One step forward two steps back

By Ron Beasley

I'm not really surprised that Obama is not  the agent of change he tried to convince us he was during the nomination process.  The corporate media would not have let him past the starting line if he was.  Steve Soto looks at Obama and asks a very good question - Where's The Change:

Over the weekend, two major newspapers came to roughly the same conclusion about Barack Obama’s behavior since he vanquished Hillary Clinton as a new kind of change candidate: he’s moving to the center, or beyond. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post took a look at Obama’s recent comments on last week’s Supreme Court decisions, his FISA flip-flop, his NAFTA-won’t-be-changed flip-flop, and concluded that rather than being a “change we can believe in” candidate, he is redefining himself as a safe centrist candidate.

Matt Stoller did an outstanding job Saturday pointing out that despite the rhetoric, Obama isn’t really an outsider running as a change candidate progressive, but rather as a front person for Beltway Democrats from K Street. I’ll go a step further: there are two major camps in the party, the Clinton wing and the anti-Clintons. Neither camp is progressive, and Obama is simply the salesman for the anti-Clinton, Daschle status quo. Yet he has taken over the party, leaving progressivism dead in the water.

Steve concludes with this:

I suspect that after another month of Obama’s jettisoning of anything looking like progressive change, there will be more and more people like me whose vote for him this November is really just a vote against Bush's third term.

I'm not sure I'm even ready to go that far.  In the comments section of Steve's post I wrote:

Maybe a third Bush term is what it will take. I may just sit this one out even if it means McCain wins.

In reality I may consider voting for Bob Barr.  I disagree with the Libertarians on many issues but on what I consider the two most important issues they and Bob Barr are the only ones who get it right.  The first of the issues is the occupation of Iraq but even more important is the erosion of civil liberties and the slide into a totalitarian state.  If we continue to move in the direction of a Soviet style police state the other issues won't really matter and Obama has given me no reason to trust him on this issue and I never did trust Hillary.

Bob Barr understands the politics of the two party system.  He has been asked by Republicans to not run and he had this to say:

"What they say is, 'It's not that we disagree with what you're doing, Barr. It's not that we don't understand. We do understand, and we actually agree with what you're saying, but we don't want to vote against a Republican because that might help the Democrat,' " Barr said of the talks he has had with those who want him to quit.

"It's all about partisan politics. It's not about substance. It's not about principles, which is what I and the Libertarian Party stand for. It's all about partisan politics. That's what has to change and that's one of the reasons I'm running."

That applies equally to both parties and I for one am not going to play that game anymore.  The Democratic nominee will have to prove to me he will be different than the Republican.  Obama is moving in the wrong direction.

Comments

[Klaus]

The Democratic nominee will have to prove to me he will be different than the Republican.

How about the having the Republican nominee proving himself different than the Democrat? Will that do? So how about this:

Question: What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?

Obama: If we don't get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we've seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It's not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that's required to find alternative fuels. I think it's very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.

McCain: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.

It's a two-party system, which sucks, but there it is. Even the socialists voted for Chirac over Le Pen, because they knew there was a difference between a regular politican and a complete tosser.