Customer Reviews

Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics

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Street shows that Obama acted as a state legislator and has acted as a Senator in very predictable ways given the tens of millions of dollars he has received in campaign contributions from top officials in the corporate world, especially the financial industry. He pushes corporate friendly measures while alternately playing the populist on the campaign trail. As a state senator Obama held up a bill in committee that promised to deliver universal health care in Illinois and watered it down so that it merely called for the creation of a commission that would study how health care access might be expanded in the state. His effort was greatly appreciated by health care industry lobbyists. During the Democratic Primary, reflecting his strong backing by the financial industry, he refused to endorse caps on interest rates on mortgage loans. His only solution to the mortgage mess was to offer tax credits to home owners. As a US senator he supported Bush's tort reform bill that further protects corporate abusers. On the presidential campaign trail he claimed to have passed a Senate bill that would have required nuclear operators to immediately report even the slightest leak from their facilities. This was after a radioactive leak into a drinking water supply from an Illinois plant of Exelon, the largest nuclear power plant owner in the country and a leading supplier of Obama campaign contributions. Actually, Obama lied; the bill that he pushed ended up offering only guidance to local regulators as to how to deal with small leaks at nuclear plants that did not reach the threshold of being required to be reported (as the leak in Illinois did not). Meanwhile Obama argued for free trade pacts like NAFTA on his Senate campaign trail in 04', then later criticized them while running for president. He expressed a great deal of anguish about job transfers to Mexico from a Maytag plant in Galesburg Illinois. However Obama apparently did nothing to argue on the workers' behalf with Maytag director Henry Crown of Crown Investments, one of Obama's leading campaign contributors. It was reported earlier this year that Obama economic advisor (and chief economist of the Democratic Leadership Council) Austan Goolsbee had assured the Canadian Ambassador in Washington that Obama's jabs against NAFTA were merely campaign rhetoric and shouldn't' be taken seriously. In similar fashion, Obama bashes Wallmart, but his chief economic advisor, Jason Furman, is a Wallmart apologist.

And his Iraq War opposition? Street shows that Obama opposes the war not because it is a major crime against humanity but because it has been executed ineptly. He refuses to commit to an unconditional withdrawal of US troops. Street quotes Jeremy Scahill, among others, to the effect that the noises Obama has made about the withdrawal of all U.S. "combat" troops from Iraq are misleading. In reality only half of all US troops in Iraq are classified as "combat." Moreover Obama voted against a bill designed to ban the use of private security firms like Blackwater. This raises the possibility that Obama might expand the use of these private mercenaries in Iraq as he draws combat troops down. Street shows how Obama has foreign policy views that are well within the parameters of traditional American imperialism. Since becoming a US Senator he has unconditionally supported all of Israel's aggression and state terrorism. After Jeremiah Wright first took national stage, one of Obama's statements was to the effect that he abhorred any utterance (such as those of Wright's) that denigrated the great and holy United States.. Street notes the irony of this denunciation by Obama. After all, in 1967, Martin Luther King, Obama's supposed idol, called the United States the greatest force for violence in the world. King charged the US with being the ally of rich landowners and corporations against poor peasants throughout the world.

Street notes that Obama ignores the role of institutional racism in American life. Obama has nothing on his agenda for black neighborhoods besides mild Bill Cosby like lectures. He gives no indication that he will not repeat Bill Clinton's performance and reinforce the harshest and most racist aspects of our criminal justice system. Many black folk are excited that a black man is possibly going to be elected president of a society that has denigrated them for so long, but Obama gives no evidence that he will bring living wage jobs, or decent health care and education to black neighborhoods. Street expresses fear about the evidence that white people, including Obama supporters, believe that because so many white people are willing to vote a black guy into the White House, then this proves that racism is no longer a significant factor in American life.

