The demise of Barack Obama

As political analysts pour over the stats and stories from the mid-term elections, the jubilant scenes that greeted Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 could not seem further away. Two years of continued economic stagnation and rising unemployment have handed Obama’s Democratic Party a crushing defeat. The Republican’s have seized control of the House of Representatives and would have won the Senate had they not picked two crazy people to run for seats in Nevada and Delaware.

Buoyed by the election results, the Republican Party, driven by the Tea Party movement, are on the warpath. They are desperate to destroy Obama’s health care bill, kill any chance of tackling global warming, and are determined to freeze all government spending; a policy that could prove to have disastrous consequences for a nation where the poverty rate has leapt to 15 per cent in the last two years.

What’s remarkable is that this has all occurred just two years after America’s Liberals were celebrating the election of America’s first black President, and heralding a new age of progressive government. So how on earth have things gone so badly for Barack Obama?

In truth, Obama himself must take much of the blame for his misfortune. His reforms have been too weak, his compromises with a deeply corrupt Washington establishment have been too frequent and his campaign promises have been broken too readily. Health care reform, so desperately needed in a nation where nearly 50 million do not have health insurance, has been passed but will still leave over 20 million Americans uncovered.

Obama has also reneged on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay, has continued George W. Bush’s unconstitutional policy of warrantless wire-tapping, has escalated an un-winnable war in Afghanistan, and has failed to pass meaningful financial reform; leaving the US extremely vulnerable to another financial crisis. As a result his base has been demoralised and his opponents have been resurgent. Of the American’s that voted in the mid-term election, 88 per cent stated that they thought the country was heading in the wrong direction. While a recent poll showed that of the first time voters attracted to Obama’s campaign in 2008, 54 per cent said that they were unlikely to vote in the mid-term elections.

Yet to blame Obama solely for the Democrats’ election woes would be unfair. Yes, his reforms have been weak but, in a deeply polarised political environment, he did well to get anything passed at all. Two years into his term, a poll conducted by CNN found that more than a quarter of American’s doubted whether he was even born in the US. Meanwhile, a similar poll found that more than 15 per cent of Americans believed that Obama is a Muslim. This kind of misinformation has promoted by key members of the Republican Party whose only input during the debate over the health care bill was to claim that government run ‘death panels’ were a key part of Obama’s agenda.

When such a vast proportion of the electorate are so misinformed that they think that you’re a closet Muslim with a penchant for eugenics, how can one be expected to have any chance of running a rational, progressive government?

Yet even if we concede that Obama had little hope of getting his progressive policies through such a divided and ignorant political system; that still does not excuse Obama’s apparent lack of effort in terms of trying to ensure that his key pieces of legislation got passed. His constant compromises with Republicans and conservative Democrats over the health care bill and financial reform have made him seem weak; particularly as those individuals he sought to compromise with – the likes of John McCain and Joe Liebermann – clearly had no intention of ever voting with him anyway. Obama’s unwillingness to fight for progressive causes such as the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the closure of Guantanamo Bay, coupled with his decision to appoint staunch Republican’s like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner to head his economic policy and his willingness to cut deals with health insurance companies and the banking sector have caused many progressives to begin to question just whose side the President is on?

The collapse of Democratic Party in the Mid-term elections last week was caused by a number of things. A resurgent opposition party backed by a powerful ‘news’ channel, a terrible economy and a widespread deep-seated hatred of the President all had an influence; but firstly the blame for the defeat must be placed at Obama’s door. He came to office with the biggest mandate for change a Democratic President has had since Lyndon B. Johnson, but by choosing to cut deals and compromise with the Washington system rather than seeking to change it; he blew it. How he deals with the consequences of his failure will define his time in office.