Obama’s Two Mistakes That Lost The Country [View all]

[KamaAina]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/21/obamas-two-mistakes-lost-country

Nothing Obama could have done would have avoided the tsunami of vicious racist and xenophobic hatred that washed over him and the country, aided and abetted by the savagely partisan and vitriolic FOX news. Nothing would have stopped obscenely rich and intensely self-interested individuals like the Koch brothers from pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to discredit and defile the President and the government in general.

But Obama might well have stunted the emergence of a rightwing populist movement if he had pursued an aggressive populist strategy of his own, one that demonstrated government could effectively challenge giant corporations and unbridled private greed on behalf of small business and the average family....

In his Inaugural Address Obama needed only to change two words of Reagan’s to begin to change the narrative and foster a new populism: “It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the ... unnecessary and excessive growth of giant corporations…. corporations are not the solution to our problem; corporations are the problem.”

The time was propitious for taking on corporate capitalism. A month before the election, responding to popular outrage, Congress had rejected the first no-strings-attached bailout bill despite warnings that it had to act within hours or risk a total financial meltdown and against the wishes of the White House and leaders of both parties. The American people wanted public money used for the public good rather than to satisfy private greed. A revised bill directed the use of bailout money to increase lending and prevent foreclosures.