Opinion: Progressives Can’t Re-elect Obama in 2012

by Victoria A. Brownworth

 It’s no longer political heresy to say it: No true progressive can vote for President Obama in 2012.

 The answers to the question “Why not?” are myriad. The answers are also acutely frustrating for those of us who waited eight years for a Democrat in the White House and worked hard to get one elected, only to discover that Barack Obama is not only no hope and change candidate, but simply–and regrettably–a more eloquent, intelligent, duplicitous and damaging version of George W. Bush.

 I have a few friends who will put their fingers in their ears and start humming loudly when I say this, but facts are facts and true progressives cannot afford to ignore them.

 All the liberal lock-step arguments are valid up to a point: It’s true that Obama was elected at a time when the economy was on a downward spiral and the country was engaged in two wars that were a major part of that economic down-turn. No matter who was elected, it was going to be a struggle with daunting challenges.

 But in 2008 Obama had a vast wave of support and goodwill–not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Only a fringe cadre of malcontents wanted Obama to fail; the majority wanted him to succeed because his success would mean the U.S. would regain some of the international stature it had lost under the disastrous tenure of the Bush Administration.

 Obama had more opportunity than any newly elected president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. In addition to winning the election outright with 52 percent of the vote (no problematic recounts), he had the added bolster of a Democratic majority in Congress, an 85 percent approval rating nationally and a glowing international response from leadership even in nations who had come to hate us. There was nothing that could stop a progressive agenda.

 Nothing, that is, except a president incapable of decision-making whose true politics were definitively more centrist than those he had presented during the primary.

 Obama’s closet right-of-center politics became a huge liability to the Democrats almost immediately, allowing the Republican congressional minority to orchestrate coup after stalemate after filibuster. Without actual leadership from the president, the Democratic Congress languished and capitulated. And that was only part of the problem.

 Obama’s decision-making stasis began with his Cabinet choices. The most damaging came early on: the choice of Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary. Choosing someone to manage the nation’s money troubles who hadn’t paid his taxes was more than just a glitch–it was an embarrassment. Geithner should have had the grace to withdraw and Obama should have appointed someone else immediately.

 But this was the first episode of Obama’s intransigence–or what many of the insiders who have already left the Administration call his arrogant refusal to listen to advice. Obama’s inability to admit when he’s wrong (just like his predecessor) began damaging his presidency almost immediately.

 The examples are many: health care reform, where Obama ignored Republican counter-arguments for an entire year until they became the only arguments. At that point the lackluster, won’t-go-into-effect-until-2014, eviscerated, no-premium caps, pro-health care industry bill offered little to Americans in desperate need of affordable health care.

 Then there were the wars. Obama had promised to end them. But instead he expanded the war in Afghanistan with more than 90,000 troops and an expansion into Pakistan that was so pervasive that the U.S. and Pakistan were in constant conflict as Pakistani citizens were killed by U.S. fighter drones.

 Obama also expanded into Yemen, again with fighter drones. And a few months ago, began yet another war in Libya.

 As a candidate, Obama promised to close Guantanamo and end torture. He even gave a date: January 2010. Neither has happened. Reports of torture in Bagram under Obama’s watch plus reports of extraordinary rendition combined with keeping Guantanamo open, holding prisoners who had little or no evidence against them.

 Perhaps supporters of Obama could forgive the health care debacle, the ratcheting up of the wars and the torture. After all, to a degree, these were all inherited problems. The argument could be made that Obama had limited options that were only understandable once he was in office.

 But that doesn’t account for the slap in the face to progressives (and other Americans who don’t seem to care as much) by Obama on civil liberties. Toward the end of the presidential primary, Obama voted with George Bush to expand warrant-less wiretapping of Americans. It was an ominous vote that portended real trouble should Obama become president, but the hype of hope combined with Obama’s immense charisma overrode reason.

 Since his election, Obama has–by the ACLU’s own standards–done more damage to American civil liberties than any President since Nixon. Hardly the agenda of a progressive.

 In addition to expanding warrant-less wiretapping and infiltrating the Internet, the Obama Administration has worked avidly to eviscerate Miranda–the warning suspects receive when they are arrested. Obama also spent the majority of his term keeping gays and lesbians out of the military and doing damage to judicial efforts to repeal Prop 8 in California. Under Obama, Pvt. Bradley Manning–an American soldier and veteran of Afghanistan–is being held in torturous conditions decried by Amnesty International, but the President has ignored calls for his release–or at the very least, a trial.

 Congress repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell 200 days ago, but the President still has not signed the bill. Yet his re-election campaign cites his repeal of DADT as an example of what he has done as president.

Last week the Center for Public Integrity released a report on the Obama Administration and cronyism. It was immensely damaging. More than 80 percent of those who donated more than $500,000 in bundled contributions to Obama’s presidential campaign have been given jobs in the Administration. And the non-partisan CPI notes that Obama’s ambassadorial appointments have been more political than any other president since Gerald Ford.

 What’s more, Obama has filled the upper-echelons of his administration with lobbyists and corporatists–the exact opposite of his promises during his campaign.

 Obama–a millionaire–cited as his first choices on how to lower the deficit cutting $2 billion in heating grants to the poor and cutting Pell grants for higher education to poor students. This was after his capitulation to the Republicans on the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy despite over nine percent unemployment and 17 percent under-employment and the fact that more than 30 percent of all mortgages are underwater. These are the Obama tax cuts, now.

 Like his predecessor, Obama is in the pocket of Big Oil and Big Coal. He has received more money from these two industries than Bush did at the same point in his presidency. What’s more, Obama has failed to proffer a single progressive policy in his time in office. Not one.

 He has also been cited as one of the least transparent presidents in recent American history.

 Throughout the Bush years Republicans blamed any problems on the previous Clinton Administration. Many Democrats have taken a page from the Republican play book and blame all the problems of the Obama Administration on the Bush Administration. But Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here,” meaning that responsibility for what happened during a given administration accrued to the President, no one else.

Obama is responsible for his presidency and the damage it has done to the nation and to other nations. Americans are still being killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. There continues to be talk of war with Iran.

Some argue that objecting to Obama’s Republican-lite policies and politics is playing into Republican hands, to which I can only counter that the only person playing into Republican hands is Obama.

 The man is not a progressive and it’s hard to see how he is even a Democrat. Throughout progressive circles the search for a challenger to Obama for 2012 continues. I hope one can be found.

 But what has to be clear for progressives is that Obama must not be re-elected in 2012. Perhaps the Democrats can only function in opposition to the Republicans. Perhaps that is the only way for us to fight our way to real progressive action.

 Capitulation is never an answer, however. If I could not vote for war and torture and Big Oil under George W. Bush, how could I vote for the same things–as well as civil liberties abuses–under Barack Obama? As a true progressive, I cannot. And I urge others to recognize just what this presidency is doing to our nation and move not further to the right, but back to the true left where actual decent, progressive change has always happened in this nation.