What would you do if...?

Over at Washblog there's an appeal from a progressive voter to get people to vote for Nader in Washington State. This is based on the assumption that Obama is going to win the state easily and people should therefore "vote their concience". ie, vote for the guy you REALLY wish could be president.

And why wouldn't that guy be Obama? Well, as the poster points out:

I believe Obama has the potential to be one of the best U.S. presidents in recent history (admittedly not a real high standard). But the operative word here is "potential." I believe Obama also has the potential to be a colossal disappointment, just as the Clinton presidency deeply disappointed progressives who had high hopes coming out of 12 bleak years of Reagan/Bush I leadership.



Which potential will be realized? It depends on the popular pressure Obama receives to do the right thing. We know he is under tremendous pressure by powerful private interests to do all the wrong things.

We've seen how this pressure has pushed him toward more conservative positions on many important issues: from his support for FISA/telecom immunity, reauthorizing the Patriot Act, "clean coal," offshore oil drilling, and nuclear power, to his hawkishness around Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia, to his choice of advisors, many of whom represent anything but the "change" he claims to bring to Washington, DC.

In the comments section below the post, one person responded:

In order to enact progressive change, you need to consider two things when deciding who to vote for. First, as you point out, the candidate you select needs to be interested in moving the country in a progressive direction. If that were the only criteria, I would consider voting for the Green Party candidate. But it's not.
The other half of the picture is the requirement, which you stumble around, that someone who shares your values actually have the ability to get into office. Neither Nader or McKinney have the ability to do that.

Voting against McCain and conservatives like him will never be the right answer. We need to vote FOR someone that we believe in, instead of against the scary candidate. So if people don't feel like they can vote for Obama because he doesn't seem "real" enough, I'll respect that choice, at least to a point.

This seems reasonable on the surface. However, one has to ask "up to WHAT point?" At what point is it not okay to feel like the Democratic candidate, it could be anybody, not Obama, though this time around, of course, it happens to be him. But at what point is it not reasonable to feel like you can't vote for the Democratic candidate?

And that brings me to my hypothetical "What if?"

What if you KNEW that Obama was not going to pursue a progressive presidency? What if you KNEW that Obama was going to tow the same corporate line as Bill Clinton in the 90's when he passed NAFTA? What if you KNEW that Obama was a conservative in liberals clothing and that he'd give lip service to a few "moderate" liberal ideals, but that in general, NOTHING would change in the USA that would close the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the nation?

What would you do then?

The reason I ask is because back in 1990 I told a friend of mine that the elections were fixed. That sounded preposterous to him back then, but nowadays everyone and their dog believes that the last two elections were fixed and that possibly this one will be as well.

At the time I told my friend this, Bush Sr. had the highest ratings in history. I told my friend that Bush Sr. would NOT be president after the next election. I told him that the reason was because Reaganomics had led to such a terrible deficit and such a shaky economy that it HAD to be corrected or else the wealthy elites would risk losing everything to a crash much like we had in the Great Depression. I asserted that the only answer was to raise taxes, something that the ruling class - I assurred my friend that We The People did NOT rule this country but an elite few Skull and Crossbones made all the decisions, INCLUDING who would be president - so I asserted that this ruling class needed taxes raised on the rest of the wealthiest citizens but that they couldn't let a Republican president do this because it would fly right in the face of the so-called conservative republican platform. Too many Republicans would wake up to the reality that their party leaders were all lying dogs who served another master.

In short, they needed to elect a Democrat to get them out of this mess.

Naturally, my skeptical friend wanted to know who I thought would be the next president. To which I replied, "Probably that guy in Arkansas, the governor, the one who looks the other way when they fly their drugs in from Central America."

I didn't even remember Clinton's name at the time, only that he was a Democrat who was in deep with the clandestine world of the CIA, ie, the Skull and Crossbones Society. So he made the logical choice.

I also told my friend that these same criminals planned on creating several economic blocs around the world. North America, Europe, etc. This was their overall objective. These blocs would help to control and consolidate their power. It would also be the ruin of the working class in America.

He said he didn't see how a Democratic president could get away with such a deal. Weren't the Dems the guys that stood up for the working class? I didn't know how he'd do it, I just insisted that he would.

