When I think back to 2008 and how things have turned out it depresses me. President Obama had such an opportunity to be a catalyst for real change but opted to go a different route. Not often have my feelings on this subject been summed up so succinctly but Cornell West is able to do so in this Salon article Cornel West: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency”
Cornell West sums up some much so well in this article but I think the key point:
...the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.
I agree whole hardheartedly that we needed a Lincoln an FDR someone to take the moral high ground, the holy ground and we didn't get that. I do feel that we as a country and as a party "got played."
Cornel West touches on so many good points that this article is a must read by any democrat or progressive. He touches on what many of us felt was the beginning of the failure to go in the needed direction with the selection of his economic team, with the Rubin crowd, with Sumemrs, with Geithner. With Holder unable to force accountability thus forcing real change.
I think the sadness that Mr. West expresses in regards to the future is something we all should think hard about:
I think a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression. Because the levels of disillusionment are so deep. Thank God for the new wave of young and prophetic leadership, as with Rev. William Barber, Philip Agnew, and others. But look who’s around the presidential corner. Oh my God, here comes another neo-liberal opportunist par excellence. Hillary herself is coming around the corner. It’s much worse. And you say, “My God, we are an empire in decline.” A culture in decay with a political system that’s dysfunctional, youth who are yearning for something better but our system doesn’t provide them democratic venues, and so all we have are just voices in the wilderness and certain truth-tellers just trying to keep alive some memories of when we had some serious, serious movements and leaders.
Please read the interview in it's entirety, I think it sums up the last six years, current status and short term future brilliantly. Even though 2016 is far away, we all are about to get played again.