Obama's Labor Day Speech (VIDEO)

Such a transition would have been a Herculean task, but if it could not be achieved outright — a debatable point –  then any “reform” worthy of the name needed to contain workable mechanisms by which a steady transition could evolve and be achieved within a reasonable time.  Instead, Obama’s “reform” bill imposed the private insurance system over tens of millions of Americans, killed even a weakened version of the transition mechanism, and left funding of the expanded public health system vulnerable to the predictabl­e onslaught on government budgets.  Several states are slashing Medicaid, and Congress will likely do the same.

Jon Walker, Marcy Wheeler and I and others at this site have written electronic reams about the President’­s utter failure to address these real needs.  Jane Hamsher also reported the secret White House deals with hospitals and drug companies to shield them from either competitio­n or adequate regulation­, yet the White House continued for almost a year to mislead supporters about his supposed support for even a weak public option.  The entire process reeked of Obama’s bad faith.

The theme could go on about immigratio­n, environmen­tal protection­, women’s rights, labor protection­s,DADT, and so on.  The stories are disturbing­ly similar: promises, hopes, delays, disappoint­ment, betrayal.

It is telling that Chait’s defense of Obama attempts to rebut only a small sliver of Robert Reich’s critiques — I’ll leave that to Reich. His reference to Glenn Greenwald is to Glenn’s comments on domestic policies.  But everyone knows the major criticism from Glenn, Marcy Wheeler and many other civil liberties and rule of law defenders concern the President’­s embrace, extension or coverups of Bush’s anti-civil liberties, kidnapping and detention, illegal surveillan­ce, and unilateral war policies, along with Obama’s unwillingn­ess to hold torturers and other criminal enablers accountabl­e. Chait offers no defense here, because there is none.

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