Bush also trampled on traditional constitutional and legal principles with his assertion of unlimited presidential powers that included his secret wiretapping of citizens, his waiving of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial, and his torturing prisoners held in clandestine prisons.
At home, Bush's tax cuts mostly for the rich and his further deregulation of corporations contributed to a bubble-and-bust economy that by the end of his eight years in office had devastated the American middle class, which had grown during the Clinton years but was rapidly shrinking by late 2008 and early 2009 with the disappearance of millions of jobs.
Brief Reunion
Because of the alarm over the Bush administration, the Left and the governing Democrats found common ground in Election 2006 and 2008. In Election 2008, many progressives set aside their concerns about Barack Obama's accommodating style of politics and rallied behind the first major-party African-American candidate for U.S. president.
Obama's historic victory in November 2008 touched many progressives as it did other Americans, though some on the Left resisted any sentimentality.
On Election Night, I encountered Ralph Nader at the make-shift studio in downtown Washington where TheRealNews.com was handling its election coverage. He had run again as an independent candidate but had gotten far fewer votes than at his high point in 2000.
Nader was attacking Obama and the governing Democrats, making clear that he would continue opposing them unless they turned to him for advice and direction. He said that if they didn't, he would be like "the canary in the coal mine," an indication that Obama was another centrist sell-out.
No doubt, many progressives believe that Nader's comment was prescient. The Obama administration did disappoint many of them by making too many concessions to the Republicans in a quixotic search for bipartisanship.
With the Republicans moving almost in lockstep against Obama's initiatives -- and resorting to Senate filibusters at an unprecedented rate -- Obama and the Democrats did scale back their proposals, like the job stimulus plan, and they sacrificed key features, such as the public option for health insurance, in their bid for legislative accomplishments.
Obama also came in for progressive criticism for refusing to hold Bush and his subordinates accountable for torture and other war crimes, another example of governing Democrats shying away from a divisive struggle that they might deem not "good for the country."
Though Obama did begin winding down the Iraq War as he had promised, he acquiesced to the insistence of Bush holdovers at the Pentagon, including Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How Bush Holdovers Trapped Obama on Afghan War."]
The Right's Narrative
While many on the Left grumbled about Obama's centrist approach, the Right sold millions of Americans on an entirely different narrative, that Obama was a closet socialist who was taking over the economy and wasting tax dollars on useless jobs programs.
Again, the Right's media dominance, contrasted with the Left's media weakness, has played a key role in convincing a large segment of the population that whatever slur is directed at Obama and the Democrats is true.
This media dynamic, combined with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling permitting unlimited corporate spending on political ads, has thrown the Democrats profoundly on the defensive, with many of them running away from their votes on health care and stimulus spending.
To compound this crisis facing the Democrats, many on the American Left have chosen this moment to repeat the experiences of 1968, 1980, 1994 and 2000 determined to "teach the Democrats a lesson" by sitting out the election or voting for third parties.
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