Uncle Tom + Manchurian Candidate = Obama

I can’t help thinking Obama is a melding of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s, Uncle Tom with the seminal movie, The Manchurian Candidate. Uncle Tom is the good ‘Negro’ who always cautions patience, compromise and deference towards society’s masters. Speak softly, don’t make waves, never challenge the powers that be. Obama always starts his negotiating from a compromise position and then gives away the store to the opposition. That’s because he’s really the Manchurian Candidate, a plant; the perfect foil sent by the enemy to further their own goals. He’s ideal for the task: he’s a totally likable fellow who’s got the rhetoric of progressivism down even when his policies are exactly opposite. He’s got all the right credentials and background and being of half African descent, nobody would ever guess he’s been programmed to work for the other side.

After three years on the job, governing from the center right, how could it be otherwise. The only thing that distinguishes his impact from that of a theoretical ‘Moderate Republican’ is his federal court picks, on every other score, it’s clear he’s doing the work of society’s controllers. He’s even been offering up cuts in ‘entitlements’ as ways to cut the deficit before the Repugs even demanded it. He’s given up the one best campaign issue for Dumbocrats, the one factor that has always distinguished the party from the opposition. Is he doing it because he believes he’s truly representing the will of the American people?


Not if you believe polling has any legitimacy since more than 80% of Americans say no cuts to Social Security and nearly 80% say no cuts to Medicare. Neither are really ‘entitlements’ since both are totally self-funded programs: to receive benefits requires having put money in. Medicaid, which is an entitlement because low-income people are entitled to benefits based solely on their citizenship, is supported by nearly 70%.


He consistently chooses the worst possible people for his economic team, like Jeffery Imelt, CEO of General Electric, to lead his Commission on Jobs and Competitiveness. GE has created a lot of jobs recently but they’re all outside the US. GE made $14 billion in profits last year but not only didn’t pay taxes on it but received a $3 billion refund. There are half a dozen progressive economists I could name offhand who would actually represent the American people rather than the elite, and do a far better job on jobs and competitiveness than Imelt. That’s Obama’s Uncle Tom coming out; he wants to be one of the guys, to be liked and respected by the bigtimers.


When his base, the people who worked and campaigned for him, try to push a progressive agenda he slams and slanders them as unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, radical, professional leftists. According to Mr. O, the more than 60% of Americans and 90% of self-identified Democrats who want single-payer health care, the same single-payer he advocated as a candidate, are asking for the impossible. It is much better in his mind to make the despised insurance industry central to his health plan, thus his Manchurian Candidate side. He doesn’t want to upset or incur the wrathful opposition of the big guys so he’s happy to settle for a half-assed plan.


Problem is, you don’t inspire your constituency with half-assism. He’s made it very clear that he thinks insulting his base improves his electoral chances with independents; after all, if you’re a progressive, who’re you going to vote for, Rick Perry? That may be true, except you don’t work for or campaign for someone who shits on you while kowtowing to right wing nuttery. You don’t show any enthusiasm for a leader who stops at nothing to protect and coddle thieving banksters while watching obliviously as millions of Americans are kicked out of their homes by those same heartless fat cats. Okay, he’s not totally oblivious to the plight of average Americans; he does mention them in passing now and then while he’s haplessly, fecklessly betraying them. Anyway, if 80% of Americans are opposed to cuts in Social Security and Medicare, who are the independents he’s trying to appeal to?


His latest jobs plan is another in a long line of policy farces. Sixty percent of the plan goes to tax breaks which will have very minimal effect on jobs. If you give the average American a tax break today, they will most likely pay down debt or buy something made in China; how does that create jobs? And since he has no fight in him, he’ll get the tax breaks because the Repugs like that part and give up the actual job creation part because they don’t.


He’s doing the job his enemy controllers sent him to do, and most American readers of this post will hold their noses and vote for him; but not me, as long as the results are essentially the same then it’s better to have a village-idiot Repug in the job than an enemy plant who talks the talk of empathy and caring while stabbing you in the back.