Obama Validates His Leftist Critics
One of the most debated issues between the center left and leftists throughout Obama’s presidency and after was whether or not Obama is a progressive. Leftists had a clear cut case about how Obama’s policies resembled more of a centrist or even center right administration at first glance. His healthcare bill was a mix of Romneycare and ideas from the Heritage Foundation. His stimulus bill was smaller than comparable efforts and riddled with tax cuts. He declined to prosecute a single banker on Wall Street and his financial reform bill left banks largely untouched. His foreign policy involved only expanding our involvement in the Middle East rather than exiting. Outside of the Medicaid expansion, the safety net languished. As Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements came out of his presidency, he spent more time chastising activists than utilizing that energy towards any good policy goals.
But the center left would often respond to all this that Obama is secretly a progressive but for several reasons, the Republicans, needing to appease the establishment and media, or just constrained by the way politics works. If anything has shattered that notion, it’s been Obama’s post-presidency, which has highlighted exactly what Obama will be doing now that he’s out of office.
Obama understandably took a brief exit from the public eye after leaving the presidency, but his return and plans for the future show that he clearly is not a progressive lying in wait. His foundation’s board is full of corporate figures from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He pushed his former Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez, to run for DNC chair and actively lobbied for him against progressive Keith Ellison. He signed a 60 million dollar book deal and just a day after he talked about the influence of special interests in Washington, it was reported that he’ll be giving a speech to a global finance firm for 400,000 dollars, echoing Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street after her time as Secretary of State.
There have been absurd defenses of Obama getting paid by an industry that he was completely negligent in regulating throughout his administration. There has been an attempt to use some pseudo-woke rhetoric about a black man deserving to be paid for his labor and this is about white leftists not wanting a private black citizen to be paid. It is a shameless deflection meant to provide cover for Obama’s insufficient policies. The recession in 2008 and subsequent foreclosures decimated black wealth and expanded the racial wealth gap even more. This gap is worse than ever, and there was hardly an effort by Obama to change this. To portray Obama’s speech as some sort of black power action rather than only approving of the intersection of white supremacy and capitalism is completely wrong and disgusting.
He campaigned specifically on reigning in Wall Street and there are countless stories and reports of how Obama went easy on them when he could have done more, even outside of the weak Dodd-Frank legislation. Obama spoke during his campaign and in office about the corrosive effect of special interests and how the revolving door only made politics worse. For him to then do this speech after he leaves office feeds into the obvious conclusion that Democrats are beholden to Wall Street and the donor class.
Obama is not putting all these resources towards a vehicle of stopping Trump but his own foundation. The goals of the foundation are all about contributing to a revitalized citizenry and this has been the theme of everything he has said since leaving office. But in an increasingly political world, these vague platitudes only help those that seek to uphold the status quo. If we look at past foundations, they’re almost never outlets of progressive government reforms or efforts, but simply another vehicle to connect the ruling and corporate class together. The argument that he’s a private citizen is shameless when Obama clearly is going to still be taking political actions even though his presidency is over, and someone with as much influence as a former President should not simply be let off the hook.
Obama is incredibly influential, and still is viewed positively by most of the country as well as the Democratic base. The Democratic Party is weak and fractured and Obama is one of the few figures that can animate young people even if many became disillusioned after his failed campaign promises. If Obama still is a major leader in the party as Nancy Pelosi said, he should lead then. As seen from Trump’s presidency, upholding arbitrary norms is not a viable or even acceptable option when opposing him. Obama could put his weight behind a multitude of efforts that would animate the base, and yes he could even get paid for them. But Obama doesn’t really have a huge interest in that, because he’s just not a progressive, and his actions prove that.
8 years ago, I was 16 years old and witnessed the financial crisis impact my family and others around me, but Obama and the fact he was in office gave me hope that he was going to enact real changes. The subsequent years didn’t just disappoint me in terms of the results, but also shook the very confidence and trust I had put in him. I didn’t just watch as bankers got off free while income inequality grew, but I doubted whether Obama believed anything he said. With time I could better see the writing on the wall and while I still continued to stay passionate about politics, I can see why my whole generation has become hostile to politicians after what Obama did, and why they weren’t willing to turn out for a candidate that had such close ties to Wall Street. This speech only further cements that perception and his effect on young people.
