Barack Obama never thrilled me, and I did not vote for him. It always was clear that he was not a progressive; he is a centrist through and through at a time when the country needs a progressive.
But still one could have held out hope. He said things many Americans wanted to hear and to believe.
Do actions speak louder than words? As Obama has built his Cabinet he has conducted a Clinton reunion party, showing the country and the world that change you can believe in brings America back to 1995.
If there is a more significant way to say “fuck you” to America, I hope it isn’t Obama that we learn it from.
I did not like the Clinton years. They were not progressive years; they were not centrist years, except at their best, which was rare. Right-wing extremists who screamed about liberals and radicals were just making noise and talking to other right-wing extremists; Clinton, by and large, was to the right of center. It is only that right-wing extremists abused the nation so much during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years that they could present Clinton as any sort of creature of the left.
Clinton’s NAFTA alone drove a stake through Detroit’s heart far more than any Bush Jr. policy. We allow that Detroit begged for NAFTA, begged to be able to shift jobs to cheaper climes of this continent, begged to steal jobs from Americans.
It is not to his credit that Obama seems a little to the left of the Clintons. That shows him a centrist when we need a progressive.