediction on his excellent political/economic/social blog called Of Two Minds (www.oftwominds.com). I strongly recommend TMV readers go to this site to review his excellent analysis.
However, when viewing the current 2012 Republican President Field, it almost seems they want Obama to be re-elected by fielding such a weak, intellectually-vapid and almost silly group of age-worn choices. But Republicans are far more astute than most Democrats think. Despite their constant criticizing and demonizing of President Obama as a dangerous liberal, progressive, fascist, communist and non-American, he might be the best ineffectual Democratic President. He is a closet moderate Republican as was Bill Clinton during whose two terms many major conservative policies were enacted such as Welfare Reform, unleashing the banking and financial sector from most regulations, and a complete failure to find any funds to address the nation’s decaying infrastructure.
The current President definitely energized the far right base to bring out just enough Republicans to effectively control Congress and many statehouses. Top Republican operatives have successfully scared the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Koch Brothers, the NRA, and a host of other conservative action groups and wealthy donors to spend tons of money on Republican candidates.
Many Republicans have painted President Obama as a major threat to the monied oligarchy in that he might take on large global corporations and their wealthy owners to spread the wealth to help the poor and middle class. Naturally, this is a complete ruse as many Republican leaders figured out that the President is a wet noodle wuss who will cave in to most of their demands in the false hope that cooperation and non-partisanship can work in a highly polarized, corrupt, fraudulent and gridlocked monopolistic political-economic system that is the collapsing American Empire in the first part of the 21st Century. President Obama’s only goal is to keep his cushy, ego-feeding job for another 4 years – his prior liberal supports can simply go to hell.
There are still some on the right who get apoplexic just thinking about a nominally progressive black man of mixed racial and religious origins and with a strange non-white name occupying the White House with an intelligent black woman as his spouse. It goes against every fantasy they have about America and feeds every base emotional prejudice they have circulating in their brains. Some cannot fathom that anyone who belongs to any party other than the Republican one should sit in the White House as that would be contrary to the will of God.
If many extreme conservatives and Tea Party members could only separate themselves from their angry emotions and prejudices, they would realize that President Obama is no more a progressive than George W. Bush. His wild spending and huge deficits are really the result of complete Republican mismanagement of government and its budget, the lack of a fair tax system that favors wealthy interests, and the warped economy they have created over several decades. They were aided and abetted by spineless Democrats who were bought off by the same wealthy plutocracy that effectively runs everything in this nation.
Too many Americans are still willfully ignorant, congenitally stupid, selfish, disengaged, and addicted to cheap entertainment and the latest electronic gizmos to make any effort to understand anything about history, science, or economic and political policy, and the actual federal spending and taxing policies, to make any worthwhile contributions to the public debate. The 14% of the population consisting of the educated “elites” in this country are merely morally-bankrupt courtiers for the top 1% who control and own most everything in the U.S. – including our politicians. These elites and political activists have yet to figure out that all economic and political theories of the past several centuries are completely bankrupt intellectually and in practice. No one has the courage to come up with new ones that fit reality. Most people in the U.S. are delusional that they think they can return to some perfect time in the past and the relentless decline of our empire will magically cease.
President Obama still maintains the heavy central security and war machine state of his predecessors. He strongly favors the financial and banking sector and a fraudulent debt-based speculative-driven economy. He also supports the large energy companies, the insurance industry, the military-industrial complex, and other large private monopolies and feudal business fiefdoms that essentially live off government contracts and bailouts and provide the funds to keep him and most politicians in office. These policies only furthers the economic, social and political interests of the privileged few and completely ignoring the best interests of the vast majority of citizens and this nation as a whole.
Every arguably progressive or democratic proposal has been ignored or struck down during his administration. The Republican agenda of the past 30 years is alive and well in Obama’s rudderless caretaker presidency.
McDonald’s announced they intend to hire 50,000 new employees in operations and management across the U.S. These jobs will not pay enough to support a family – they are principally second jobs without any benefits meant to supplement a person who gets financial support from elsewhere. Sadly, McDonalds and its franchisors have the luxury to be very choosy about whom they hire. Only those with undergraduate degrees will make hamburger flippers and servers – provided they are also bilingual (English-Spanish) if they want to work in many parts of the U.S. Only M.B.A.’s will get assistant manager positions. Just about 15 years ago the McDonald’s workforce principally consisted of high school and college students and recent graduates who understood those jobs were temporary training on the road to better employment in the future. Instead in 21st Century America, these may be the only jobs available for most unemployed people in our rapidly imploding domestic economy. In 2012, most voters will blame President Obama for the putrid economic “recovery” that provides lousy jobs or no jobs for many, and people generally see through the massive deception our government and Wall Street have fabricated to cover up this mess…
Naturally, with all these permanently low-paying jobs, social security and future income tax revenues for all sorts of public programs are in jeopardy. We already know that the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans and the largest global corporations have no further interest in financially supporting the American experiment in representational democracy and free market capitalism. They already trashed that quaint idea and they look to invest in developing nations in Asia for their future incomes and wealth expansion where corrupt crony capitalism is the only way to conduct business.
The U.S. will simply have to do without their contributions and live on a much lower level that can be sustained with a population where 20% are below the poverty level, one out of 4 children are poor, the job participation rate hovers around 50%, nearly half of all workers earn too little to pay income taxes, and 25% qualify for the earned income tax credit that refunds all income and payroll taxes paid to social security and Medicare and gives them an additional financial payment just so they don’t riot in the streets.
Under such a dying economy, the past promises social security and healthcare benefits for the entire population are just too expensive – particularly when you also have to fund (via more deficit spending) every military escapade around the globe that only benefits the very wealthy in the nation who profit from the various domestic and overseas contracts that are associated with those wars. Investing in education, better transportation systems, and new energy sources will not be a viable option in this Nation since we are “broke” principally because our wealthiest citizens and corporations have completely detached themselves from the rest of us.
We have little choice but to gut all social and discretionary domestic spending if tax hikes on the rich, ending corporate tax breaks, and reducing the size of our bloated military budget are all impossible due to the bankrupt, nasty and rigid ideology of the extreme right and that goes against the selfish interests of our wealthiest citizens who completely control our government and our national policies. The best Machiavellian policy for Democrats and Independents would be to allow Republicans to enact their entire agenda and then the American people can judge the results.
If Republicans nominate Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush for President, then Obama will lose outright. If Obama manages to eek out a victory in 2012 after spending more than $1 billion in propaganda over a much weaker field of opponents, then Republicans will still have won. This country has always been controlled by a minority and today the wealthiest 5% of the nation effectively controls our government and the economy. The unconstitutional super-majority rule in the U.S. Senate and similar anti-democratic rules in many statehouses effectively make the best interests of most Americans effectively irrelevant in the public discourse.
There really is no obvious alternative to the imploding status quo but to hope that it self-destructs sooner rather than later. Whether President Obama remains in office for a second term is really irrelevant to the great trajectory of history. Our sclerotic political and economic systems are completely unable to address any of the challenges of the 21st century. The American people – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – must share the blame for this awful mess.
Submitted 4/5/11 by Marc Pascal, happily ranting from Phoenix, Arizona.