Obama unites the extreme left and right

by CalWatchdog Staff | June 19, 2012 8:44 am

[1]June 18, 2012

By Chriss Street

Back in September last year in an article titled “Revolution on the Left to Overthrow President Obama Begins,” I predicted that there would be a political “coup d’état” against the president by the extremist wing of the Democratic Party.  Led by the prestigious Roosevelt Institute, Democrat affinity groups — such as union households, women and young people — have been quietly trying to decapitate the president’s re-election campaign so that his plummeting re-election prospects did not drag down other Democrats in the 2012 election.

These rebels believe that, as President Obama politically triangulated away from hard core liberal orthodoxy in favor of the big money crony capitalist interests of General Electric and others, Democratic Party affiliation has fallen to a 22-year low of only 31 percent[2].

The initial chorus of 45 liberal leaders included former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Princeton Professor Cornel West, Chris Townsend of the United Electrical Workers of America and President Emeritus Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth. They have been actively undermining Obama’s reelection campaign by speaking out and rallying financial support for Democrat congressional candidates from “various fields and areas where the president either has failed to stake out a progressive” position or where he has “drifted toward the corporatist right.”

This growing movement refuses to use Obama’s name, and instead emphasizes: “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street. We need policies that empower Main Street.”

Obama response

President Obama has been forced to respond by dramatically endorsing of gay marriage[3] and suspending deportations of illegal immigrants[4].  These actions have been a source of joy to the left and adulation from the liberal media, but they are rapidly eroding support from independent voters and are motivating Republicans to overcome their initial concerns about Mitt Romney’s commitment to the true conservative cause.  A recent USA Today/Gallup poll[5] regarding opinions about the American Dream Act demonstrated how the president’s radical swing to the left is affecting his re-election bid:

“Among partisan groups, Democrats today are the most upbeat about the financial opportunity available to the next generation, but only on a relative basis. Less than half of Democrats (48 percent) are satisfied with the opportunity for the next generation to live better than their parents, compared with 37 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of independents.

“Democrats are also significantly more likely than Republicans to feel satisfied with Americans’ willingness to work hard to get ahead, 59 percent vs. 47 percent. At the same time, Republicans are a bit more likely than Democrats to be satisfied with the opportunity a poor person has to get ahead through hard work, 56 percent vs. 50 percent.”

Rebellion

But once an inter-party civil war has begun, new converts seem to pop up to fan the flames of rebellion.  Robert Unger, one of Barack Obama’s former professors at Harvard Law School, recorded a YouTube video that is commanding big viewership by shouting: “President Obama Must Be Defeated in The Coming Election[6]” because, “He has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States” and must lose the election, in order for “the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.”

Unger acknowledges if Republicans wins the presidency, “there will be a cost … in judicial and administrative appointments.” But “the risk of military adventurism” would be no worse under a Republican than under Obama, and “the Democratic Party proposes no new direction.”

Unger portrayed Obama’s positions as: “Give the bond markets what they want, bail out the reckless so long as they are also rich, use fiscal and monetary stimulus to make up for the absence of any consequential broadening of economic and educational opportunity, sweeten the pill of disempowerment with a touch of tax fairness, even though the effect of any such tax reform is sure to be modest.”  He brutally lists his complaints as:

•His policy is financial confidence and food stamps.
•He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests.
•He has left workers and homeowners to their own devices.
•He has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money.
•He has disguised his surrender with an empty appeal to tax justice.
•He has reduced justice to charity.
•He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care.

Of course, the humor is that Professor Unger’s leftist complaints are virtually the same indictments of the Obama Presidency that will be made this week at your local Tea Party meeting.  It appears that Barack Obama has uniquely managed to unite these two book-ends of extreme American political ideology to a common enemy, himself !

Feel free to forward this Op Ed and follow our Blog at www.chrissstreetandcompany.com[7]

If you would like Chriss Street to speak to your organization, contact [email protected][8]

Chriss Street’s latest book: “The Third Way” is now available at www.amazon.com[9]

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2012/06/19/obama-unites-the-extreme-left-and-right/

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