Before I begin, let me qualify that I have been one of Barack Obama’s most FIERCE defenders throughout the years. While Clintonites viciously attacked him 8 years ago and fair weathered friends gave him nothing but lip service, I and progressives like me were in the trenches fighting for Obama. So do not misconstrue this post as misinformed or coming from an opponent. That being said, there are some very good, progressive things that Obama has done while in office, and some very bad, regressive things. Hillary Clinton is quick to try to wrap herself in Obama’s legacy for partisan political gain, but just like her time “gaining experience” in Bill Clinton’s White House, you HAVE to take the bad with the good.
So let’s begin with some of the progressive things Obama has done as president. He saved the macro economy from the Great Bush Recession, caused by conservative deregulation of the financial sector which unleashed the worst corporate greed since the years before The Great Depression. The stock market has more than doubled, jobs have grown immensely after the bleeding stopped, the incarceration rate stopped spiking, immigrants have more rights, our nation restored much of the international respect we lost under the conservative Republican chickenhawks, some restrictions were put on dirty coal, the Keystone XL pipeline was rejected, corporate profits are at record highs, Net Neutrality was protected as a common carrier, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and the deficit has been cut by two thirds.
There are numerous lists of his many progressive accomplishments in office.
But that only tells half the story. I remember having extremely passionate debates with my friends to my left about Obama in the early days. They warned me that he was appointing Wall Street insiders. They warned me that despite getting Nobel Peace Prize, his foreign policy was still geared towards foreign aggression. They warned me about a great many things, and I chose to trust Obama and give him time. In hindsight, it would have been more prudent to listen to some of these critics.
Wall Street has more than doubled, yet Main Street continues to suffer as big corporate box stores replace locally owned small businesses. Jobs have recovered and the unemployment rate is down, yet many of these new jobs are not as good as the ones they’ve replaced with less security, harsher working conditions, often part time, etc. Corporate profits are at record highs, but wages are still stagnant. Confidence has been restored by the “investor” class, yet 95% of the new income in America has gone to the richest 1%. The Forbes 400 used to have as much wealth as half of all Americans combined, but now only 20 of the richest billionaire oligarchs have as much wealth as half of all Americans combined. Our dominant economic paradigm continues to be Trickle Down economics. Everyone continues to work longer, harder, and faster for less so the rich can get richer.
Obama has been pushing the corporate written Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will not only dwarf the damage done by NAFTA, CAFTA, and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China combined (outsourcing jobs, depressing wages, damaging the environment, etc.), it will do a host of other regressive things.
While torture has officially been banned (in theory at least), the illegal torture facility at Guantanamo Bay remains open, as do other secret black op torture sites around the world. The US has mostly pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but our drone strike program has skyrocketed in the frequency and reach of extra-judicial killings. We have made strides for transparency but continue to persecute important whistleblowers. Military-related expenditures have barely decreased (accounting for $1-1.4 trillion per year), we still spend nearly as much as the rest of the world combined on our military, and we still have over one thousand overseas military bases.
More people have been deported under Obama than any other president in the history of our nation. The promised Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation that was supposed to be voted on in the first year has never happened. The Employee Free Choice Act has never had it’s time either, and it was also supposed to happen in the first year. The Stimulus was far too small, and misdirected with a third being tax cuts and most of the rest being direct aid to state and local governments instead of a massive infrastructure repair and Green Energy New Deal. 99% of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich were preserved, and it took 5 years to repeal the other 1% of them on the super-rich. The Sequestration (austerity) program mandated massive cuts to public services that hurt the public sector and had a very negative impact on real people’s lives in a great time of need.
None of the bankers or other greedy crooks on Wall Street every faced justice for what they did. Dodd-Frank looked like a good first step, but was watered down in the regulatory process so bad that lost all of it’s initial effectiveness. They all received huge bonuses, the big banks were never broken up, in fact they have consolidated their power even more, and Wall Street now dominates nearly two-thirds of our GDP.
The police state and incarceration complex continue to rein supreme. We have an even worse problem with institutional racism and slaying of minorities by Law Enforcement. We continue to imprison more people per capita than literally another nation in the world.
We continue to spew CO2 pollution at an alarming rate. There has been more fossil fuel drilling than at any other time in history, including sensitive areas like offshore, public lands, and the Arctic.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has helped, especially with the regulations of private health insurance corporations to stop them from profiting off of people’s suffering, but there are some severe problems. 30 million people still do not have health insurance/health care. Tens of millions more are still under-insured to the point where illness can create a devastating financial hardship. The individual mandate is incredibly unpopular and while the rate of increase in premiums has slowed, it is still monstrously high. The average health care costs per person is rapidly approaching $10,000 per year per person and we still pay nearly twice what other Western nations do per capita.
There are numerous lists of his many regressive failures in office.
It absolutely needs to be noted that there would be a lot more progress and a lot less regress if Obama had a progressive Congress to work with. Right wing Republicans have literally waged the worst campaign of obstruction and political warfare in our nation’s history. They abused the filibuster rules to stop any substantial reforms from passing during Obama’s first two years, and cowardly centrist and conservative Democrats were too chicken shit to actually fight back (and that’s the reason why Dems got spanked in 2010 and 2014, not due to “progressive overreach”).
The point that I’m trying to reach here is this: while Obama may be a progressive at heart, we have not seen the level progress we need during his time as President. We have only slowed, not stopped or reversed the rate of decay, abuse, and exploitation caused by the unholy alliance of:
1. Military/security/incarceration complex
2. Social conservatives/theocrats/Talibangelicals
3. Billionaires/oligarchy/corporations/oligopoly
Trying to appease these bases of power and their puppets in the GOP is not working. Shifting to center (which by international standards is fully conservative) does not help. Imagining these selfish special interests will do the right thing for the nation is delusional.
Hillary Clinton only represents more of the same. She has quite a big list of promises on her website, but NONE of those things have any chance at all of making it through a GOP Congress, the lobbyists, the Washington D.C. machine, the corporate media, or the power elites that are trying to protect their profiteering scheme. She is not nearly as progressive as Obama, and he was rather ineffectual in bringing REAL change and reform to those who need it the most in the face of the dominant power structure.
Our one and ONLY chance is for revolutionary caliber change in our political system. That will only come with someone with Bernie Sanders who has the vision bold enough, the message clear enough, the track record clean enough, and the experience tough enough to actually take on the power elites and win in a wave election. The key is to retake Congress. Odds are good Democrats will retake the US Senate no matter who is running (blue states, red Senators in 2010 debacle election).
The House is the tricky part. It is so gerrymandered that our one and only hope is to have a wave election. We have to win by about 7% of the total vote nationally to make R+2 and R+3 districts competitive enough. All we need is 50% +1 in the House of progressive Democrats to push through reform, and many of the centrist and even some conservative Dems can be pressured to vote for progress if they want to not get primaried.
Wave elections are partially organic and partially created. The elements for the former are in place, as people are PISSED OFF at establishment politics, specifically how it has failed them (no income gains over 35 years, etc.). The latter will only happen with an inspirational lead candidate and some grand promises (like a NEW New Deal, or a progressive version of the old GOP Contract With America). Bernie can deliver that, Clinton can't. It's as simple as that.