By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch
".........The prime constant factor in American politics across the past six decades has been a counter-attack by the rich against the social reforms of the 1930s.
Twenty years ago the supreme prize of the Social Security trust funds – the government pensions that changed the face of America in the mid-1930s - seemed far beyond Wall Street’s grasp. No Republican president could possibly prevail in such an enterprise. It would have to be an inside job by a Democrat. Clinton tried it, but the Lewinsky sex scandal narrowly aborted his bid.
If Obama can be identified with one historic mission on behalf of capital it is this – and though success is by no means guaranteed, it is closer than it has ever been.......
Right now Obama’s job approval rating, as measured by Gallup, is running at about 46 per cent, as against the disapprovers who are around 48 per cent, having dropped back from an early autumn high of over 50 per cent. He’s now fairly set upon the right-wing course Clinton embarked on after 1994: wars abroad (Yugoslavia for Clinton, Afghanistan for Obama); a war-on-terror policy worthy of Bush-Cheney, as exemplified in the abandonment of pledges to shut down Guantanamo and the swift drafting of new and repressive espionage laws in the wake of WikiLeaks. Last Thursday Bill Quigley and Vince Warren had an ominous piece on this site, Obama’s liberty Problem.....
Clinton, the self-proclaimed ‘Comeback Kid’, took the same turn with his 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act., which was Act One of the Patriot Act. Clinton launched his successful onslaught on welfare in his second term, also the attack on Social Security which Obama now aims to consummate.
As with Clinton, we have an opportunistic, neoliberal president without a shred of intellectual or moral principle. We have disconsolate liberals, and a press saying that Obama is showing admirable maturity in understanding what bipartisanship really means. Like Clinton, Obama is fortunate in having pwogs to his left only too happy to hail DADTell as the rationale for continuing to support this spineless slimeball. The landscape doesn’t change much, as evidenced by the fact that Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and George W’s brother, looks as though he’s ready to make a bid for the Republican nomination. "
CounterPunch
".........The prime constant factor in American politics across the past six decades has been a counter-attack by the rich against the social reforms of the 1930s.
Twenty years ago the supreme prize of the Social Security trust funds – the government pensions that changed the face of America in the mid-1930s - seemed far beyond Wall Street’s grasp. No Republican president could possibly prevail in such an enterprise. It would have to be an inside job by a Democrat. Clinton tried it, but the Lewinsky sex scandal narrowly aborted his bid.
If Obama can be identified with one historic mission on behalf of capital it is this – and though success is by no means guaranteed, it is closer than it has ever been.......
Right now Obama’s job approval rating, as measured by Gallup, is running at about 46 per cent, as against the disapprovers who are around 48 per cent, having dropped back from an early autumn high of over 50 per cent. He’s now fairly set upon the right-wing course Clinton embarked on after 1994: wars abroad (Yugoslavia for Clinton, Afghanistan for Obama); a war-on-terror policy worthy of Bush-Cheney, as exemplified in the abandonment of pledges to shut down Guantanamo and the swift drafting of new and repressive espionage laws in the wake of WikiLeaks. Last Thursday Bill Quigley and Vince Warren had an ominous piece on this site, Obama’s liberty Problem.....
Clinton, the self-proclaimed ‘Comeback Kid’, took the same turn with his 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act., which was Act One of the Patriot Act. Clinton launched his successful onslaught on welfare in his second term, also the attack on Social Security which Obama now aims to consummate.
As with Clinton, we have an opportunistic, neoliberal president without a shred of intellectual or moral principle. We have disconsolate liberals, and a press saying that Obama is showing admirable maturity in understanding what bipartisanship really means. Like Clinton, Obama is fortunate in having pwogs to his left only too happy to hail DADTell as the rationale for continuing to support this spineless slimeball. The landscape doesn’t change much, as evidenced by the fact that Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and George W’s brother, looks as though he’s ready to make a bid for the Republican nomination. "
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