I watched some of President Obama's comments in his press conference today, one day after I sent him a letter in response to an Organizing for America email, expressing my disappointment in some of his policies and his proposal to extend all of the Bush tax cuts.
Today I saw a president openly mocking and disparaging the principled activists of his party. He sounded like he didn't want my support or the support of any progressives -- that he is done with us and plans to make no attempt to woo us by embracing any of our principles and policy preferences as he has done so frequently and self-abasedly with conservative Republicans. He sounded like he would not even try to "earn back my support and the support of the millions of progressive Democrats, especially young people like myself who invested so much hope in your candidacy two years ago," as I asked him to do in my letter.
Then, this evening, I got another email from OFA, asking me to watch a video of President Obama promoting the Republican tax cuts for the rich and to leave a comment as feedback to the Obama campaign. I watched the video and left the following comment:
I think President Obama is making a big mistake by moving so far to the right and essentially doing exactly what Republicans want, a tax policy that will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars and necessitate deep spending cuts that will be devastating to the economy.
I was an enthusiastic supporter and volunteer in Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign, but I am very disappointed with his presidency so far. I was disappointed that he did not fight for a public option in the health care reform bill. I was disappointed that he did not close the Guantanamo Bay prison. I was disappointed that he did not allow investigations of high ranking Bush administration officials who authorized the use of torture. I was disappointed that he escalated the war in Afghanistan.
Extending the Republican tax cuts for the rich is the last straw for me. I can no longer call myself a supporter of President Obama. I hope he will step aside at the end of his term and let other Democrats who actually believe in Democratic principles and policies run for president in 2012.
And then I clicked the link to unsubscribe from the Organizing for America email list. I didn't do it lightly. I have thought of doing it before, but never actually did it. Maybe it was my memory of the weekends I spent walking neighborhoods, knocking on doors, passing out literature and attempting to persuade people to vote for this man in the crucial swing state of Virginia. I was always hoping that at some point, President Obama would surprise me by restoring the hope I had invested in him in his campaign. There is such a deliberate finality about taking the action of unsubscribing from the mailing list of an organization that one used to support strongly and in which one made a significant investment. Finally I did it.
I felt a sick feeling in my stomach and found tears welling up in my eyes. I don't cry easily. I certainly didn't expect that the simple act of unsubscribing from a political mailing list would have such an effect on me, but somehow it did.
I think my tears came because of a realization that suddenly hit me full force like a punch in the gut: that Barack Obama will go down in history as a tragic figure, a classic, archetypal example of a man who had so much potential to be a great, transformational leader at a time when the society in which he lived desperately needed such a leader and actually elected him to lead our country in a new direction. And who took the rare opportunity given to him and threw it away, becoming just another typical politician making backroom deals for less than half a loaf -- mere crumbs, in fact, and crumbs spiked with poison -- becoming an accessory to the continued decline of American civilization, shattering the hopes of millions. When he could have been so much more.