Obama's 100-Day Hope Check

[babylonsister]

Obama's 100-Day Hope Check
posted by Katha Pollitt on 04/20/2009 @ 5:49pm


Are Barack Obama's supporters wondering where the hope went? Does the campaign now seem only a golden dream? After all, Obama's been in the White House for over three months, and people are still losing jobs and houses, US troops are still overseas, single-payer health care is still not on the agenda. Surely the President should have fixed all that by now with the power of his mighty hope machine.

In her current Nation column, Naomi Klein claims that disillusion is setting in. She has a clever list of words to describe the phenomenon: Hopefiends feel hopebreak which will (hopefully) lead to hopelash, "a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related." Enough of these cowardly compromises! Back to the streets!

I have a lot of respect for Naomi Klein, but I think her own hopes for a mass radical movement are getting in the way here. According to polls, after all, Obama is wildly popular. A Harris Interactive poll released on April 7 found that 68% of Americans have a good opinion of him. That doesn't necessarily mean they approve of everything he's doing, but it means that a heck of a lot of people who didn't vote for him like him now.

Is there any evidence that "a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard"? And by the way, did anyone over the age of 21 ever really believe this? That hope, an emotion, was going to "save the world," the way children clapping their hands saves Tinkerbell? Are Americans really such idiots? Hmmm, better not answer that.

Naomi and I must talk to different people. For example, I don't know anyone as stupid as the hopefiendish "Joe" who "actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions." Think what you're saying, Joe! Had Obama intentionally put in someone he knew would fail, he would not only be a clairvoyant and a psychopath -- callously indifferent to the ruin of possibly millions of people -- he'd also be risking political suicide. Because had he first chosen a course he knew would fail he would not have the political capital to "what he really wants."

I know a lot of people who supported Obama, and every time I see them I ask how they think he's doing. The only people I've found who've given up on him, who feel betrayed, misled, and foolish, are those leftists who didn't like him in the first place and voted for him in a weak moment as the lesser evil. They, predictably, went back to their cabins on Mt. Disdain before Obama had even been inaugurated. Obama will never satisfy the left because no president could. FDR didn't satisfy the left either.

more...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/anotherthing/428763/obama_s_100_day_hope_check?rel=hpbox

[Clio the Leo]

1. Watching Joe the Plumber the other night on Hannity say...

... that he basically is not upset with the President but with the Congress, said a lot.

For the moment at least .... Barack's got it made.

[babylonsister]

3. OK, why oh why

were you watching Hannity? :spank: :spank:

[Peace_Sells]

2. bad week

I still give him a passing grade but this has been a dissapointing week. But I'll keep supporting him.

[babylonsister]

4. Bad week? I thought the president

did great during the pirate fiasco and at the latest summit.

[Adelante]

5. I surely agree with this article

Thanks for the OP :hi:

[natrat]

6. hope? check out this random guy's rant---suffice it to say we have peaked

I don't think we'll make it to 2012

U.S. defaults on it's debt obligations this year. massive unemployment in the 35-40 or more percent, perhaps worse. inflation beyond your wildest dreams due to the incomprehensibly fucked up idea of the FED creating FIAT MONEY as fast as someone's fake money generation algorithm can do it, computer wise. Due to the pandemic of unemployment, cities begin to 'implode' into paroxysms of violence and whole entire sectors of places like Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles become more or less 'no man's lands' that even military units dare not go into without drawing withering fire from the occupants.

Israel attacks Iran, with somewhat reluctance on the part of the new regime, that's already strapped in an escalation of violence in Afghanistan, brought on by the never ending stupidity of drone striking innocent civilians.

Iraq blows up in our face, requires emergency withdrawal of our troops, as we don't have the force composition to send troops in to do anything to stabilize that.

add to this the fact that about this time, the 'Bird Flu' virus has begun to emerge as a pandemic because it's finally mutated enough to easily become a problem for humans and most domestic animals.

government checks either are reduced or not mailed out at all. massive bank closures and runs on banks with angry, pissed off, rioting mobs.

martial law.

don't talk to me about a McKinney or Nader run in 2012. if 1/2 of the shit on my list above comes to fruition, we won't have an election in 2012, because we won't have any more illusions about the DICTATORSHIP that got HANDED DOWN to this new regime by George Bush.

we are fucked. I do not see anything remotely looking like a life preserver coming out of nowhere to save us from this. The huge wild card is the Israeli attack on Iran. If that happens, we won't make it out of 2010 without a GLOBAL energy war.


http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/04/aig-eats-another-30-billion-ish/#comment-3146

[babylonsister]

7. Why don't you just start your own thread you can shit in, since

that's all you seem to do? :shrug:

[natrat]

8. ez killer ...dont take it personally

edit to say when i see the idiotic hope word put in context with a government that has no respect for the rule of law and all of its ramifications well, i feel entirely entitled to speak up so dont tell me where or what to say, got it?