The Beginning of the End of Barry's Great Adventure
One can hear Mr. Obama's sigh of relief: Now that the Republicans have a 41 seat majority in the Senate the Democrats can blame them for obstructing every bill that the Democrats fail to pass. Better yet, on health care the president has every excuse to move further towards the "center" in order to gain "bipartisan support" for comprehensive "reform" from one or more Republican Senators. A corporatist overhaul of the U.S. medical services sector thus remains very much in the cards.
The problem is that corporatist reforms won't work in the sense that they won't provide net benefits to ordinary people. They will, of course, work perfectly well in the way the president actually intends for them to work — as a gold mine for Wall Street and industry insiders — but Massachusetts has shown that it may be extremely difficult for the Democratic Party to rent voters (again) for the next election (or two).
Perhaps the White House does not understand this fact, being almost completely isolated from real life. Or perhaps Mr. Obama does understand, has always understood, that his role as a corporatist mole — a reverse scarlet pimpernel — is simply to hand off back to the Republicans at the appropriate time. That increasingly looks to be 2012.
Posted by George Kenney on January 20, 2010 10:50 PM 
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Comments
Hi George,
Your analogy — reverse scarlet pimpernel — appears to reflect your one-time hope that BO might actually understand the customary meanings of words that he used during his 2008 campaign. After he selected his outrageous economic advisers — L Summers and T Geithner — followed by a continuation of the appointment of R Gates as Defense Secretary, it appeared obvious that he could more logically viewed as a shill for the big money boys in both political parties. In any event, he has seemed quite satisfied with himself and has seemingly been unwilling to be influenced by anyone other than the big money boys. Currently, I am wondering whether he will pull a Tony Blair act and become an executive at Goldman Sachs as soon after the 2012 election as is lawful.
[For those who miss the reference, The Scarlet Pimpernel is available for free at Project Gutenberg — and fun to read through. g.]
Posted by: William Wilson | January 21, 2010 12:00 PM