A real snoozer so far

In November Americans will elect a new President. For most of us this campaign season has been a real snoozer. But this election, more than most, is deadly important. But one would never know it from the shallowness of the various campaigns and the disengagement of the perspective voters.

While acknowledging that voting for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (an empty suited fraud and a Repub hack posing as an ideologically pure number cruncher) should be absolutely beyond consideration for any sane non multi millionaire or billionaire, what we are left with is Barack Obama who is like a first round draft pick who ended up with only a so-so first season.

Suffice to say most fair minded people would agree Barack Obama faced historically daunting challenges when he assumed office in 2008. And the worst case was avoided . There was no repeat of the Great Depression which seemed quite possible at the time. But unlike FDR, who faced a similar economic catastrophe brought on by similar factors, the Obama Administration failed to take advantage of this once-in-a-century opportunity to make a major course correction. Recall the Bush-led Repubs were dead meat in 2008. They were seen by most Americans as responsible for having left behind a stinking pile of elephant shit – a crashed economy, massive debt, economic policies that were simply muted class warfare, and two still festering, grindingly expensive (unpaid for) wars.

Yet two years into the Obama Administration's first term, the Republican lunatics were somehow back running the asylum, their credibility miraculously restored. They were in fact again defining the national discourse by successfully foisting blame off on the Obama Administration for the ravages of the recession - and suddenly discovering 'the deficit' (that they had run up.) Besides shifting the blame on the sickly but slowly healing economy, they made sure his first real legislative goal, health care reform, was a ghost of what it could have been – and then tried to destroy even that. So in the 2010 midterms, the Repubs by marshaling residual reactionary energy on the right in the form of the so-called Tea Party movement they actually took over the half of Congress lock stock and barrel and nearly retook the the other half. Also many State governorships fell to the Repubs.

How did all of this come to be? Well first the Repubs discovered the magic of the filibuster redefining majority rule. They also took full advantage of having their very own cable “news” network as well as hundreds of angry white right wing radio talk show hosts. And add to that a rabid pack of hardcore paranoia-driven, fact-adverse Internet bloggers. Truth is never an obstacle the new brand of Repubs. The bigger the load bullshit to provoke their semi-literate base, the better. But without Obama having seriously underplayed his hand and losing all forward political momentum early on, all of this would have only been merely right wing chatter and sour grapes.

Here are two examples of missed prime opportunities:

• Obama blew his chance to effectively resuscitate the economy back in early 2009. Most reputable economists at the time predicted that the size of the proposed stimulus was inadequate to effectively reboot the economy. Both the world historical crisis of global warming and a crashed US economy provided an opportunity like no other. It was a WWII type opportunity to use tried and proven Keynesian deficit spending (yes, go deeper into the hole) to fire up our once powerhouse economy. A solution to these two seemingly intractable and unrelated problems could have been intertwined into a bold mammoth federally financed $2-3T 'green infrastructure' rebuild. The United States, still a powerful worldwide influence on every level, could have become a global showcase and world leader for sustainable 21st Century earth friendly technology. Obama and his advisors did not understand that global warming is a crisis like no other, something beyond the experience of humankind. Wars, revolutions, economic upheavals have all occurred countless times throughout history but humans have never overheated the atmosphere of the entire planet and then passively waited to see what would happen.

• And what about US health care reform? There was a broad consensus that radical reform was necessary to fix our dysfunctional and budget busting health care system. So what happens? Obama's opening gambit is a tepid, Republican-designed program that keeps most of the gamers untouched (health care insurance companies, hospitals, big pharma, medical equip manufacturers, overpaid specialists, malpractice opportunism, et al. ). Yet, the Obama proposal (later to be derisively dubbed “Obamacare”) as conservative and limited as it was, naturally was still hated by the Repubs. Why should they let him get a “win” on anything? Obama should have at least opened with proposing something big, something game changing - like a Single Payer System modeled on the VA or Medicare, real universal health care. Why can't we have what all the other wealthy industrialized countries have? Why not go over the head of the cynical negative bullshitter pundits on the right and center, the Repubs, the Bluedog Demos, and sell the idea directly to the American people. Medicare for All! And if it had to be downsized in scope, at least a fall back position could have the Public Option in competition with the greed based for-profit health plans. As it was his Affordable Health Care act barely got through Congress not just because of Republican intransigence but because it was so crappy and small bore.

These are just two examples. There are many more: his Neocon double down in Afghanistan (by the way how is that working?), killing alleged terrorists (and often their extended families) by remote control with drones in countries that we are not at war in, not reigning in the Orwellian national security state set up by Bush/Cheney, relying on Timothy Geitner, Larry Summers and other former Wall Street insiders to 'clean up' the Wall Street mess, opening the sensitive Arctic Ocean to oil drilling after the Gulf of Mexico got trashed from a massive drilling disaster, suddenly harassing Calif medical marijuana clubs, and other sorrows. That said Obama is light years better than anything the Repubs can come up with. He is reasonable on many issues, Osama Bin Laden was knocked off on his watch and he seems basically fair minded (maybe a little too fair minded at times.)

But despite Republican propaganda Obama is not and never will be left-of-center on anybody's political spectrum. He, following in Bill Clinton's footsteps, is firmly a center-right politician on most issues. This position was formerly proudly and responsibly occupied by the old GOP before it went nutzo. When the Demos moving rightward under Bill Clinton and his “triangulation”, it essentially drove the Republican Party further into wacko, tin hat land. Although you would never know this from the way mainstream media delivers ahistorical, context-less, analysis-free news.

The problem for Obama now is how to energize his base after doing so little to service it. People, especially the sectors that vote Democratic, are easily demoralized by politics and politicians. Once disappointed they retreat into cynical apathy or else manifest the old 'throw out the bum' syndrome. Some of us vote for the lesser of the evils because we realize as pathetic as the Demos are, they are all we have as a barrier against a full corporatist plutocratic takeover. Remember no matter how a bad country's economy gets the very rich stay very rich – great personal wealth knows no nationality. There will always be Caymans Islands and Switzerlands.