Colin McEnrow of the Hartford Courant sadly and finally gives up on Obama, and in doing so explains why Obama is not now and could never be a socialist.
He’s not the guy I thought he was.
And Bill Clinton would have had no problem going before the cameras during the recent troubles and saying, “Look, be as conservative as you want. But not in a way that puts more pain on people who don’t have have jobs, people who are already hurting, people who need Medicaid to get their teeth fixed so they can look for a job, old people who are scared the only doctor they can see is going to stop accepting Medicare. This is the wrong time to start hurting people. We have to bring those people back and get them jobs and get them on your feet. Then you can try all your Tea Party stuff. But right now? I am the president of the United States, and I will not let you hurt these people who have been through three years of pain.”
Bill Clinton would have said I feel your pain and might well have meant it. But not Obama, not the technocrat who unfailingly bolsters corporate power. He doesn’t even pretend to feel your pain. Probably because he has no idea how to and doesn’t care anyway.
But you know what? I don’t think Obama really feels that. I don’t think that’s the fire in his belly. Just as ARRA and the stimulus and the bailout all seemed aimed at structures and higher ups, as opposed to putting money in the hands of regular people, as opposed to getting people back to work, so also does his response to the debt ceiling game seem depressingly sterile. He’s just not that into regular people. If he were, he might be a socialist. But he’s so not. Alas.
Precisely. To be socialist you have to care about people, about workers, about those losing jobs and homes. Obama has never shown that he does, in fact his actions seemed specifically designed to hurt rather than help regular people as they continue to enrich the already wealthy.