A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The Obama regime has been remarkably successful – in pushing forward a Republican agenda. Obama, especially, has “moved with such elegance and poise, his fans forgot that he was dancing with a partner: the GOP.” Together, they have starved the federal beast and forged a consensus on the inevitability of austerity. Let the gruesome-twosome take a bow.
The Sequestration Tango: Obama and GOP Dance Through the Graveyard of the New Deal
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
“Austerity is the order of the day, and no one is more responsible for that catastrophe than Obama.”
Barack Obama’s mission has always been to destroy the left wing of the Democrats in order to consummate a grand bargain – a melding – of the corporatists in both major parties. He entered national politics as a newly-minted member of the Democratic Leadership Council
He packed his presidential team with the same gang of finance capitalists that Bill Clinton had allied with to consummate his Grand Bargain of 1999: the deregulation of the banks. Obama assumed the presidency with the economy in ashes as a result of what Clinton had wrought a decade before. Immediately, Obama turned the music back up, and the Corporate Tango began anew, full of choreographed emotion, stage-managed drama and canned passion. But the dancers – Obama and the Republicans – were all going in the same, preprogrammed direction: a backwards, counter-clockwise promenade to the Right, a dance through the cemetery of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
“Obama was playing the old Republican game of ‘starve the beast.’”
Obama moved with such elegance and poise, his fans forgot that he was dancing with a partner: the GOP. In 2011, following Obama’s lead, the loving couple initiated their sequestration, a timed sequence of moves that would ultimately force the gutting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with a whole host of discretionary social programs.
As is required when doing the Corporate Tango, Obama lied through his teeth, swearing during his third presidential debate that he never proposed part of the grand plan matched Obama’s 2009 projections
Polls show that the Republicans are getting the blame for sequestration, but the stock market is hitting new heights now that austerity has triumphed, and that’s all that really matters to the moneyed classes, whether they are wearing Republican red or Democratic blue. They have won – at least until the next economic collapse, or until a new opposition to the rule of capital can be constructed. That will not happen anywhere near the event horizon of the Democratic Party, which has followed Barack Obama into the black hole of Wall Street. Once you go Goldman Sachs, you never go back.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
Black Agenda Report gives special attention to events in Palestine, as Israel continues its occupation of Gaza and practices the war crime of exacting collective punishment on a civilian population.
The colonized and the marginalized are often condemned by the same forces that oppress them, or they are asked to utter condemnation at the whims of their rulers.
The Black Agenda Report editorial team is grateful to our readers for their support and patience. Last week we were unable to publish BAR due to circumstances beyond our control.
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