raghu: Obama did these things ultimately because he wanted to. And that is the actual reason Obama sucks. Not because he failed to bring socialism.
Marv Gandall d: If Charles has any differences with the DLC or the White House, I've yet to see them. There were no political barriers coming out of the 2008 election, none. The Democrats controlled Congress until 2010, and Obama and his advisors could have harnessed the powerful desire for a break with the failed domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration in the first two years to pass the deeper financial, housing, and social reforms demanded by the crisis had they the political will to do so. What would have been the consequences? Impeachment? A military coup? The rise of the American right? Losing control of the Congress in the midterms and widespread disappointment with the Obama presidency? ------------- Marv, up to a point, gives a pretty good account of what (theoretically) _could_ have been accomplished by the Obama Administration in 2009. But at bottom his analysis, as expressed here, does not differ from that of Charles Brown, The key is in the phase, " had they the political will." This is nonsense, and (I think) ultimately _vicious_ nonsense. I often disagree with Raghu, but here he is quite gloriously correct: " Obama did these things ultimately because he wanted to." (That, incidentally, doesn't mean that Obama sucks; it just means that he represents the enemy. Moral judgments of him personally are irrelevant and distracting.) Carrol Marv continues: FWIW, I commented elsewhere on Krugman's Rolling Stone piece as follows: I will perhaps take up that argument in a separate post. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
