Because, you see, I had the very expectations he would be who he is when he first ran. And this is a reminder.
Rushing by my social media feeds have been a slew of sudden Valerie Jarrett analysis--who knows how much of it is sexism, sour grapes and/or accurate. But this nugget was worth passing on from Noam Scheiber's piece:
How could these two legacies coexist in one presidency? They emanate from the worldview that Jarrett and Obama share—call it “boardroom liberalism.” It’s a worldview that’s steeped in social progressivism, in the values of tolerance and diversity. It takes as a given that government has a role to play in building infrastructure, regulating business, training workers, smoothing out the boom-bust cycles of the economy, providing for the poor and disadvantaged. But it is a view from on high—one that presumes a dominant role for large institutions like corporations and a wisdom on the part of elites. It believes that the world works best when these elites use their power magnanimously, not when they’re forced to share it. The picture of the boardroom liberal is a corporate CEO handing a refrigerator-sized check to the head of a charity at a celebrity golf tournament. All the better if they’re surrounded by minority children and struggling moms.
Notwithstanding his early career as a community organizer, Obama, like Jarrett, is fundamentally a man of the inside. It’s why he put a former Citigroup executive and Robert Rubin chief of staff named Michael Froman in charge of assembling his economic team in 2008, why he avoided a deep restructuring of Wall Street, why he abruptly junked the public option during the health care debate, why he so ruthlessly pursues leakers and the journalists who cultivate them. It explains why so many of his policy ideas—from jobs for the long-term unemployed to mentoring minority youth—rely on the largesse of corporations.
It’s the boardroom liberal in Obama who gets bent out of shape over criticism from outsiders, despite having once urged progressives to press him the way civil rights activists like A. Philip Randolph pressured Franklin Roosevelt. He is a president profoundly uncomfortable with populist rhetoric. He prefers to negotiate behind closed doors, as he did on the stimulus, health care, and deficit reduction, rather than wage a state-by-state political campaign to force concessions. Except for a handful of moments over the last six years—like when the administration tried to pass a second stimulus bill known as the American Jobs Act—Obama has rarely tried to mobilize public opinion in any sustained fashion. He has been consistently slow and half-hearted about taking unilateral action.[emphasis added]
In particular, many of us pointed out going back to 2008 that the president was a part of, and lifted up by, a solid core of the financial and political elites (hello, who was his finance chair? Penny Pritzker, billionaire).
You could, and still can, hold two contradictory ideas in your mind without having to be either an Obama hater or an unquestioning disciple: the Republicans must be defeated AND Obama was not going to transform the country by taking apart a system that has robbed most workers, that he is very much a believer in the "free market" and that he believes elites know best.
I suggest this not to try to re-ignite new back-and-forth wars. But, rather to just say that getting lost in most of the navel-gazing about the recent elections are a few points:
1. The election was always about preserving the current system of the "free market". Oh, sure, different variations were on display--the almost comical regurgitation of the virtues of the "free market" a la Republicans versus the "mend it but don't end it" Democratic version.
2. Which is why the pretty boring "who must be held accountable" and/or "here is our savior" stories are pointless. What, you think dumping the head of the DCCC makes a difference? You think Schumer would be better than Reid? And, with apologies to the fans of Elizabeth Warren and Howard Dean, it's not at all clear that they believe anything but "mend it but don't end it".
3. Blame Obama/Democrats all you want but what is striking to be is how most of the permanent "liberal/progressive" world has basically enabled this system--partly, I would suggest, by a dependence on large foundations that have no interest in changing the system. But, the lack of honest self-reflection in the halls of The Nation, Campaign for America's Future et al. is instructive: they will never risk themselves, their access, their personal positions.
4. We need to break a lot of shit.