An Accounting of Obama's "Achievement"

From a post by Glenn Greenwald writing for Salon magazine:

Democratic politics in a nutshell

by Glenn Greenwald

Let's begin by taking note of three facts:

(1) Three days ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers, appearing at a meeting of the Out of Poverty caucus, said: "The Republicans -- Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor -- did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that" (video here, at 1:30);

(2) The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go."

(3) The same White House behavior shaping the debt deal -- full embrace of GOP policies and (in the case of Social Security cuts) going beyond that -- has been evident in most policy realms from the start. It first manifested in the context of Obama's adoption of the Bush/Cheney approach to the war on civil liberties and Terrorism, which is why civil libertarians were the first to object so vocally and continuously to the Obama presidency, culminating in this amazing event from mid-2010: "Speaking at a conference of liberal activists Wednesday morning, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero didn't mince his words about the administration's handling of civil liberties issues. 'I'm going to start provocatively . . . I'm disgusted with this president,' Romero told the America's Future Now breakout session."

In other words, a slew of millionaire politicians who spent the last decade exploding the national debt with Endless War, a sprawling Surveillance State, and tax cuts for the rich are now imposing extreme suffering on the already-suffering ordinary citizenry, all at the direction of their plutocratic overlords, who are prospering more than ever and will sacrifice virtually nothing under this deal (despite their responsibility for the 2008 financial collapse that continues to spawn economic misery). And all of this will be justified by these politicians and their millionaire media mouthpieces with the obscenely deceitful slogans of "shared sacrifice" and "balanced debt reduction" -- two of the most odiously Orwellian phrases since "Look Forward, not Backward" and "2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate" (and anyone claiming that Obama was involuntarily forced by the "crazy" Tea Party into massive budget cuts at a time of almost 10% unemployment: see the actual facts here).

There is much more. Go read the original post to get the embedded links and the additional material.

It is clear that either the Democrats must push Obama out of the party or the party needs to split to allow the liberals to continue the historic mission of the Democratic party to look after the bottom 90% instead of selling out to the top 1%.