It was my last semester at Penn State, when the Democratic presidential primary came to Pennsylvania. I spent most of my free time registering student voters, and imploring them to vote for Obama. My first choice had been John Edwards because of his attention to the stark income inequality in the United States. He was right to focus on it, because the United States now has a more unequal distribution of wealth than during the time of the robber barons around the turn of 20th century. By the time the campaign came to Pennsylvania, it was a two-candidate race. I supported Obama largely because of Clinton’s obstinate support of the Iraq War.
It was an annoying time to be an Obama supporter. The twin controversies of Reverend Wright and “bitter gun clingers” were all over television. Clinton looked likely to win Pennsylvania easily, and she did. But I was proud to see that next November Obama won Centre County, the home of Penn State, by a startlingly large margin of 11%. Despite predictions from an obnoxious media, Obama won Pennsylvania by the largest margin of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I took the day off from work in Maryland to drive home to Pennsylvania to get out the vote in the neighborhood where I grew up. It was a satisfying drive home on election night back to Maryland.
I am writing about this because I am disappointed. I never really believed that a president could change how Washington works, but I did believe that Obama was the best choice for progressives. I will be forever grateful for his achievements of passing health care reform and ending the Iraq War. But I am afraid that there is nothing that President Obama will not negotiate away when confronted by the right-wing House.
He never supported a public option during the health care reform debate. One of his campaign promises was to allow the government to negotiate directly with drug companies to keep costs down. Lobbying by large pharmaceutical companies successful had the negotiation provision removed from the health reform bill. Obama was against “cramdown,” a policy that would have allowed judges to force the renegotiation of mortgages between lenders and homeowners. TAMP, the program that is in effect now, has been an utter failure. Little of the program’s funding has actually been put to use, and foreclosure rates remain high. Obama has extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. And now worst of all, in talks over the raising of the debt ceiling he has allowed Republicans to hold the US economy hostage, and has used social security and medicare as bargaining chips.
Obama is willing to sign off on the damage to two of the most successful programs in American history. Obama may be considered a great leader, in the sense that he is willing to forge difficult compromises. But when I spent hundreds of hours volunteering for Obama in 2008, this is not what I expected. I voted for a president who would work to lower unemployment in a time of crisis. Youth unemployment is at 25%, not even considering the epidemic of underemployment. Now the talk in Washington is all about deficits; deficits brought on by the Bush tax cuts and spending on foreign wars. Obama refuses to take a stand for the unemployed and the underemployed. I would admire a president who tried and failed, but I cannot admire a president who never tried at all.
Cross-Posted from Students for a New American Politics
