The (Fading) Call of Obama. By Paul Street

2009 DECEMBER 24

by kanan48

Via: ZNet.

Now that Barack Obama is being exposed like never before as a tool and agent of concentrated wealth, business class rule, and militarism, 2009 is ending on a distinct note of liberal disenchantment. His “progressive base” is restive over his actions to an unprecedented (to use Obama’s favorite word [1]) degree as the president of “Yes we can” has morphed (as widely predicted on “hard left”) into the pallid symbol of “No We can’t – as the clarion of “change” has emerged as another Democratic office-holder whose outwardly progressive campaign pledges translate into corrupt, corporate and imperial nothingness in the real world of power.

“THIS IS A CON JOB”

The signs of liberal and progressive anger at Obama (“The Empire’s New Clothes,” as I described immediately him after his election to the presidency) are hard to miss. The former sixties radical and “Progressives for Obama” (PFO) co-founder Tom Hayden announced that he was “scraping the Obama sticker off my car” after the president gave his West Point Afghan War Speech three weeks ago. [2] Formed by such leading left-liberal lights as Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Cornwell West, and Barbara Ehrenreich, PFO has dropped its president’s name from the organization, re-christened “Progressive America Rising.” [3]