Open Door

http://www.salon.com/news/opin…

on the ruling elites use of racism.

Particularly like this swipe at Obama though:

Although Obama and his Party are being blamed for the intensifying economic crisis, it is just historical fact that the unraveling took place under the Bush administration.  It seems as though it was decades ago, but it was only in October, 2008 — when Bush was still President — that John McCain argued  that the economic crisis was so severe that the presidential campaign should be suspended in order to attend to it.  That is the same crisis — which exploded during the Bush presidency — from which we still have not recovered, which has progressively worsened.

That crisis presented a huge opportunity for Obama and the Democrats to bring about real change in Washington — the central promise of his campaign — by capitalizing on (and becoming the voice of) populist anger and using it to wrestle away control from Wall Street and other financial and corporate elites who control Washington.  Had they done so, they would have been champions of populist rage rather than its prime targets.  But, as John Judis argues in his excellent New Republic piece, they completely squandered that opportunity.  Rather than emphatically stand up to the bankers and other oligarchical thieves, they coddled and served them, and thus became the face of the elite interests oppressing ordinary Americans rather than their foes.  How can an administration represented by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers — and which specializes in an endless stream of secret deals with corporate lobbyists and sustains itself with Wall Street funding  — possibly maintain any pretense of populist support or changing how Washington works?  It can’t.

New Republic piece by Judis:

http://www.tnr.com/article/pol…