Needless to say, the rest is history. Clinton becomes president. HE, not the Republicans, signs NAFTA. He balances the budget. The media attacks him relentlessly, but it's all smoke and mirrors to keep the populace occupied so they don't notice that their jobs are all shifting overseas. The European Union forms.

I knew then, as I know now, that we are not a democracy.

Then along comes Obama. The first I heard of him, everyone was praising this nobody from nowhere. Obama who? Until the past year, no one knew what Obama stood for, what he had done, what he would do. He was a complete enigma to most observers. Obama who?

He's been talking a fantastic talk the past few months. He's inspiring. He gives me hope. But so did Bill Clinton, even though I KNEW he wasn't really on the side of We The People.

And I even spoke once with Barack Obama. We argued, actually. He was defending Joe Lieberman and saying the progressive community should not attack him. I said we should. I tried to explain to him that holding our candidates accountable to the ideals and beliefs that we elected them to uphold was the very essence of democracy. Obama did not seem to understand. I was less than impressed.

So I have to wonder, as does the poster over at Washblog, is Obama for real? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it. I HOPE so, but hope is what keeps the donkey chasing the carrot. Right up until the day he dies.

No one, of course, can ever KNOW what a candidate will do once he's elected. All we can do is infer what he'll do by what he says but most importantly, WHO HE SURROUNDS HIMSELF WITH.

Who does Barack Obama surround himself with? Well, let's look and see:

Austan Goolsbee
The University of Chicago economist, who by most accounts is playing a dominant role in vetting Obama's policy proposals on a wide range of issues, had managed to keep his name out of the press -- until three weeks ago. That's when news leaked of a meeting that Goolsbee held with Canadian officials to explain his candidate's call to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. After Canadian officials said that the economist had dismissed the tough rhetoric as political posturing, the Clinton campaign used their account to argue that Obama was insincere or a secret advocate of free trade. Obama's team tried to counter by insisting that Goolsbee has played only a minor, unpaid role in the campaign, but this was disputed by other Democrats with knowledge of his influence.

Goolsbee himself certainly believes in free trade. Unlike Alan Blinder, Paul Krugman, and other left-leaning economic experts who are questioning the axiomatic belief among economists that free trade is always good, Goolsbee's faith hasn't been shaken, according to colleagues.

Doesn't sound too encouraging. Sounds like more of the same ole, same ole to me. The University of Chicago? Home of the entire Free Trade braintrust? The birthplace of modern laissez faire capitalist economic theory? THAT University?

Yeah, THAT'S who Obama chooses to be his economic advisor. Feeling hopeful? Well, who else has he got on his economic team?

Christina and David Romer
At the same time that Obama is calling for higher income taxes on people making $250,000 or more, the Romers have found that tax increases are generally bad for economic growth and that they primarily discourage investment -- the supply-side argument that conservatives use to justify tax cuts for the rich. On the other hand, the Romers have shredded the conservative premise that tax cuts eventually force spending reductions ("starving the beast"). Instead, they concluded that tax reductions lead only to one thing -- offsetting tax increases to recover lost revenue.

Well, good and bad, not too encouraging however.

Okay, so here's something encouraging: Obama voted against CAFTA.

Daniel Tarullo
The discussion focused on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which Tarullo opposed and Obama ultimately voted against.
Tarullo, 55, teaches law at Georgetown University and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He joined Obama's advisory team in December 2006 and is the go-to guy on currency, foreign investment, and trade. With a book coming out this spring on the need for tighter regulation of banks, Tarullo is also involved in campaign policy discussions about financial regulation and the subprime-mortgage crisis.

Well, well! There actually might BE a carrot dangling in front of our faces! But is it a REAL carrot? Will Obama favor Tarullo's advice or Goolsbee?

Goolsbee is considered Obama's #1 advisor.

But my mind keeps wandering back to Obama voted AGAINST CAFTA.

I don't know, maybe I don't WANT to know, if Obama is just another insider like Bill Clinton was.

But if you KNEW that Obama was going to be just another "Free Trade" president, what would you do? Vote Nader? Vote for the guy you REALLY want to be president?

Well, what does that say about our democracy when the one guy everyone deep down would rather have as president doesn't have a chance in hell, but the guy who DOES just might be going to give us more of the same things that got us into this mess, just dressed differenly?

And if it turns out Obama is just Clinton Redux, then what?

Where would we go from there?