Mitt Romney & Barack Obama |
U.S. election battle today
pits major disappointment against scary alternative
Tuesday,
November 6, 2012
By Bill Tieleman
"The
country Obama inherited was indeed in shambles, but Obama took a bad situation
and, in certain ways, made it worse."
One
candidate for president of the United States supports privatized
health care, extrajudicial killing of
opponents in foreign countries, wiretapping
without warrants, and big business
bailouts.
This
candidate's $1-billion
campaign is heavily corporately funded, with Microsoft and
Google among his largest contributors, and he has Wall Street
economic advisors and the strong support
of the former speechwriter for ex-right-wing presidents Richard Nixon and
Ronald Reagan.
The
other candidate is Republican Mitt Romney.
So whether
Democrat Barack Obama or Romney occupies the White House, corporate America
wins the election.
And
while there are substantive and serious reasons for U.S. Democrats to work hard
for their candidate, the political system is stacked against any president
making what Obama himself called "Change we can believe in" before
his 2008 victory.
That
historic election fuelled the hopes of progressive Americans, not just as the
country's first black president but because Obama represented an opportunity to
dramatically shift the balance of power towards ordinary citizens.
Obama
made big promises
-- to help unions organize more workers and ban permanent replacements for
strikers, to close the horrendous Guantanamo Bay detention camp for foreign
prisoners in Cuba, to increase the minimum wage and tie it to inflation, to
amend the North American Free Trade Agreement, to reject wiretapping of
Americans without warrants, to bring in a public health care system -- not
boost private health insurers' profits, and much more.
Four
years later, those promises remain unfulfilled.
Still
waiting for change
Obama
can't be blamed for all his failures -- certainly the Republican Party has done
all it can to frustrate his agenda, especially after gaining a House majority
in 2010.
But
Republicans didn't force Obama to appoint Wall Street millionaires
to key jobs in his administration or fail to jail a single banker from the 2008
sub-prime mortgage financial meltdown that rocked the world or at least try to
reform the insanely expensive American political system.
Obama's
disappointments have forced many progressive
Americans to frantically plead with voters to ignore flaws in his
record because a Romney presidency would be far, far worse -- true, but not the
most appealing argument.
Faced
with that choice, most Canadians would vote for Obama,
even though on many issues he is significantly to
the political right even of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen
Harper.
Obama
may be able, like Bill Clinton before him, to overcome Democrat voter
discouragement and win a second term.
But
those voters should be under no illusion that Obama will magically transform
into a progressive president.
He's simply
better than the alternative.
.
13 comments:
I live in BC. I have no say in the USA election all I can do is manage the result.
In BC I would like to know how we can get better government.
When as seen this evening, a candidate spent 37 million dollars of her own money and got beat by a fellow who spent 7 millions of friends and supporters, it sort of proved that getting elected in the US of A is not necessarily to help the poor, downtrodden, old , sick , but to help your company friends
You won't see a better government from the NDP.
The NDP insiders and loyalists are already lining up to get their tickets on the NDP's gravy train
Dear anonymous:
I posted the prior comment regarding my concern that we waste time and energy on governments we have no say or control over. We should put our energy in making the governments we do have a say in as good as possible. Our politics is what we should discuss not USA politics.
How do you get an NDP rant our of that?
You will when the NDP does something you hate and have had no say or control on it.
It won't take very long either. I'd say within the first 10 to 15 months of their term.
Be around when it happens.
You don't get to be a 2nd term president without a multi-billion dollar campaign war chest at your disposal. Unfortunately bake sales and house concerts don't tend to cut it so the piper must be paid. The TARP invigorated Wall Street consensus is alive, well and doubling down. Rather than banning corporate donations hoping for a less plutocratic outcome, the right wing block of the Supremes made the whole thing no limit poker, effectively gutting the McCain Feingold campaign reform act, ascribing election rights to corporations as people. Maybe Obama's managerial inexperience in his first two years led to some mistakes ( Geithner / Summers the very deregulation architects of the previous crisis ). Geithner ( the previous fed chairman ) will be stepping down as Treasury Secretary ( perhaps to claim some AIG bonuses : ). What Obama does with Liz Warren will signal how serious he is at mollifying the liberal base as opposed to the very narrow but powerful Wall street interests and their back room dealmakers. He's got to pay the vig. It's just bidness, nothing personal.
A good statement if it made any sense and applied to British Columbia.
Well I'm certainly not one who's mad at you. It's true and only brainwashed fools believe the opposite.
The US isn't and never has been a democracy. It may not be as micro-managed as many other dictatorships (including the legions of ones it has imposed and supported). But it's not much far removed from a totalitarian police state.
Of course Obama is a far better option than Romney. But how much he can (or even wants to) change is microscopic compared to what needs to happen.
Sadly, that's the way it will remain until some sort of major popular uprising takes hold.
And this is almost as true for Canada as it is for the US.
The U.S. is a democracy even though Anonoymous Nov 8 12:37AM doesn't think so. It was shown in his statement when he said Obama is a far better option than Romney. If the u.S. was not a democracy, oppposite options would not exist.
The U.S. is most certainly far removed from a totalitarian police state.
He needs to learn alot more about how democracy works, and what exactly a totalitarian police state is. An example would be East Germany during the 1960's to mid 1980s.
It's true though. All that money and nothing to show for it.
http://tinyurl.com/romnesia2012
And all the lies too!
Still, I agree with you.
OMG im agree!
Click this link for more info: http://reddit.com
Yep sure credible sources those are.
Try again.
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