Barack Obama is gutting the core principles of the Democratic party

How many times have we denounced Obama in these pages?  Count the ways. The man has betrayed everything of critical value to ordinary people, not to mention expanded wars and danced cheerfully to the Wall Street music. And yet, millions of Americans will not brooke any criticism of this transparently hypocritical man. Short of being found to molest children, his re-election is practically assured. How pathetic is that? 

The Guardian                                                                                                                                                 

Glenn Greenwald |||  21 July 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/21/barack-obama-social-security-cuts
The president’s attacks on America’s social safety net are destroying the soul of the Democratic party’s platform. Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama’s legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left’s political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party’s leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe.

That victory established an important political fact. While there are very few unifying principles for the Democratic party, one (arguably the primary one) is a steadfast defence of basic entitlement programs for the poor and elderly – social security, Medicare and Medicaid – from the wealthy, corporatised factions that have long targeted them for cuts.

Fast forward to 2011: it is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.

This dynamic has repeatedly emerged in numerous contexts. Obama has continued Bush/Cheney terrorism policies – once viciously denounced by Democrats – of indefinite detention, renditions, secret prisons by proxy, and sweeping secrecy doctrines.

He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorising the war.

And thus will Obama succeed – yet again – in gutting not only core Democratic policies, but also the identity and power of the American Left.
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