Now that we are on the eve of the apocalypse, or Trump’s
inauguration for those of you who aren’t political, can we now look at things
clearly? Because we cannot continue to look at the world through rose-colored
glasses or behind veils of denial any longer. The stakes have simply gotten too
high. All I keep hearing lately is about how much people are going to miss
President Obama. Ask the people of Yemen how much they’ll miss him between bombings.
While you’re at it, ask pretty much any country in that region and you might
not get the sentimental rhetoric we’re hearing from many Americans this week.
Let’s be honest, a lot of that sentiment is a direct result of the stark
contrast in personalities between Mr. Obama and the guy coming in next. Because
of Trump and how he is, it makes Obama seem like he’s more than he is and to me
he’s far less than that, politically speaking.
We can talk about Barack Obama’s wonderful exit speech last
week but in reality I tuned him out a while back. I voted for him twice, one
time enthusiastically (2008) and one time reluctantly (2012). The fact of the
matter is I’ve never been more disappointed in a politician in my lifetime, partly
because I feel like I was duped by him, since his message of hope and his many
promises were never kept and partly because he himself set the bar incredibly
high and failed to live up to it. He didn’t even come close. Yes he’s classy,
extremely intelligent, an amazing orator, has a great temperament and he even
seems like a cool dude, but as a president he’s failed miserably to deliver the
hope and change he promised and had us believing he’d deliver. For the most
part, he’s just delivered more of the same. Slightly better than George W. Bush wasn't what we signed up for. Why else would the nation feel like
change was needed again? Think back to January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated…
do you feel more hopeful now than on that day? Do you feel like the things that
needed to change have changed? I feel like in some ways we are worse now because progress wasn't made. Yes I
have health insurance, but since they didn’t go with a public option and kept
private insurance companies involved, Obamacare hasn’t been as efficient or as
effective as advertised, leaving the door open for extreme criticism from the
other side and from those whose premiums keep going up. Yes it’s been a godsend
for some, myself included but this year, instead of having several choices for
which insurance I want, there was only 1 choice to “choose” from in the
“marketplace”. The private insurance companies weren’t seeing enough profits
through Obamacare so some of them took their ball and went home. There are
many flaws in the ACA and now instead of fixing them and improving the imperfect
but necessary program I fear the entire system will get discarded by the
Republicans and IF it’s replaced at all, it will likely be replaced with some
bogus voucher program that they’ve been talking about for the last 8 years that
nobody but they and their business buddies want. Speaking of them, income
inequality in this country is worse than it’s been since the 1920’s. This did
not improve during Obama’s 2 terms. Major companies continue to merge into supercompanies and rich people still buy elections. Not a single crook who helped to destroy our economy before Obama's arrival did any jail time despite their business model being nothing more than fraud... are you kidding me?!? Civil Rights and voting rights seem to be
evaporating every year in favor of increased rights and power for the corporate sector and the
oligarchs. Crooked corporations were bailed out and are now stronger than they
were before the recession but nearly half of Americans live in poverty. When do
the people get bailed out? In a lot of ways, things are worse than
they were in 2008. Why else would there be such a backlash in the form of
Trump?
Fact: Obama is the first president EVER to have troops at
war somewhere in the world for an entire 8-year
presidency. Why? Remind me why we're doing it again? What are we fighting for? Why are we
still there? Why are we constantly trying to topple regimes? Why are we so upset that
other countries are trying to meddle in our elections? We’ve been doing it for
decades! Perhaps the attempts to undermine our democracy have occurred as a direct consequence of our thirst for imperialism and our continued attempts to rule the world like some power hungry red, white and blue global dictator. Since the events of 9/11 and subsequent response we have been at
perpetual war over in the Middle East. In 2 months we’re
coming up on the 14th anniversary of the United States having troops over
there. You think all that war and fighting and arming of rebels is cheap? All those trillions used to fight abroad to protect the rich man’s lies and the
rich man’s oil interests could have been used to provide public college and
health care to citizens and there would have been plenty left over to modernize
and repair our crumbling infrastructure. Notice I didn’t say “free” college or
“free” health care. It’s time to drop that tired narrative. If you are a
citizen of this country you have rights and you absolutely deserve certain things,
especially from the richest country in the history of this world. Other major
countries do this without issue and strangely their health care systems are more efficient and far less costly than others, hmmm. When you privatize the crap
out of what should be essential systems and programs, all you are doing is
creating a systemic division between haves and have nots, splitting up citizens
in the name of profit. In terms of spending for the greater good, other
countries see this as a moral obligation to their citizens; ours sees it as
radical fantasy, a pipe dream while they dream about more pipelines. The fact
of the matter is that trillions of “our” dollars have inexplicably been spent on things
other than US, for terrible reasons and with many Americans dying both here and
abroad as a result. Why people aren’t more up in arms over this when cities
don’t have clean drinking water and several places suffer the effects of an
antiquated infrastructure is beyond me. The naked truth is that our leadership
has failed us, the Democrats especially. I blame the Democrats more than the
Republicans because we know what we’re getting from the Republicans. They don’t
hide it. Their playbook for several decades is to make the rich
richer, privatize everything, worship golden idols, shrink social domestic spending, bloat military spending, tell everyone else what to
do and piss on the poor. That’s trickle-down economics folks. We’ve already
proven it doesn’t work. We’ve already proven that Republicans by and large do
not do things with the best interests of everyone in mind, just the chosen few. Fighting
for the rest of us was supposed to be the Democrats job. And don’t get me
wrong, they still claim that they do this, but sadly their actions in recent
years show otherwise and the results are telling. See the recent election
trends for proof. Again, if Obama was so good, why have we gone in such a drastic, opposite direction? People are hurting, they're scared and they feel like no one is there for them so when a sleazy con man with no morals actually speaks to them and pretends to share the same values, the people are so happy that someone is actually speaking to them and for them that they'll overlook his historic flaws and come together in support of their new paper champion. You have to remember that values unite people while issues divide. If you speak to people's values, you can win. And win they did leaving the Democratic Party searching for answers.
