It is time again for the quadrennial absurdity of the American presidential race. In reality, it began as far back as last summer as the slew of utterly risible \u201ccandidates\u201d for the Republican nomination entered the fray. While the establishment media has myopically focused on the long slog of a horse race that is the primaries, it is often difficult to discover that there are other things going on in the world. The average broadcast on Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN ineluctably devotes the majority of its airtime to discussing the inequities and megalomania of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum\u2019s sweater vests, or Mitt Romney\u2019s automaton personality; often ignoring Ron Paul, the only principled, yet deeply flawed candidate. Now this coverage of the seemingly meaningless rigmarole of the Republican primary and the subsequent similar coverage of the presidential race may make Chuck Todd\u2019s heart palpitate, it does a massive disservice to everyone else. We will be told over and over again, from the editorial pages of the New York Times to the primetime cable new shows, that this election is about the future of the country and presents two stark contrasts for the economic trajectory of America. Most informed Americans realize that our politics are a sham, in a sense they are outside of politics. What progressives and leftists must ask themselves this election is can we vote for President Obama in good conscience?<\/p>\n
It is difficult to adequately decipher the causes of the manifest failure of the Obama administration to implement progressive initiatives. Are these failures endogenous to President Obama? In other words, is he really the milquetoast, bipartisan-craving centrist (even center-right) politician that we have seen over the past three years? Or has the obduracy of the Republicans in Congress and the pathetic, spineless Democrats presented an insurmountable stumbling block to the advancement of his agenda?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To my mind, it is likely a combination of the two. To be sure, the posture of Republicans, who have declared their primary goal to be defeating President Obama in 2012<\/a>, has been cynical, opportunistic and overtly self-serving. Yet President Obama has pursued a whole host of policy initiatives, particularly and ironically, given that Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, in regards to civil liberties, which have been anything but progressive. Even many of Obama\u2019s ostensible legislative successes have been a mixed-bag at best. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at the Affordable Care Act<\/a>, also known in Republican lexicon as \u201cObamacare.\u201d While an additional 30 million Americans receiving healthcare is laudable and an important step in rectifying the maladies of the American healthcare system, it is also a boondoggle for the healthcare industry. Moreover, one must wonder whether Obama ever even meant to implement a more progressive healthcare initiative. Richard Kirsch, the former director of the advocacy group Health Care for America Now has asserted<\/a> that the Obama administration only used the public option as a bargaining chip. According to Kirsch, \u201c\u201cThe White House had negotiated a number of deals with the health industry, designed to win their support for reform, including agreeing to oppose a robust public option, which would have the greatest clout to control how much providers got paid.\u201d Rather than exerting a strong push for a public option, the \u201cweak-kneed\u201d White House was content to use the public option as leverage to get something, anything, passed. The recent kerfuffle over the administration attempts to require religiously affiliated universities and hospitals to provide for contraception in their healthcare packages demonstrates the true absurdity of employer-based healthcare. If there was a single-payer system, as in most of the Western world, such controversies would not exist. In any case, the healthcare battle is just a microcosm of the Obama presidency: a backroom capitulation to corporate power masquerading as a public confrontation.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s response to the financial crisis has arguably been even worse. It was clear what direction his administration would take from the beginning. By appointing people like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at senior level positions Obama\u2019s administration has maintained the neoliberal course. The very people who helped craft the crisis are now those we are relying on to remedy it. Not a single executive from any of the major financial institutions has been prosecuted or even indicted for their dubious and morally reckless activity. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have had their homes foreclosed upon and millions of others continued to be mired in life-changing levels of debt. But the banks, well, they received billions in bailout money and continue to hand out millions in bonuses and have seen record profit levels. What has Obama\u2019s response been? More or less, nothing. The Dodd\u2013Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was meant to clamp down on the banks is a rather innocuous little piece of legislation. Indeed, it does not even regulate the derivatives market that is one of the unquestioned causes of the Great Recession.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, the real cause for progressive concern and reticence in the 2012 election should be Obama\u2019s record on civil liberties and the so-called \u201cwar on terror.\u201d President Obama\u2019s administration has maintained a marked continuity with the Bush\/Cheney counter-terrorism detention policies and their penchant for wantonly violating civil liberties. While Obama campaigned on closing Guantanamo\u2019s detention facilities and issued an executive order immediately after his inauguration, the facility remains open. Moreover, in 2011, Obama issued another executive order that created \u201ca formal system of indefinite detention<\/a> for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.\u201d In effect, Obama not only reneged on his campaign pledge to close these detention facilities, he formalized their place as a component of the U.S. counter-terrorism policy and created a legal black hole where the U.S. can hold detainees without charge or trial. As part of the National Defense Authorization Act, President Obama codified indefinite detention as a part of U.S. law. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes<\/a>, \u201cThe statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.\u201d In an effort to assuage civil liberties defenders, Obama attached a signing statement to the bill noting that his administration had \u201cserious reservations\u201d with the provisions related to indefinite detention and would thus not utilize them. However, this does not prevent future administrations from employing indefinite detention, which this administration has copiously practiced anyway.