Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?
These questions were inspired by the ongoing suspense over whether President Obama will do the obviously right thing and nominate Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial protection agency. But the Warren affair is only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=2&src=twr
Krugman doesn't answer the question because Obama still seems an engima to him. I think what Krugman is missing is Obama and the Democratic leadership protect their base, i.e. corporate elites where the money and power come from.
The way to see Obama/Demo leadership is to consider each of the major crisis of the economy, the Gulf oil disaster, and the two failed wars. In the corporate mind, the management's main task is to manage perception and keep loyalty enforced in the rank and file. These tasks are directly from the neoliberal play book. So we have the illusion that there is nothing wrong with free market practice (or class war), just a few bad apples.
The Gulf gusher has been a better example, because the government could better manage public perception through restricting public and media access to the worst areas of damage which were the marine eco-systems off shore. The main goal was to protect the oil industry as a whole, and let BP take a few news cycle hits as the bad apple. Now what will follow are endless corporate-government manuverings to skip out on and limit damage claims, obfuscate data collection and scientific studies, etc. The FDA as already said some local fisheries are `safe', while the next BP CEO is talking about winding down clean up.
Then there are the wars, where the same general method has been used to restrict access, obfuscate data, then claim national security, prosecute whisleblowers and scare off any independent media. Corporate media self-censorship seems to be generally trusted. When that doesn't work. threaten journalists with subpeonas.
>From this view, which makes the corporate elites the `base' of Obama and the
Democrats, it can be more easily seen, it is the liberal-left who constitute
the primary enemy. They are the sources of most of the criticism and
whatever potential public will to change directions on the economy, the
environment, foreign and domestic policies.
CG