Here ya go.
Obama ran on a message of change. Now, many presidential candidates have run on the theme of change - pretty much every time the candidate is running against an incumbent in fact.
But Obama's campaign took it up a few notches, casting it as an historic election where Washington's business as usual would come to an end.
"They don't own me, they did not fund my campaign, they will not set the agenda, they will not drown out your voices."
Remember that? Obama talking about how lobbyists would have no effect on him.
So unlike other change campaigns, Obama's was truly change you can believe in. We were so hopeful. I know I was, my wife, all of my best friends.
And here's the real clincher: Never before in our lifetimes, not since the Great Depression, had there ever been more of an opportunity to really change things. That was the gift of the financial crisis. An American president finally had leverage over the most powerful and corrosive force in our political system, the banking cartel.
To fully appreciate this you have to understand just how powerful Goldman Sachs and the other top investment banks really are, how much wealth they have captured from the American people, and how ruthlessly they play the game. People sense that their politicians are bought and paid for. But they rarely ask, much less learn who the owners are. Well, I'm telling you now. The owners are bankers. Don't take my word for it. Here's Dick Durbin:
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
But when Obama took office in January of 2009, he had something no president has had since Franklin D. Roosevelt: leverage. The all powerful mafia of Wall Street was on its knees, at the mercy of the newly elected Democratic president.
That was the time to demand reforms. Quid pro quo - you want to survive? You'll do it on terms that serve the interest of this country.
When Barack Obama actually picked Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, I defended him. Who better to sell reform better than the architects of the disaster. How brilliant.
But reform never came. It's been over a year, and the time for CHANGE has long since past. The leverage is gone. The banking mafia has not only secured its position, but has actually grown more powerful, using our money.
The new president of change, in the most important issue of his presidency, ended up protecting the status quo. A status quo that has been the single biggest factor in the economic decline of this country for the last 40 years.
Most people just have no idea that Wall Street bankers are responsible for much of the economic devastation of the American middle class. That's because they get their news from television, and Wall Street bankers own the television networks. But these parasites have been siphoning off the wealth of this country from its inception. They produce nothing. They just siphon, much like the health insurance companies.
So Obama had a chance to reel these scumbags in a little bit. To at least get us back to before Bill Clinton and Larry Summers killed the New Deal regulations that would have prevented some of the most egregious chicanery.
For those of us who have spent our lives battling and trying to expose Wall Street's ongoing crime spree... to see Obama just fold like a paper doll. Let's just say, it hurts. Really bad.
I honestly don't know if Obama can recover from such a failed first year. People who say that we should be patient obviously don't understand politics or the presidency. There is a small window of opportunity in a president's first 100 days that closes as momentum wears, powers settle in and regroup, and the old ways regain their hold.
FDR was able to have a second 100 days in the third year of his first term. But that was only because there was no centrally controlled mass media to cover up just how bad the economy really was. Even more astounding, populists firebrands had control of the airwaves, demanding more be done on behalf of the people.
This climate led to great fear among the Washington establishment that someone like Huey Long could either split the ticket and cause FDR to lose, or worse, that he could actually win. No one was willing to risk a Huey Long presidency. So they went along with a whole host of economic reforms that were considered radical to the power class of the time, but were broadly popular among the masses. Labor reform, jobs programs, Social Security.
FDR's second 100 days was far more important than his first. And his first were pretty important.
Is there a chance in hell that a populist uprising among the left could pressure Obama and the Democrats to be real agents of change instead of wiltering beneath the weight of Wall Street's lobbyist?
Not as long as progressives continue to mistake their role as a movement for reform instead of cheerleaders and spinmeisters for power.