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Now, there is a virtual one-stop shop for anyone interested in Obama’s prescription for change. Written by Jeremy Scahill, this piece titled, “This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House” details all the people posed to shape Obama’s foreign policy.
As for Obama’s economic policy, it looks like Obama will be tapping in to Robert Rubin & Co. and will be utilizing Rubinomics when establishing economic policy. Rubin is responsible for repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which enabled commercial to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. (This in layman’s terms means the repeal is partly responsible for the current financial meltdown.)
It’s not like a significant portion of America didn’t see this coming. It’s just that less than 5% had the fortitude to not choose John McCain or Obama on Election Day and instead vote for a third party candidate like Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr, or Chuck Baldwin.
Throughout the election, this sliver of the American population continuously tried to compel Obama supporters and members of Obama’s fan club to force him to earn their vote and were brushed off or snubbed.
Voters who considered voting for a candidate other than Obama or McCain based on the fact that Obama and McCain had yet to earn their vote were mocked and derided.
As Chris Hedges detailed recently in his must-read piece, “America the Illiterate”, Americans, even peace, justice, and freedom activists whose agenda was and still is at odds with Obama, were bought off by “slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness” of a candidate.
Many Americans made small contributions to Obama’s campaign despite the fact that private entities like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Latham & Watkins, Time Warner, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Microsoft, General Electric, Google Inc., and News Corp were donating hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In fact, while the Obama campaign made a big to-do out of the small contributions, the Washington Post reported this on October 22nd:
Lost in the attention given to Obama's Internet surge is that only a quarter of the $600 million he has raised has come from donors who made contributions of $200 or less, according to a review of his FEC reports. That is actually slightly less, as a percentage, than President Bush raised in small donations during his 2004 race, although Obama has pulled from a far larger number of donors. In 2004, the Bush campaign claimed more than 2 million donors, while the Obama campaign claims to have collected its total from more than 3.1 million individuals.
Dear Obama supporters, was Obama promising change we could believe in or change we needed to small contributors or big donors, which donated to the Obama for America Fund and then the Obama Victory Fund and then forced the Obama campaign to open a third fund, the Committee for Change, so that donors which had already donated tens of thousands of dollars could donate tens of thousands of dollars more?
Ask yourself, just what did these big donors hope to get?
I mean, Obama supporters may not have thought about this but bipartisanship and unity and making Washington work are all things that the private sector may have been hoping for. Corporations need a government willing to unite and not engage in partisanship so that gridlock does not prevent deregulations and bills which benefit Big Business from being stalled.
We can’t have that next big bailout being stalled in the House or Senate now, can we?
Let’s be honest. Delusions of grandeur, visions of hope and change, filled the hearts and minds of America’s electorate and Americans having been through Bush gladly bought into these delusions.
Few prepared for this moment otherwise many Americans especially bloggers and Internet news writers would be talking about who they think should be an Obama Cabinet like In These Times did at the end of September when they published their two-part piece, “22 to Know: Our Picks for an Obama Cabinet.”
Had progressives and liberals been organized and less invested in a candidate who was at odds with many of their beliefs and values, they would be out in the streets like they were when Bush was planning to go to war in Iraq right now, and they would be demanding that this policy change opportunity not be squandered
