I don't know Obama's motivations. No one does except Obama. And he's human (GASP!), so he may not even be fully aware of what truly motivates him to make certain decisions or do certain things.
Why do I remind you of this? I think you can figure it out, but just in case you can't, and cuz I'm such a nice guy, I'll tell you.
There seems to be a certain subset of diarists here who know, totally, what motivates Obama. Ask them. They'll tell you; Obama is out to fuck us. He's sold out. He's a corporatist. He's a lackey. He's doing his masters bidding. He cares only for himself and his own aquisition of power and money and prestige or whatever. He's out to fuck us. And kill Medicare and Medicaid and destroy the social safety net and he's motivated to do this because he's a wimp and a sellout and a shill and on and on and on and on.
Ask them about it. They know all these things.
You see, they can tell, even thought they've never met him, were never involved in any level of any of his decision making processes and don't know even a tiny percentage of what he knows.
They read stuff about him and see him on tv. And yet THEY KNOW!!!
You see here's the difference between those people and myself.
I don't know.
I don't know what motivates Obama. In fact, you know what? I can admit that THEY may in fact be right about his motivations and he really is a creep or whatever. I really don't know.
However, I can say that I THINK I know. You see, instead of only looking at isolated decisions, through a predetermined prism ("he's a corporate sell out!!!), I have a more holistic prism. I take the totality of the man. His life before now, what he did, what he said, what he wrote. Could he have been lying about all those things as part of some massive set up to ultimately fuck us? Sure, I guess so.
I also look at his actions and decisions in light of current circumstance and environment. Is it possible he's in league with Repubs and corporatists? Sure. But it's also possible he's merely working with them because HE HAS TO.
Sure, I can take any single action, isolate it and make it look like it supports whatever predetermined conclusion I want it to. But WHY would I want to do that? I dunno why I would want to do that. I'd rather look at a more complete picture, and IMO when you look at the complete picture of Obama, I have to think it's a lot more complicated than "He's a sellout!!".
Could I be wrong? Sure, of course. Could you?