Let’s face it, the Democratic party is in trouble, big
trouble. This is nothing new, but Trump may have been the coup de grace. We can
talk about Gerrymandering, fake news, voter suppression, the so called liberal
media and all this stuff but I saw a statistic recently that there are only 4
states in the entire country that have a democratic governor AND democratic
state legislature. ONLY 4! That means in 46 states Republicans have control of
one or both! That’s not winning folks. Do you remember in 2012 when Romney lost
and the popular narrative was that the Republicans were out of touch with voters and
regular people? That’s a half truth because BOTH parties are out of touch,
clearly listening more to the money and the elites in their parties rather than the people. It’s taken a while but I
think we’re starting to notice, hence the incredible popularity of Bernie
Sanders and Donald Trump last year. One party establishment was just better at
squashing their populist “outbreak”. While they succeeded in beating back the
challenge of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement he represents the
Democrats have failed in almost every other endeavor. In fact, I think it’s
safe to say the Democratic party is now a joke, but they don’t get it. Don’t
believe me? In 2009 when Obama took office, there were 10 more Democratic
Governors, 70 more Democratic representatives in the House and several more
Democratic senators. In all the Democrats have lost over 900 federal and state
seats since Obama was sworn in. What we have right now is the greatest concentration of
Republican power since the time of Lincoln!
If you want to go even further, if you eliminate the votes of the 2 biggest
coastal states, California and New York, both of which
are decidedly blue, Trump beat Hillary by over 3 million votes in the popular
vote of the remaining 48. They can point fingers and cast blame all they want
but the reality is that the Democrats simply have lost the people. How else could you explain such results? The party’s
handpicked successor represented more of the same and in a country with an
enormous appetite for change, it says a lot that the people would rather choose
a rich celebrity with no experience over a highly qualified but deeply flawed
candidate who represented the worst of the party when it came to corporate
connections and who lacked a real message. Trump and Sanders had strong
messages that resonated with the people. We can debate how authentic that message was when it comes to Trump but he was smart enough to tell the people
what they wanted to hear in a way that made them believe him. He spoke to the people while Democrats spoke at them. Try as the tone-deaf
Democrats could, even with President Obama strongly behind Hillary Clinton, the
fractured, fallen party could not beat arguably the worst candidate in history.
Think about that. For something that unbelievable to happen I think it’s safe to say that the
party was not and is not in tune with the people. Instead of blaming
millennials, the Russians, Wikileaks, Bernie or busters, racists, white men, Faux
News or whatever, just stop. Stop and think about what’s happened, be honest
about why it did and fix it Democrats. If you refuse to accept this
responsibility one of 2 things will happen: a grassroots fight for a 3rd
major party could be on the way that will further weaken the Dems or the Republicans will earn even more seats in the
near future so that their majority will become so lopsided that the Bill of
Rights and many of our other freedoms might be at risk! It's hard to swallow but what’s done is done. The
Democratic establishment has no one to blame but themselves for losing their way
but what we need now is a dramatic reversal before it's too late. We can't go to them, they must come back to us.
Now that we are in President Obama’s final moments it’s natural
to look back, reflect, take account of what was, what is and what could have
been. I’m going to look back at Barack Obama as an incredibly historic but
failed president, who could have been one of the greatest of all time but instead
presided over the potential death of the Democratic Party as we know it and
because he and they have failed us, we are looking into the teeth of the beast.
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