Pull Out

A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary antiwar dissident Daniel Ellsberg on Huffington Post live on the merits of the Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day. Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him, lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party. This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves a genuine response. As the election is fast approaching, this piece is an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.

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The civil liberties/antiwar case was made eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience, vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and social equity.

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Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered?

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[A]fter the Obama inflection point, corporate profits recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did.

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The foreclosure crisis, with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama’s oligarchy.

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Look at the broken promises from the 2008 Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush, and then went back on his word because these promises didn’t fit with the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision.

  Salon – Matt Stoller

Well, to be fair (and accurate), it wasn't a matter of shifting society toward Obama's vision (although it seems apparent that this is his vision also.) This is not a new direction since Obama has been in the White House. This is not Obama or the Democrats coming up with an evil plan to destroy the middle class. It is simply a continuance and deepening of the system we have in place which is thoroughly grounded in corporate control of a pretense of democracy. Should Rmoney be the president in 2013, he will be equally as embedded in that system.

However, we're all aware of Obama's kill list - er, I mean, disposition matrix - and the drawdown of combat soldiers in favor of increasing drone strikes (and some of our liberal brethren may be secretly - or even publicly - in favor of those things).  So we can - should - hold Obama responsible on his own merits for some very bad policy, domestic included ....

[D]uring the [2009 presidential] transition itself, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal.

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It is not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained by anything but his own policy instincts.

And furthermore...

Obama is the president who insisted that women under 17 shouldn’t have access to Plan B birth control, overruling scientists at the FDA, because of his position ”as a father of two daughters.” Girls, he said, shouldn’t be able to buy these drugs next to “bubble gum and batteries.” Aside from the obvious sexism, he left out the possibility that young women who need Plan B had been raped by their fathers, which anyone who works in the field knows happens all too often. In his healthcare bill, Obama made sure that government funds, including tax credits and Medicaid that are the key to expanding healthcare access to the poor, will be subject to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits their use for abortion.

[...But] there is a lot more to women’s rights than abortion. Predatory lending and foreclosures disproportionately impact women. [...] Under Obama, 1.6 million more women are now in poverty. [...] The teacher layoffs from Obama’s stimulus being inadequate to the task disproportionately hit women’s economic opportunity.

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There are only five or six states that matter in this election; in the other 44 or 45, your vote on the presidential level doesn’t matter. [...] So, unless you are in one of the few swing states that matters, a vote for Obama is simply an unabashed endorsement of his policies. But if you are in a swing state, then the question is, what should you do?

And so we come to another “election”.  Well, more of a statement of who we really don't want, as opposed to a vote for someone we really do.

As of 2012, the highest office in the land depends upon which warlord has better rigged the districts, the rules and perhaps the voting machines, and scared the most voters away from the opponent.  Let's hope we don't devolve further to the next point where it's a question of which warlord has killed the most opponent's voters. 

Even if you are in a swing state, and you vote for Barack Obama for any other reason than you support his destructive policies both foreign and domestic, or for Mitt Rmoney for any other reason than you truly believe that he'll actually do what he says he'll do (which day?) - and that's what you want done - you are, to borrow a phrase from Dylan, only a pawn in the game.  The game is rigged, and a vote for someone you don't want ensures that it will stay that way.  If you don't like either one, then vote for someone else. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.