262 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyObama’s trick is to make the perfect the enemy of the good, thus blocking any concrete and
practical benefit that might actually be within reach. As Gonzalez points out,
Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame
poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy
bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent.
Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting
these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.
Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling
too high. His explanation isn’t credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative,
and didn’t put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found
objectionable. Why wouldn’t Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory
credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle
classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him.
For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention
of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome. (Matt
Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,” Counterpunch)OBAMA AS THE LEADING SABOTEUR OF IMPEACHMENT
Given the way the 2008 primaries worked, Obama was able to attract a very large part of the left
liberal wing of the Democratic Party into his camp. These left liberals had been the leading force
calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Bush and Cheney, and action which is not a
mere matter of opinion, but rather an objective necessity if we want to wipe the slate clean of all the
liberticide precedents and entrenched totalitarian practices of the Bush Cheney regime. There is in
fact an ample window for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney by the new Democratic Congress
during the 17 days between the convening of the two chambers on January 3, 2009, and Bush’s
departure from office (in so far as the law is observed) on January 20, 2009 at noon. But, by early
February 2008, it was clear that the left liberals supporting Obama were dropping impeachment like
a hot potato, evidently because it conflicted with the Perfect Master’s pledge to usher in a new
golden age of harmonious bipartisan cooperation, thanks to the beatific and transfiguring power of
Barky’s radiant personality. Impeachment, by contrast, is a very messy and a very partisan affair
indeed, but it happens to be necessary to preserve constitutional government in this country. One of
the reasons that the Trilateral financiers deployed Obama in the first place was because of their
desire to divert and deflect a very strong mass resentment against Bush, Cheney, the neocons, and
much of what they stand for. Obama has largely succeeded in fulfilling this task, since his
candidacy has coincided with the collapse of momentum in favor of impeachment up and down the
line. By sending forth Obama, the Trilateral banking faction is attempting to set in motion a process
of organizing masses of the American people against themselves with the help of a ruthless
demagogue financed by an avalanche of cash — a process which has all the essential characteristics
of fascism. González shows that
Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president
(“Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable,” USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn’t even
support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold’s effort to censure the Bush administration for
illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 and Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. In Feingold’s words “I’m amazed at Democrats cowering with this
president’s numbers so low.” Once again, it’s troubling that Obama would take these positions