With the arrival of US midterm elections on November 2, any balance sheet drawn up after two years of an Obama administration that swept into office in 2008 on a tidal wave of hope and euphoria will likely be stamped at the bottom with the words “crushing disappointment”.
This once in a lifetime presidential candidate, the man who made history as the first black president of a nation where blacks were still held in bondage three centuries prior, who intellectually and politically marked the emergence of the US and by definition the world from the long, dark shadow of the Bush years, hailed as a latter day saviour in the process, has not only failed to live up to the hopes invested him by the millions who queued for hours to cast their vote for the change he so eloquently championed, he’s succeeded in trampling those hopes into the dust.
Just another machine politician in thrall to the corporations and to Wall Street, is the view, judging by recent opinion polls, of many of his former supporters after two years of failure to tackle the lobbyists, the Republicans and the Washington machine head on, as he promised he would if elected.