On 2010-11-05, at 11:06 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> CB, I'm with Dennis and the others on this one. Acknowledging that he's an
> upwardly mobile biracial striver with strong neoliberal tendencies, Obama
> had a fairly well organized multiracial population of kinda grassy netroots
> people - from traditional democrats to independent swing voters who expected
> him to publicly lead, publicly promote and publicly defend the kinds of
> reforms he explicitly said he was going to seek in terms of national
> defense, government opacity, economic policy, immigration policy,
> environmental policy, education policy and health policy.
Good analysis, Alan. The problem is that Charles, like Carrol, is a fatalist on this issue. Each, from their differing perspectives, says Obama represented "centrists" or "capitalists" and that were therefore no other policy options other than the ones chosen by the administration, and that it is an illusion to think otherwise. There is no understanding or acknowledgement on their part that there were, in fact, divisions among the capitalists, and that Obama's policies lost the independents who had previously voted for him precisely in expectations of change.