Is Obama a conscious "sell out"?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I had this conversation a while ago with a friend who is a socialist, at least somewhat, but has some sympathies for Obama.I mentioned how horrible Obama's policies are, supporting finance capital at the expense of the working class. My friend pointed out that Obama can't be that "evil", after all he was a left wing community organizer, read Marx and Frantz Fanon, and in his early days had leftist "street cred". According to my friend, by my reasoning Obama is a sleazy sell out.

I mentioned that a politician's personal beliefs don't matter, its the broader class forces which determine consciousness.There are many cases in the US of people starting out as leftists and then, given the lure of money, power, or influence, gravitating rightwards, however they justify this to themselves.

Still, Obama is highly intelligent. At some level he must understand what's going on. He;s not a moron like Bush. I'd be surprised if he hadn't read David Harvey, occaisionally read Counterpunch or checked out the WSW.

What's the story with Obama? Is he hoping he'll get lucky? Is he a "sell out?"

[9]

I had this conversation a while ago with a friend who is a socialist, at least somewhat, but has some sympathies for Obama.I mentioned how horrible Obama's policies are, supporting finance capital at the expense of the working class. My friend pointed out that Obama can't be that "evil", after all he was a left wing community organizer, read Marx and Frantz Fanon, and in his early days had leftist "street cred". According to my friend, by my reasoning Obama is a sleazy sell out.

I mentioned that a politician's personal beliefs don't matter, its the broader class forces which determine consciousness.There are many cases in the US of people starting out as leftists and then, given the lure of money, power, or influence, gravitating rightwards, however they justify this to themselves.

Still, Obama is highly intelligent. At some level he must understand what's going on. He;s not a moron like Bush. I'd be surprised if he hadn't read David Harvey, occaisionally read Counterpunch or checked out the WSW.

What's the story with Obama? Is he hoping he'll get lucky? Is he a "sell out?"

It doesn't matter what someone's personal beliefs are, as you've said. He is managing a capitalist state. He could profess to believe in violent revolution and quote Marx in all of his speeches or he could be a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and talk about how "God hates Jews and F*gs" - it wouldn't make much difference; it wouldn't change his position.
He's not a sell-out, though. To say that he's a sell-out implies that he was something more than a liberal to begin with. But he wasn't. He has always been a liberal. Maybe he was a more radical liberal in his youth, but a liberal nonetheless. I know a lot of liberals who have read some Marx, and a lot more who have read Fanon.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There are a lot of political hoops for people to jump through to get to the point where the ruling class will back them. There are ideas or behaviors that would automatically disqualify someone (in the ruling class's eyes) from running or gaining the nomination for one of the two parties. So there was a lot of scrutiny on Obama regarding Israel - lots of editorials questioning his commitment and so Obama had to come back and reassure the ruling class and sell support of Israel to the public. Obama was forced to prove to the ruling class that his candidacy would not let the racial genie out of the bottle in the US: he stressed his post-racial views and his willingness to go to black churches during the campaign and blame black fathers for black oppression and inequality. That wasn't enough, so then he also had to publicly throw his ex-minister under the bus. Even after the election, the media hounded him for saying that the cop that arrested prof. gates "acted stupidly".

So unless you are running in a 3rd party or whatever, there is no way for a mainstream party candidate not to align his positions with what the ruling class expects.

I don't think people like Obama think of themselves as "sell-outs" I think they think of themselves as "realistic" politicians. Really it's the logic of "changing the system from the inside" playing out; it's the system that ends up changing them, not the other way around. Anyone who wants to play the game (in other words, the system) has to accept certain rules except the rules are crooked and made to preserve the system.

More specifically, with any government, the needs of the ruling class will always be louder than the needs of anyone else in society. Obama has countless people telling him what the "realistic" options for the war and economy are - these people all work for banks or private companies or the pentagon. Obama actually said it himself when he gave his acceptance speech; he said something like "If you want to see this change happen, you will have to go out and make us (politicians) change things". So even when change does happen to come from within the system, it is only because pressure from OUTSIDE the system opened the space for the ruling class to feel that it needed to allow the popular change.

[Adi Shankara]

It seems like Barack Obama took the sentiments of the aspiring proletariat, wooed them with the future as it would be under Marx, and lied to them by stabbing them in the back with capitalism.

[CaldroMaginer]

Obama is just as bad as the next Democrat. Promising a socialist utopia, then doing absolutely nothing. Sending tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and authorizing off-shore drilling in the Atlantic is not leftism.

[Sir Comradical]

Obama is in no way a sell out, because he never really changed now did he?

[Chimurenga.]

