If Obama loses, don't blame progressives

If Obama loses, by 1% or 2% of the vote, some Dems may want to blame Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, and their supporters — just as they blamed Nader and his supporters in 2000.

I’ll shake my head and say, “WTF did you expect given what Obama did?” The Democratic Party let him get away with all sorts of crap because he was their leader. Had a Republican done some of the same things, the Dems would have fought hard.

Clinton triangulated by repealing Glass-Steagall, passing NAFTA and GATT, weakening welfare, and accepting advice from hard rightist Dick Morris.

Obama’s agenda is even more corporatist and militarist. He greatly expanded the war in Afghanistan and drone attacks, put Social Security on the chopping block, implemented a health care plan designed by the Heritage Institute, surrounded himself with Bush and Clinton era advisers, expanded the police state, and prosecuted only whistle blowers and marijuana growers.  See this petition for a fuller list of Obama’s sellouts.

We needed an FDR or even a Hubert Humphrey. We instead got a premature compromiser.

Some of the stuff Obama did just seems weirdly stupid: like prosecuting marijuana growers.  In  The Warren Mystery Paul Krugman speculates whether the Obama team are “idiots.”  There are credible allegations that Obama wanted to continue occupying Iraq but was forced to leave when Iraqis wanted Americans out. And there are allegations that the crackdown on the Occupy Movement was coordinated in D.C.

Yes, Obama is better than Romney, but that’s not saying much.

An Obama apologist responded by saying, “Staff can be around for 30-40 years. It will take decades of Democratic presidents to completely clean house.”

But Obama appointed many of the staff members I’m referring to.  Like Tim Geithner.

Paul Richmond commented:

Obama made multiple choices. These choices include appointing bankers who crashed the economy in positions overseeing a non-existent recovery (as was pointed out in the current episode of Bill Moyers journal, we are heading towards an even large bank crash with even larger banks.) These choices include putting the person who ran “Cheney’s Death Squads” in charge of the entire Middle East. These choices include putting someone from Monsanto in charge of the FDA.

There’s also the sweeping powers that Obama gave the presidency. The kill lists which Deborah Wasserman Schultz denied the existence of. These are all powers that Romney or the next Republican President will inherit.

When Norm Dicks addressed our County Party, one of the officers had the temerity to say, “I work to get you elected and to get people to volunteer. When you do policies like these, it makes it hard to get volunteers, and there’s nothing I can say to them.”

I hope party leaders such as you will consider giving Democrats such inconvenient truths.

One possible way to exonerate Obama is hinted at by a comment I heard Dennis Kucinich make last year when he was considering a run for Congress in Washington State. During a question and answer period,

I shouted out “What should we do about Obama and his sellouts?” Kucinich smiled and shot back, “Next question.” (I’m sure he doesn’t want to go on record as being too critical of Obama.) A bit later he said that the national policies are being dictated by Wall Street and Obama isn’t really in control. So don’t overdo the blame on Obama, he said. (Dennis Kucinich looking for a political home, needs our help?)

Does that mean that Obama’s hands were tied? How so? What are the mechanics of that?