Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 1,808
Its the asset stripper versus the empty suit ( mk 2 )
"...
In the 24 hours since Wednesday night’s debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the American media has been filled with commentary on the failure of Obama to conduct a serious defense of his record or mount an effective attack on his opponent.
The organs of the Republican right, like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, have hailed the debate as a vindication of the Romney candidacy, signaling his transformation from the hapless loser of the week before into a credible standard-bearer for their favored policies of shredding the social safety net to fund even greater tax cuts for the super-rich.
Such arguments explain nothing. Romney is still just as reactionary and his policies just as unpopular the day after the debate as they were the day before. Moreover, his performance Wednesday night, from his brazen lies about his plan to cut taxes for the wealthy to his incomprehensible reference to “trickle-down government,” was no more cogent or convincing than Obama’s.
Liberal pundits were up in arms, venting their disappointment at Obama’s lackluster performance. Their explanation for the debacle explained nothing either: Obama had made a poor tactical choice in deciding not to bring up his rival’s record as an asset stripper and corporate raider at Bain Capital or Romney’s disparaging comments before an audience of wealthy contributors about the “47 percent” of Americans who are supposedly “dependent on government” and “believe they are entitled” to healthcare, food and housing.
In part, the intensity of their disappointment with Obama’s capitulation reveals their own self-delusion. They seem to have believed their own hype that this right-wing bourgeois politician was the champion of “hope” and “change.”
Equally bankrupt were the incessant references in the pro-Obama media, like the New York Times, to the president’s “professorial” demeanor and approach. Obama was no less vapid and pedantic in 2008, when the corporate-controlled media hailed him, without the slightest justification, as a superb orator who was moving millions.
Among the most apoplectic responses came from MSNBC’s Chris Mathews, who exploded “Where was Obama tonight?” as if the man on the stage in Denver and the occupant of the White House were two different people.
In the debate, however, the real Obama was on display: a man with no significant political background or career, much less independent ideas. An individual who had passed through no real struggles before he was picked up and promoted as the symbol of “change,” while remaining a loyal servant of the state.
No doubt, for someone whose meteoric political rise has depended on rich patrons, being roundly attacked by someone from that social layer was disconcerting.
...
If Obama were a genuine opponent of Wall Street privilege and criminality, having Mitt Romney as his challenger would be a godsend. As the longtime proprietor of a major private equity firm, Romney is the personification of the social layer that wrecked the US and world economy and plunged millions of workers into unemployment and destitution.
But Obama is a political servant of that same social layer. Face to face with Romney, he cannot indict him for the 2008 crash, because that would entail indicting the financial aristocracy itself, and making an appeal to social forces that all the bourgeois political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, regard with hostility and fear.
more at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/pers-o05.shtml
Comrade Stalin
"...
In the 24 hours since Wednesday night’s debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the American media has been filled with commentary on the failure of Obama to conduct a serious defense of his record or mount an effective attack on his opponent.
The organs of the Republican right, like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, have hailed the debate as a vindication of the Romney candidacy, signaling his transformation from the hapless loser of the week before into a credible standard-bearer for their favored policies of shredding the social safety net to fund even greater tax cuts for the super-rich.
Such arguments explain nothing. Romney is still just as reactionary and his policies just as unpopular the day after the debate as they were the day before. Moreover, his performance Wednesday night, from his brazen lies about his plan to cut taxes for the wealthy to his incomprehensible reference to “trickle-down government,” was no more cogent or convincing than Obama’s.
Liberal pundits were up in arms, venting their disappointment at Obama’s lackluster performance. Their explanation for the debacle explained nothing either: Obama had made a poor tactical choice in deciding not to bring up his rival’s record as an asset stripper and corporate raider at Bain Capital or Romney’s disparaging comments before an audience of wealthy contributors about the “47 percent” of Americans who are supposedly “dependent on government” and “believe they are entitled” to healthcare, food and housing.
In part, the intensity of their disappointment with Obama’s capitulation reveals their own self-delusion. They seem to have believed their own hype that this right-wing bourgeois politician was the champion of “hope” and “change.”
Equally bankrupt were the incessant references in the pro-Obama media, like the New York Times, to the president’s “professorial” demeanor and approach. Obama was no less vapid and pedantic in 2008, when the corporate-controlled media hailed him, without the slightest justification, as a superb orator who was moving millions.
Among the most apoplectic responses came from MSNBC’s Chris Mathews, who exploded “Where was Obama tonight?” as if the man on the stage in Denver and the occupant of the White House were two different people.
In the debate, however, the real Obama was on display: a man with no significant political background or career, much less independent ideas. An individual who had passed through no real struggles before he was picked up and promoted as the symbol of “change,” while remaining a loyal servant of the state.
No doubt, for someone whose meteoric political rise has depended on rich patrons, being roundly attacked by someone from that social layer was disconcerting.
...
If Obama were a genuine opponent of Wall Street privilege and criminality, having Mitt Romney as his challenger would be a godsend. As the longtime proprietor of a major private equity firm, Romney is the personification of the social layer that wrecked the US and world economy and plunged millions of workers into unemployment and destitution.
But Obama is a political servant of that same social layer. Face to face with Romney, he cannot indict him for the 2008 crash, because that would entail indicting the financial aristocracy itself, and making an appeal to social forces that all the bourgeois political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, regard with hostility and fear.
more at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/pers-o05.shtml
Comrade Stalin