I've enjoyed reading Dr. Street's commentaries on Z Communications on Obama and other issues from a genuinely radical perspective. Some leftist folks like Bill Fletcher Jr. and Barbara Ehrenreich have become horribly entranced by Obama while talk radio demagogues, Jerome Corsi, and other paranoid frauds portray Obama as an extreme socialist. It is only from Dr. Street, the Black Agenda Report and a few others that really penetrating, intelligent critiques have been produced. Dr. Street attacks Obama but admits that he has the potential to do some progressive things. But he notes that the Obama "movement" has to hold the Senator's feet to the fire if he gets elected. If they can't move beyond being entranced by his personal charisma, the Senator will feel free to adopt everything big business demands of him.

On a negative side, the prose in this book is often a bit stiff and the discussion at times lacks concision. I would have appreciated more and clearer detail in some places, for instances in discussion of Obama's quite bad non-single payer health care plan.

I was pleased that Street outlines a progressive agenda that a genuinely populist candidate could use to facilitate serious citizen involvement in our bourgeois democracy.

Paul Street is amazing at putting a left-wing critique on Obama that situates him firmly within the policy and practice of the ruling class at large. He also skillfully denounces the big-business-dominated electoral system that stifles real debate.

However, in the last analysis he fails to draw the conclusion all his data points toward: that radical and progressive voters should break decisively with the two-party system and support the strongest possible left challenge. Rather than advocate a vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney, he revives the lesser-evilist analysis that the Republicans are just too horrible not to vote for the democrat.

This is surprising, given the overall message of the book that change will not fundamentally come through electoral politics. Still, I highly recommend reading this for anyone capable of taking this excellent data and drawing their own conclusions.

Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss! Famous words by a famous rock band from long ago. It still has meaning today.

Paul is a genius. He saw Obama as a conservative before anyone.The detail and the back-up on his argument is flawless. Anyone else on the left who had the balls to say it the way it most of us now clearly know to be true? There are some (Chomsky, Pilger, etc.) but none devoting a full book to it. Based on his selling out the environment, public health care, joing the mass murderer club by upping the military budget, etc. Wall Street Obama is a con in more ways than one. Kids, it's time to reform the electoral system in the US, there is no third party that will ever compete under the current system and this book proves why. Read it if you want to be on the cutting edge of political know-how. Instant classic.

For progressives who want to know what went wrong. How did all that hope and change end up in a giant bank bailout, escalation in Afghanistan, and letting the torturers off the hook? Street wrote this prospective on Obama before the Nov 08 election and gets it right on just about every count.

Any liberal or leftie who had great expectations for Obama should have read this excellent, well documented, rational analysis of Obama's cautious record and conservative impulses. Read it now, and you'll get a better understanding of what the next few years will bring.

written before Obama was elected. Plenty of things that you will never hear in the MSM

There was another book written by another reporter also from Chicago, also a Democrat, David Mendell,"Obama From Promise to Power". These two books confirmed my instincts that Obama was unvetted, too inexperienced and lacked the life experience to be an effective Exceutive in Chief.

These writers came to the table liking Obama, as Democrats and seasoned Reporters. What I don't understand is how the Democratic Pary could run someone so green, so untested and clearly so radical for President. Both books showed many examples that Obama is too thin skinned, cannot take critism and is not open to other ideas.

The one thing that kept coming out is his undeveloped emotional maturity and his inability to listen to different views. There are numerous examples of why Obama should not even be a Senator but a President............NO Way.

He is a dangerous man.

While I agree that this a great book, I'm puzzled, because all of these type books are being put forward as if they are some kind of new and surprising revelation. They aren't. The fact is they are little more than what Ralph Nader has been telling us all along. He told us that Obama was owned by the corporations a long time ago. It should have been evident by the method obame used to raise Campaign contributions. While he used the internet to raise millions in small donations, he gave the impression that he was divorced from BIG MONEY. Not true. He also was taking millions more from the Health Care Industry. Is there any wonder that he took single payer off the table immediately and created a bill that is a great boon to the health insurers. If any one was watching, on the day the Heal Care was passed, all prices went up

The sad thing is that Nader has been marginalized for these very same views, mostly by the Democrats. Isn't time we recognized what real jewal this man has been for many years.