Paul Krugman: In Defense of Obama (Rolling Stone)

[Dustlawyer]

39. I am not attacking you either, however I disagree with you on two things.

The first is that I hold Obama responsible for HIS PART in the dirty deal. It his is different than say, the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner allegedly targeting Republicans. Obama cannot know what every beaurocrat is up to or direct their work, quite the opposite. Obama played an active role in the spill resolution. He also has the power to insist BP doesn't get to drill again until they resolve all the issues in litigation. In Brazil when an oil company had an offshore spill they seized the passports of all of the employees who were not allowed to leave the country until they ponied up. While I would not advocate that exact measure be taken, all of the oil companies are drilling in the deep waters in the Gulf with zero changes in preparedness or technology. There is no accountability and the Obama administration hasn't said boo about the spill since Feinberg was picked.

The second thing I disagree on, I will admit that I held your view until a couple of years ago. I too was pissed at Nadar for costing us the election and subjecting us to W. Over time I have realized that if we always support the Democrat against the Republican, we will never really have real change, Obama taught me that as well. I believe that the Plutocrats control our government and both parties through campaign contributions, Super PACS, and the media that they own. They threaten Americans with the really crazy Republicans and laugh when we sigh in relief that a Democrat was elected this time, not knowing that they control our guy too. Our guy gives us some of the things that we care about that the PTB don't care. They know that to keep up the illusion of Representative Democracy we have to appear to win sometimes. On the things important to them they are passed as quietly as possible and they have their media to help shape it.
This time around the spoiler may be Bernie Sanders, someone who I think has a slim chance at winning. For me however, he supports a solution to end the legal bribery of our politicians, Publicly Funded Elections and ending campaign contributions. I would rather his message get out to the widest possible audience as many times as it can. I am tired of holding my nose and voting FOR someone who is going to sell me out to the corporations, just not as badly or as openly as the other party's candidate. People who believe in Democratic ideals, not just the Democratic Party should want to support someone like Bernie even though his chances are slim. If the Democrats all got behind him instead of the more electable, but more flawed Democratic favorite, Bernie would then be the favorite and we could return our country back into a Representative Democracy. But that is not reality, not everyone has reached a high enough level of frustration at the same time, if ever. If people would stop and think about it, they wouldn't think this was either a conspiracy theory or fringe ideas. I mean, you give a candidate a lot of money (enough to guarantee election) and let them know what is important to you (usually against the countries overall interests), and the candidate understands that you will give that money to their opponent if they don't do what you want, what do you think that ambitious candidate will do? This has to stop sometime! Democratic front runners cannot say what Bernie is saying and win. This is what happened to Obama, who I think, all things being equal, could have been the best President this country has ever had! In many respects he has been a great President, but they still have a hold on him.