Politico: Liberal Fantasies Of Obama Come To End With Daley Appointment

Politico says that Obama's appointment of JP Morgan Chase banker William Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff in the administration is the "last straw" for liberals:

The appointment of Bill Daley to the top staff job in the Obama White House has dealt the final blow to a dearly held fantasy of parts of the left: that a truly liberal president has been ill-served and misinterpreted by Rahm Emanuel and other center-right aides.

The sounds of hearts finally breaking come from key quadrants of the Democratic Party — labor, ethnic groups and the gay community — who had tried to convince themselves for two years that President Barack Obama was still the liberal crusader they had come to believe he was during the 2008 campaign; it was just that his West Wing staff wouldn’t let Obama be Obama.

With the ascension of a renowned centrist and Clinton administration veteran to the post as White House chief of staff, the left now finally acknowledges that Obama’s decisions are actually being made by Obama — and they seem to veer perilously toward the center time and time again.

“First, when progressives were disappointed, they blamed it on Rahm. Then (interim chief of staff Pete) Rouse came in and they had the same problems,” said one senior labor official. “It’s going to be the same thing with Daley, but folks don’t see the point in trashing him, because it’s going to be the same pattern [of] decisions from the top.”

“There’s a sense of resignation and fatalism,” the official said.

I guess I have a different position on Obama than many in the liberal community. I was suspicious of him dating back to right after he was elected to the Senate and I saw him on FOX News Sunday lecturing liberals to be "open to people of faith" on the right. Obama was comfortable framing the debate exactly as the right frame that debate - right wing religious people are "people of faith", left wing religious/spiritual people are not - and that bothered me. He reminded me a lot of how Joe Lieberman sounded when he talked on Fox.

From then on, I was dubious of Obama. I didn't trust him. I saw ambition in him, but no core beliefs.

When he announced for president, I took a very close look at his education policies. I saw somebody who was squarely in the pro-privatization/pro- ed deform camp - he promoted charter schools, "accountability" for teachers (i.e., evaluating teachers on test scores), longer school days and longer school years, standardized curricula and vouchers. I found those policies troubling.

I was blogging at NYC Educator's blog in those days and I wrote the following about Obama on February, 18 2008:

Barack Obama told the AFT and the NEA last year that he did not support private school vouchers, but this week he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board that he is open to supporting private school vouchers if research shows they work.

The education "reform" group, Democrats For The Return Of Feudalism And The Six Day Work Week, immediately hailed Obama's flip-flop on the voucher issue:

The executive director of the lobbying group Democrats for Education Reform, Joseph Williams, said the response was unusual for a Democratic politician, praising Mr. Obama for making his bottom line helping children learn rather than ideology.

"I don't think anyone can call him a voucher supporter out of this, but it is an intriguing response," Mr. Williams said. "It is a different kind of answer than most of us are used to hearing from politicians."

It sure is.

Most Democratic politicians see the private school voucher movement as just another way for the privatization folks to get their hands on public money and continue to privatize as much of the government as they can.

For example, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton see the issue that way.

But not Obama.

You see, he's a different kind of Democrat.

He tells the NEA and the AFT that he supports merit pay based upon standardized test scores and says he now could support school vouchers.

He also thinks the problem with the American economy is not a greedy multi-national corporate system that rewards hedge fund managers, CEO's and the rest of the investment class over the workers but an education system that doesn't educate students as well as India does (never mind that in class-stratified India, only 75% of the population can actually read and more than 1/3rd of the population live on less than 40 cents a day - Obama thinks it's a model for the U.S. to mimic.)

Gee, he kinda sounds Republican-lite to me.

No wonder Whitney Tilson and the other values investors at the Democrats For The Return Of Feudalism And The Six Day Work Week like him so much.

He speaks their language - privatize, standardize, voucherize.

That pretty much sums up my whole take on Obama on the education issue - a corporate-minded shill who spoke the language of the deformers - privatize, standardize, voucherize.

Now it is true that I did vote for Obama, but I held my nose when I did it. McCain/Palin seemed an untenable alternative to me and though I was hostile to Obama's ed policies, after eight years of Bush/Cheney, I didn't think the country could survive four years of McCain/Palin (especially with the economy collapsing at the time.)

I have regretted that vote ever since. On issue after issue, Obama has governed as the corporate-owned shill he is. From the TALF bailout to the Obama destruction of the UAW to HAMP to Race to the Top to the refusal to push for a public option in HCR to his insistence on a 40% excise tax on employees with employer-provided health care plans over a "millionaire's tax" to his "deal" with the GOP on raising taxes on families making less than $40,000 and extending the Bush tax cuts on people making over $200,000, Obama has rarely missed the opportunity to screw liberals, middle and working class people, union members and teachers.

For me, the firing of the Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers and Obama's reaction to that is the emblem of who this man.

He didn't care about any of the problems teachers in that town face in trying to educate students in a town with the largest poverty rate, unemployment, alcoholism and addiction rates and homelessness in the state of Rhode Island.

All he cared about was promoting his RttT policy that scapegoated teachers and schools for all the ills in American society today, breaking the teachers union, and making those teachers a symbol of the coming feudal order - more hours at work, more days at work, less pay at work, no work protections, slashed benefits.

Now I dunno what other liberals have been looking at when they see Obama. Clearly for anybody to think that Obama has been governing as "centrist" because of Rahm Emanuel or Pete Rouse, well, those people just haven't been paying close enough attention to Obama.

He IS a "centrist" (i.e., corporate-owned shill and whore.) He chooses to surround himself with other corporate shills and whores like Emanuel, Rouse, Daley, Larry Summers, Timmeh Geithner, etc. because those are the people he is comfortable with.

I dearly hope liberals are finally off the bandwagon and have been awakened to the reality that Obama is a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary out to screw liberals, working and middle class people and union members for his corporate overlords and masters.

But I dunno.

Many liberals have got to be the stupidest people on the freaking planet to have gone so long believing in their "Liberal Obama" fantasy.

And until liberals say "I am NOT voting for you, Mr. Obama, because you are a corporate sell-out who has worked to screw me over and over and now I will treat you with the same disdain you and your administration hve treated liberals!", nothing will change.

It is like a sick co-dependent relationship between liberals and Obama.

He keeps punching them in the face and saying "Oh, but you know I love you!" and they keep staying with him.

Abandon him. Call the White House every week and tell them you are ACTIVELY working to primary Obama not because you think a liberal can knock him off but just because you want to see him sent back to Chicago as a one term president and allow a Democratic Congress to at least fight against corporate policies.

Let's be honest, do you think the Dems in Congress would have allowed McCain/Palin to get away RttT, the Bush tax cut extensions, the 40% excise tax on employees with health care or the HAMP program?

They most likely would not have. They certainly would have fought against them. But because Obama pushed these corporate-friendly policies, the Dems and liberals rolled over.

Well, now it is time to stop rolling over.

So far, I have not heard that determination from liberals outside of a few people like myself who clearly saw Obama for the corporate whore he is long ago.

I hope I hear that determination not just from people at Open Left and Common Dreams but also from the mainstream left like the Daily Kos, TPM, Move On and most especially from liberal constituencies like labor, the anti-war movement and gay rights advocates.

He is screwing you.

It is time to screw him back.