Will I Vote For Obama Next Year? Probably, but...

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Sunday August 07, 2011 · 12:47 PM PDT

2011/08/07 · 12:47

Will I vote for Barack Obama in November of next year? Yes, if he is the Democratic nominee and the Republican running against him is as horrible as I expect him/her to be. But am I going to be supporting his nomination leading up to the Democratic Convention? No, I will not.

Why? Why would I be willing to risk the possibility that progressive criticism could ruin the President's chances of getting reelected next year? There are actually four reasons why I cannot lift a finger to help Barack Obama with his efforts to win the Democratic nomination:

One, if his approval ratings continue to drop over the next ten months---and I fully expect that they will, with no improvement in the unemployment rate by next summer---the Democratic Party will need a Progressive Democrat to turn to if/when Barack's candidacy becomes an embarrassing liability to the party (e.g., if his approval rating hits the low 30's).

Two, I really don't think we'd be losing much if Barack were to fail to get reelected, because he has been supporting Republican solutions to America's economic problems throughout his term as President, and the nation's economy has failed to recover because of it. More of the same would be bad, whichever party happens to be in power.

Three, of far greater importance than the outcome of next year's election is the urgent need to get Progressive Economic Alternatives heard/understood/debated in the mainstream media whenever there is an opportunity, and there is no better time than during the months leading up to the party conventions when everyone is paying attention to the issues.

Four, The Republicans have already made it clear that they intend to accuse the President of forcing his ultra-liberal economic agenda on the economy only to see it fail. PROGRESSIVES CANNOT ALLOW THIS CALUMNY TO GO UNCHALLENGED. Running a Progressive challenger against the President is now the best/only way to make it clear in the minds of the electorate that the traditional Democratic Method of fixing the economy after the Republicans have broken it (dramatically INCREASING GOVERNMENT SPENDING) has not yet been tried.

Unfortunately, one thing we know with certainty is that Barack Obama will not be the one who steps forward to defend the soundness of Progressive economic solutions, but will be likely, rather, to point to us as extremists in his effort to seize the political "center" that exists in the imaginations of his advisors.

In spite of his many virtues as a human being---Barack Obama has not used his bully pulpit and his extraordinary rhetorical gifts to explain to the American people why Progressive solutions actually are better than the crap the Republicans advocate. Instead, he accepts their framing of what the problem is, and then concedes his way into giving them virtually everything they want, in his increasingly desperate efforts to win their approval.

No matter what criticisms he might have leveled at Republican proposals in years past, in the most recent fiasco, he never once came out and said that it was ridiculous for the Republicans to be advocating reductions in government spending at a time when DRAMATIC INCREASES IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING are urgently needed in order to eliminate unemployment and return the economy to prosperity.

It appears that President Obama doesn't want to advocate/defend progressive economic solutions either because he doesn't really understand them, or because he does understand them but doesn't really believe in them (which makes him, in effect, a Republican).

For [Economic] Progressives, the All-Important, Never-Ending Mission is to educate the public regarding the the virtues of Progressive Economic Policies vs. the evils of the Republican/Corporatist Economic Agenda. ("Public" = The Journalist Class, policy-makers in Washington, Barack Obama).

We had hoped that Barack Obama might be the guy who could do that for the Democratic Party and for average Americans everywhere. Now, in our desperation, it is clear that "Primarying" our sitting President is the smartest/only thing for us to do to further our urgent mission.

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