The Misguided Left Attempt to Mobilize Support for President Obama

President Obama is under constant attack from the far right for the Affordable Care Act and many other actions of his administration. Some leftists are now calling on us to support him against that attack. That call is irresponsible and makes no sense. During the great depression, much of the left gave support to FDR who was genuinely wringing concessions from the rich and powerful in order to save capitalism. That made sense. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Obama. Obama is a right of center Democrat who seems to see his job as to wring concessions from the poor and downtrodden in favor of the rich and powerful. A strong majority of Americans in poll after poll support single payer healthcare. Obama responded with the Affordable Care Act which was crafted by insurance companies, came out of a conservative Republican think tank, and implemented first in Massachusetts by Mit Romney. The ACA is a piece of crap. It makes a few improvements, such as pre-existing conditions and coverage for adult children, but it doesn't address the hundreds of billions in profit and waste, including unnecessary administrative costs, siphoned out of our healthcare dollars by the insurance companies. Obama deserves no credit for passing the ACA, even if its rollout had been smooth as silk. In fact, the misguided left has made it easy for Obama to capitulate to the right because it has given him support instead of confrontation. The Occupy movement showed that confrontation could shift the discourse and put pressure on the government. Instead of learning that lesson, some in the left continue their huge mistake of supporting Obama in 2008 and 2012. If we are to have any influence on the direction of the USA, we have to be bold in fighting for our ideas. We cannot do that and at the same time support a president who shows no sign of having a single progressive bone in his body. Our response to the ACA should be to raise the demand to expand Medicare to all. Our response to the ongoing financial crisis should be to demand the takeover (not bailout) of failing banks and other financial institutions and the prosecution of criminal financiers. Our response to calls for austerity, such as cuts to Social Security and Medicare, should be to call for increased taxes on the rich and the corporations. These are all very popular ideas among the American public. One of the jobs of the left is to articulate and to fight for those ideas. It is not our job to be co-opted by the moribund Obama administration.