Obama: Not a Progressive option

In 2008, President Obama campaigned as a man that would reign in on Wall Street, and stop corporate corruption in Washington. Many Obama supporters saw him as a symbol of change, hope, and progressive values. He was then elected with the hope that he would discontinue the policies the Bush administration put in place concerning warrantless wiretapping, the indefinite detention of prisoners, the end to Guantanamo Bay Prison, and tax cuts to the richest Americans. Instead Progressives got another politician who has received millions from big business and has surrounded himself with former Wall Street insiders.
Obama is a president that has extended the Bush tax cuts for two more years, continued the policy of warrantlessly wiretapping America’s phone lines, and he has kept up with the standard practice in Washington of trying to please corporate lobbyists before the people that actually voted for him.
Obama’s health care act might have been a quarter of a step in the right direction I will admit,but it was one of the first signs of Obama folding on an important progressive issue that helped get him elected in the first place. From the administration there was no fight for a single payer system which every other developed nation enjoys, and then there was little to no fight for a public option (which was desirable according to many national public opinion polls). In the end, we got this Frankensteinian bill to which many pharmaceutical, and health insurance companies contributed.
Obama has also not been shy when it comes to hiring Wall Street insiders as members of his staff. For example, William Daley is not just Obama’s Chief of Staff, but a former banker for the banking giant JP Morgan Chase, the man that was hired to select key White House staff, supervise them, and structure the White House staff system in general was at one time beholden to a bank that was heavily involved in a system that helped sell toxic mortgages to American citizens.
Obama has also shown a propensity to bow down to Republican opposition whenever faced with the challenge of trying to pass something that doesn’t meet up with house Republicans criteria (which always turns out to be the cutting of a social safety net program heavily,and tax cuts for the richest Americans), and instead of trying to sell it to the American people and trying to fight for its passing, he automatically makes compromises and deals that benefit the Republicans, and richest corporations. Obama hasn’t shown much skill when it comes to being an apt negotiator. When he tries to negotiate economic policy, he inevitably tries to also appease his Republican opposition by okaying the cutting of social safety net programs, like heating for poor families in the Midwest increasing the benefits the rich have in America, and continuing the deregulation of Wall Street.
When progressives elected Obama it was understood that he would be the leader fighting for the working class, which was hit the hardest during the 2008 reccesion, and that he would be the man to discontinue the Bush administration’s constitutionally/pragmatically questionable methods of fighting terrorism. It was also believed that he would promote progressive policies that would help the poor and working class in America. Instead Progressives got a man that has shown he cares more about big business and the appeasement of his political enemies, a man that, if anything, consolidated the Bush doctrine. Because of Obama, the Bush doctrines are now the norms in Washington. We now seem to be fully entrenched in an America that seeks to benefit the wealthy rather then the working class. Obama has become a big disappointment, and Progressives need a more viable option.