<\/p>\n Perhaps what is most pernicious if you are an American citizen, is Obama\u2019s denial of the Fifth Amendment\u2019s due process rights to American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki; who was assassinated in a drone strike in September 2011. Awlaki, we are told, was an important member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and inspired the Fort Hood attack and the failed \u201cunderwear\u201d bomber. Awlaki was born in the United States and retained American citizenship while living in Yemen. While his leadership status in AQAP has been questioned, there can be no doubt that he played some sort of role as a firebrand cleric and member of AQAP. This does not mean that President Obama has the right to revoke his Fifth Amendment rights and serve as judge, jury, and executioner. The Obama administration then proceeded to assassinate Awlaki\u2019s 16 year old son<\/a> and another 17 year old member of the Awlaki clan via drone strike. Obama\u2019s justice department has averred that they could not release documents relating to Awlaki and the evidence they had compiled against him because they are \u201cstate secrets\u201d and could damage national security. The ACLU is now suing the Obama administration over their policy of targeting American citizens for assassination without trial.<\/p>\n While the Awlaki assassination is one egregious and salient example, the Obama administration has ratcheted up drone strikes and increasingly relied on them in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Even if we are killing al-Qaeda leaders, there are always civilian deaths (collateral damage in the official parlance) that render this policy profoundly unjustifiable. As Glenn Greenwald discusses<\/a>, drone strikes have even targeted mourners and rescuers who attempt to provide succor to the victims of drone strikes from mere moments prior. Our Nobel peace prize winning President presides over a policy of indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians.<\/p>\n The discussion of the above issues is only a cursory overview of the troublesome policies of this president. In regards to immigration, President Obama has maintained a draconian effort to deport as many illegal immigrants as possible. Indeed, he is on pace to deport more people<\/a> in his first term than President Bush did in both terms combined. In violation of the 1973 War Powers Act, President Obama engaged in war in Libya without Congressional authorization. His administration\u2019s justification was that the NATO effort was not engaged in the type of hostilities stipulated under the War Powers Act; a dubious argument at best. As the four decades long assault on worker\u2019s rights continues, perhaps even accelerates, the Obama administration has done little to protect worker\u2019s rights. The administration took a public stance against anti-union bills in states like Wisconsin and Ohio; however as part of the recent FAA Reauthorization Act the administration, in the name of Obama\u2019s fetish for compromise, Obama signed into law a bill that could serve as a precedent to make union organizing increasingly difficult. As part of Obama\u2019s Race to the Top education policy, the administration rewards schools that reach certain thresholds with additional funding and in some cases pulls founding or shutters struggling schools. One must ask, is not the goal of education reform to improve the performance of failing schools? President Obama has also, despite some rhetorical platitudes, done little to reorient our massively unfair taxation system. He has presided over the racist drug war and the continued and creeping expansion of the prison-industrial complex. I\u2019m afraid the list of anti-progressive Obama initiatives could go on for days.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yet, what are the alternatives? From a progressive or leftist perspective there are none. Mitt Romney would likely represent a more pugnacious tonal shift in regards to foreign policy and redistribution of wealth, but his presidency, I would argue, would look markedly similar to Obama\u2019s. Rick Santorum\u2019s presidency would be a disaster to anyone concerned with civil liberties and sexual rights. There has been a robust debate in many progressive circles<\/a> regarding the utility of Ron Paul as a candidate and his foreign policy principles. Paul\u2019s anti-imperialist message certainly has a deep resonance with many progressives and I agree with people like Greenwald that assert that his mere presence<\/a> in the Republican debates is important for the very fact that his message is reaching an audience that would otherwise solely hear candidates regurgitate bellicose, chauvinistic, and militaristic bluster.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Paul is far from the progressive answer. He is against the Civil Rights Act, which should in and of itself arrest any modicum of an inclination to support him. Moreover, he has a long history of troublesome and racist remarks, many of which his campaign says cannot be attributed to him because they were not written by him. They were just in his newsletter\u2026 called the Ron Paul Newsletter. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard. He thinks private charity should be the mechanism for addressing the massive structural inequalities of society. Of course, there are so many reasons that Paul cannot be considered by progressives and leftists. We can simply be glad that there is one person on the right with a sensible and circumspect foreign policy and move on from there.<\/p>\n So what should progressives and leftists do? It is clear now that the symbolism of Obama\u2019s presidency is much less important than many, including myself, originally held it to be. The election of an African-American president was touted by many as proof of the greatness of America as we were able to overcome the deep and painful legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and subsequent malignant institutional racism. However, what we truly needed in the White House was a President willing to challenge the prevailing neoliberal economic orthodoxy and the bipartisan neoimperialist consensus. The symbolism of Obama\u2019s election, while still important, is dramatically less meaningful three years on. If Obama was elected in the 1970\u2019s, this would arguably be a different story. The most important civil rights issue of our day is economic inequality and Obama is either unwilling or incapable of addressing it in a structural way. Given the institutional structure of American politics in its current iteration, progressives, and leftists will never have an ideal candidate. Nonetheless, we must hold our leaders accountable and as such I find it difficult to personally justify voting for President Obama this coming fall.<\/p>\n As the Arab uprisings and the Occupy movements have saliently evidenced, there are other, arguably more important, outlets to express our grievances and demand redress. Despite what the media or the two party establishments may want the public to believe, donating to political parties, candidates, or Super PACs and voting are not the only methods of political action. So next November when we will all be faced with a choice of two candidates we shouldn\u2019t feel as though we must necessarily vote for the lesser of two evils. If you cannot vote for President Obama in good conscience, then simply do not vote. It is high time that progressives and leftists more resoundingly demonstrated that the Democratic party can no longer reflexively count on our vote while they stomp on our beliefs.<\/p>\n