Obama Wins for whom? | Michael Hudson

English: Barack Obama Deutsch: Barack Obama (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does Dr. Hudson honestly wish to suggest the the Koch brothers et al, and Citizen’s United were a set up to get the President re-elected? And that people were persuaded to pour billions of dollars into Republican coffers to scare the plebes into voting for the lesser evil, as if that were the desired result all along. So that they could get the Democrats to do what they have wanted done since Social Security existed? That’s a little too far-fetched and cynical for me.

Frankly, Dr. Hudson, I don’t know what to think of Obama. What he seems like to me is a product of his upbringing and his times. He was raised by a banker, after all, and attended elite schools. He is, therefore, disposed to understand of such people and give them the benefit of the doubt. He is also the product of a time in which virtually everyone was brainwashed by Reaganism, and would have been too young and inexperienced to see it for what it really was, a Coup d’Etat by the rentiers.

He also came of age politically at a time of bitter partisanship, in which the ownership of trillions of dollars of the nation’s surplus was at stake, and the loudest, the boldest, and the most mendacious messengers prevailed. Along comes Obama, with his “can’t we all get along” vibe and voters who were sick of the ugliness went for it, only to discover that the “hope and change” they voted for was, for all intents and purposes, the “hope and change” they voted for; a not so loud, not so bold, not so mendacious gentleman who was born to give away the store in the naive hope of achieving some “gentlemen’s agreements.” In 2008, I preferred him as a candidate to HRC, but had no illusions about his Blue Dog politics.

He’s had his trial by fire. He’s learned where the power lies. With luck, he has learned how NOT to tangle with it. Now he has four more years to learn HOW to tangle with it. I’m willing to wait and see if his mother’s rebellious spirit and his community organizer genes don’t inform his second term. What choice, after all do I have? He’s my President for the next four years.