So, the Obama campaign is tacking left in order to win the presidential election, after spending the past three years tacking right in pursuit of the White Whale, otherwise known as the mythical homogeneous independent voters.
So, we’ll be hearing a lot about Obama protecting Social Security and Medicare, which is probably good, because it will make him reluctant, at least for now, to return to talk about grand bargains consisting of cutting those programs in order to reward Republican intransigence. We also may be hearing some stuff about Wall Street, if his ratings continue to go South.
I hope it works, considering the alternative, but I question whether the people who have been paying attention will believe a word of it. But then, those people are like me: nowhere to go. This election is about the people who aren’t stupid or political enough to become tea partiers, but are too stupid or inattentive to know what’s being done to them by the corporations and plutocrats running the country. Those people know a few things: they love them some Social Security and Medicare, and they probably don’t like banks. Who knows, Obama may benefit, in a back handed way, from the ludicrous charge that he’s a socialist, since his new found commitment to Social Security, Medicare and tax equity does have a faint, albeit very faint, whiff of Socialism about it. The uniformed may actually believe he’s in character.
It all makes you wonder: where would Obama be in the polls had he stood up for these principles all along? It is impossible to believe he could be lower than he is today had he been constantly making the case that the lower 99 shouldn’t be carrying the burden for the upper 1%. Who knows, maybe he would even have accomplished something had he successfully painted the Republicans as the protectors of the rich that they are. Oh well, better late than never.
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