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So far the post election narrative appears to be a debate over "where the Obama administration must govern from". Admonitions against a dance move called 'overstepping' abound. Dire warnings are issued against judicial appointments that might upset the rightwing whackjob balance of the Roberts Court.
What a bunch of vague bullshit. Corporate Media has once again done its job and framed policy debate not over actual policy but about what label we should put on it and where we should place it on a mythical line on a playing field running from right to far right.
Health care: this administration has promised to finally deliver on some form of universal healthcare. It had better do so, and if it fails it ought to be only because of overt obstruction in the senate.
Iraq: a negotiated phased withdrawal with an explicit timetable - until the crash of 08 this was the organizing theme of the Obama campaign.
Energy: we need to rejoin with the rest of the industrialized democracies on sane policy to minimize the damage from global warming while implementing a major domestic policy initiative that transforms our energy infrastructure into one that is both far less dependent on oil and moving with all due haste toward sustainability.
Economy: the Obama administration is stuck with the last disaster of the Bush regime, and this mess threatens to consume his administration. The 2010 midterm election is likely to be decided over how the new administration has dealt with what we are told is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In my view, this opaque debate in Corporate Media over where the Obama administration is supposed to be placed on their right-to-far-right playing field is a narrative about economic re-regulation, about the threat this administration might pose to the neoliberal globalist agenda that has dominated economic policy since the Carter administration. They are not going to talk about it directly because it is rather obvious that their shit has failed and re-regulation is the only sane course, so instead they are mumbling nonsense about goalposts.
Education: raise your hand if you think No Child's Behind Left was malevolent disingenuous bullshit that Teddy Kennedy got snookered into supporting. Plus us in the middle class could really use some help here with the insane costs of higher education. I really think everyone should be able to go to college and that nobody should have to graduate with a mortgage level debt to pay off.
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