The Obama Effect: The demise of the Democratic Party and a gift to the country

The “Bubble” of false consciousness afflicting the American nation may be at last on the verge of deflating.

By Michael Rectenwald, Founder

Dateline: 12/11/09 [print_link]

Obama in Oslo. One of the most ill-advised Nobels in history. The choice served to bare the class nature of these Nobel committees.

The evidence that Obama is every bit the representative of the corporate oligarchy and no less a corporate shill than the rest has been mounting for nearly a year-or well before the election for the cognoscenti. Only fanatics could have heard Obama’s speech on Afghanistan and failed to hear the resonances of Bush. But the writing was on the wall over a year ago when Obama supported the bailouts of the banks and brokerage firms that leveraged their destruction of the economy on the foreclosures of homes. Few could miss the fact that the health care reform bill, should it ever pass, will be another unwarranted and gratuitous bailout-this one of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Obama diverted the legitimate anger and energy for real change and scuttled it under the fraudulent tent of the Democratic Party. He led millions to the cliff; they are now falling off in droves. Those who’ve not quite gotten to the edge screech and yell: “Wait! Give him time!” Those who gave warning from the outset are not busy casting nets. We welcome the demise of the Democratic Party.

And that is exactly the Obama Effect. Every last tissue of belief in the Democrats should by now be shred and cast aside. The Democrats are no less the corporate bailers and militarists than the Republicans. They hand trillions to the banks and brokerage firms; they dissolve union contracts and send the workers to the dogs; their unmanned drones bomb Pakistan, killing and maiming innocents and displacing tens of thousands; they sell the same lies about the wars-that they have to do with terrorism or democracy rather than oil and other resources-as their predecessors; they fund the very enemy that they claim to fight; they keep up the same contracts with Blackwater and its successors; they vote for the same war funding; they carry out the same secret renditions; they sanction and continue the same spying on US citizens; they exonerate torturers and war criminals from the previous administration; they are war criminals in complicity with other war criminals.

For those who hadn’t quite gotten the point before, thanks to Obama’s euphemistic and high-flown rhetorical excesses, no one can now believe that another Democrat, even an apparently more “left” one, will ever deliver a thing that he or she promises. Obama has filled the Democratic hot air balloon to the limit and it has burst. It falls like a failing parachute along with those who trusted it.

Despite all of this, or rather because of it, Obama has given, albeit unwittingly, a great gift to the majority. He has shown those who still have brainwaves that nevermore should anyone other than a corporate shill believe in a Democrat for any positive change in terms of the vast majority. The one thing that Obama has changed: the credulity accorded Democratic demagoguery.

Am I merely opening the door for the Republicans to fill the vast void of credibility left by the Democrats, you ask? To answer requires some clarification. The Democrats are one of two levers by which the ruling oligarchy controls the political process to their nearly exclusive advantage. This isn’t a new development-it has merely become too obvious to ignore. The Democrats have left this void. It is not my doing. I recommend that it be filled by a working-class party movement-not a green party, not a libertarian party, not an “independent” party, but a party that is aligned with the vast majority-a party of the workers- workers of farms, of factories, of schools, of construction sites, of the auto industry, of the retail industry, of the research firms, of the institutions of higher education, of banks, of city and other governmental offices-of those who make their livings not from profit but from wages. Every other party in every other country has ended up being just another lever of the ruling oligarchy.

Only a working-class majority can overcome the power elite and end the wars. Only a working-class party can change the socio-political and economic conditions. Only a majority party can deliver to itself health care coverage. Only a majority party can save the environment. Only a majority party and order can put production on a rational basis for their own benefit and not the benefit of a tiny minority.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Obama. He has finally dashed and destroyed the false hopes in the Democratic Party and the political system as it stands. Obama was the false prophet of change. Now let the real change begin.

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