::::::::
ã
The mass media way overstates the GOP's popularity and influence with all of the American public. The fact is as a country we are roughly evenly divided between cons and libs on the more extreme ends, withmiddle-of-the-roaders who don't know what to think occupying the central thirdpercentage of the electorate. These are undecided but mad that things are not working and are trying to decide who to blame in the next election.
ã
Obama, for whatever reason appears to be paralyzed in his leadership. Maybe he doesn't HAVE ANY leadership ability and that's why he was chosen by the oligarchy so that he would appear to change things but would only appear to do so,and thus temporarily defuse popular anger and will for changes to happen). Maybe he was picked BECAUSE he can't take a stand on anything. He is so stuck on collegial consensus that he won't fight for any reforms,but now he facesa popular backlash, andhe doesn't know what to do when there ISN'T ANY center anymore to buoy him up.He is king of CHAOS, witha vast patchwork of selfish interests competing for the megaphone.
Governing is a vastly different problem from that of writing abstract theses and giving rousing speeches. Oratory is different from nuts and bolts, roll up your sleeves, down and dirty power brokering.
ã
I don't think Obama is up to the job of governance. He says one thing to get elected and then does another and betrays his base once elected. He is committing political suicide in doing so. I don't know what reason he has. Maybe the oligarchy has threatened his life or his family or bribed him or God knows why he is abandoning the very people who put him in office. He is crazy if he thinks that by caving in to the right that he will carve out a base amongst them. They will hate him to his dying day no matter what he does.
ã
So we will soon see whether he has a chance to pull things out or whether he bcomes a one term lame duck and unpopular on both sides of the aisle early on in his first term. So far, the latter conclusion looks like the course he has set for himself. God knows what he hopes to gain from such political folly.
By constantly giving in to the right, he will lose his base while gaining no quarter from Republicans. By trying to out-Clinton Clinton, he will meet the same fate of betraying his base in order to get goodies from the oligarchy. . Except that he is a brown person, and unless he can change that he's doomed to failure unless he gets tough.
He roused the genie of hope for progress and now if he kills the genie he will engender the worst kind of cynicism and bitterness, which will eat at progressivism and put extremists in a position to win back power. Just as happened in California, when the center collapsed, the extremists took over and now are dismantling the social safety net. I think this is the plan that the oligarcny has: to mimic the CA holocaust for the poor and destroy the national social safety net so they don't have to pay for Social Security or Education or anything else that average people need. They want a total corporate state that becomes like Colombia or Mexico: small elite at the top that dominates and grinds the masses of peasants into the dirt. He is enshrining the New Klux Klan by trying to meet them halfway - you either meet them with snarling dogs and ax handles or their torches and gasoline will take over and put you under Jim Crow.
Apparently we are a country of dumbfence postswho prefer reality TV to planning for our own future. We are stuck in our personal orbs of shallowness, egotism and we like babies crying at feeding time kick against the economic pain we caused ourselves withnihilistic rage (tea bag parties)but refuse to make the effort to get involved in mass movements to kick the oligarchy in the pills.
We can't get free of our own selfishness long enough to stick together for our own good. We have two impotent pop-ideologies that are both hopelessly impotent and laughed at by those who control the real power. We are divided, and thus conquered. Our owndiametrically oppositeworld views at loggerheads enable the oligarchy to stomp on us con or lib at will and they knowneither can gain the upper hand over them as long as they are divided and feuding. The culture wars serve the oligarchy's interests.
ã