Promising a socialist utopia

When did he ever say this?

[Dimentio]

Obama is just as bad as the next Democrat. Promising a socialist utopia, then doing absolutely nothing. Sending tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and authorizing off-shore drilling in the Atlantic is not leftism.

To be frank, he hasn't promised anyone a socialist utopia. He promised a transparent government and a reconciliation between republicans and democrats, as well as reforming healthcare and sending more troops to Afghanistan. Sometimes I think he got elected because people did hear what they want to hear.

Like this: A woman (America) who has an abusive boyfriend (Bush) changes boyfriend because she has fallen in love with this "nice guy" (Obama) and almost start to worship him. Then she realises that he isn't prince charming and goes all hate on him. :lol:

[The Idler]

I'd be surprised if he hadn't read David Harvey, occaisionally read Counterpunch or checked out the WSW.
You gotta be kidding me? The guys at WSWS have been opposing him since 2007 (http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/obam-f13.shtml). Likewise other left media including Counterpunch since Feb 08 (http://bit.ly/2n7k2O). Obama was never more than a liberal.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I understand these left media would never support Obama. (Although Cockburn supported Ron Paul for a while). I thought that Obama would, on an intellectual level, understand the arguments of the left.The other posts cleared that up for me.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Effective sovereignty in the US is vested in the Senate, not the presidency. 100 millionaires, with the most backward-ass, cracker-ass reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie dispoportionately represented. Obama could be Little Mary Trotskyist Sunshine. He still can't do hardly a damn thing independently. Lookit gays in the military. Damn obvious thing that the bourgeoisie supports, but it's held back over the objections of a few swamp-barons from small states.

The things a president CAN do independently is shit like warrantless wiretapping and starting a secret bombing campaign on Cambodia, or dealing arms and funnelling the money to rightist guerillas. I.e. when he drags us further right, there are no checks on him; when he wishes to drag us further left, he needs a permission slip from Lindsay Graham every two steps.

The American system of government is fucked even from the point of view of managing the bourgeoisie's affairs properly.

[The Idler]

I understand these left media would never support Obama. (Although Cockburn supported Ron Paul for a while). I thought that Obama would, on an intellectual level, understand the arguments of the left.The other posts cleared that up for me.
IMHO the only people who fully understand the left, tend to become members of it. Which would suggest to me, Obama does not fully grasp the left ideology, if at all.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The American system of government is fucked even from the point of view of managing the bourgeoisie's affairs properly.I don't know about this. When they want a war - they mobilize huge amounts of personnel and resources in a matter of weeks. When the ruling class wants billions of tax dollars to shore-up cracks in their system, TARP is passed in a week or so. Healthcare? Unemployment extensions? Relief for foreclosed homeowners? When the population needs things, that's when politicians suddenly throw their hands up and say the system moved too slowly or that there are too many procedural hoops to jump or too much opposition.

People say governmnet moves slowly and this is not true, it moves quickly when the ruling class wants something and is fairly united in that desire. It moves slowly when the population wants something that the ruling class doesn't.

As for gays in the military, I think they know there are many homosexuals already serving; the only debate is over weather they can have the right to be open in the military.

If Obama really wanted the things he claimed to support, he could have used his huge popularity and the incredible army of grassroots organizers he mobilized for his campaign to ram his agenda through. Instead, Obama demobilized his "troops" after the election and talked about bi-partisan negotiations and making friends with the Republicans (who had an approval rating of like 25-30% at the time of the election). Obama, by demoralizing his own base, is the cause of the tea-party emergence and the weakness of an organized response from liberals. He wants to be Bill Clinton when liberals want him to be FDR; he wants to be a triangulating centrist at a time when the population is bitterly polarized... and this has allowed the right to re-gain the initiative. Personally I think this was calculated because I think the ruling class was afraid of the kinds of people who were activated and mobilized by the promises of change that Obama seemed to offer.

At the time of the town-hall meetings, if Obama had passed card-check for unions and kept his organizers in place, he could have easily sent grassroots forces, union rank and file, IN FAVOR of health-care out to the town-halls and they would have outnumbered the Tea-crazies 5 to 1. But since Obama wanted to sell a compromised version of health-care that would merely tweek the current system, I think the administration thought it would be too risky to send rank and file unionists and the like (who have been advocating UNIVERSAL healthcare for decades) into the battle (some unions sent some meager forces to "peacfully" protest at the town-halls, way too late). If the left had been mobilized and got a sense of their power to drive the agenda (as the tea-parties did) then it may have been too hard to put the genie back in the bottle and make people settle for the BS pro-insurance indust. Obamacare.