I have concentrated on the role the media played in first providing the polluted swamp, then created Donald Trump in that environment and then promoted him with an estimated two-billion dollars worth of free publicity because that is the single thing most responsible for the destruction of American democracy. If the media had been telling the truth, telling the facts for the past fifty years we would probably have someone more like a president Elizabeth Warren putting together her team instead of Trump. But there are others, some of them supposed to be on our side who played a supporting role.
The past and still sitting Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had a large role in this. One of the things I've taken to doing the past few days to try to cheer myself up has been to watch Youtubes of Elizabeth Warren grilling bankers, presidents of banks, insurance companies, and, most notably in this piece, such people as Tim Geithner, the head of the SEC, Mary Jo White, others such as Leonid Chanin (who she was coerced into hiring due to his alleged and massive expertise) and speaking against such things as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
While I haven't found video of her grilling some other very deserving appointees of Barack Obama, there are those there as bad as any she did question.
When one of the greatest voices for economic justice in the United States Senate has to do this to the appointees and policies of the sitting Democratic president, there is something seriously wrong with the policies of that president.
If Barack Obama had championed the interest of working people, poor people small businesses, instead of those of the richest of the rich and the biggest of the biggest corporations who are robbing, fleecing and cheating and grinding down people at the bottom of the economic ladder he would never have lost the congress in 2010, he would have almost certainly have created the conditions that would have made Americans reject Donald Trump and voted for a real Democrat who will not be the disaster that they turned to. Much of what I said about Barack Obama could be said for the many missed opportunities during the Bill Clinton administration - though in Bill Clinton's case, the tech bubble did a lot to float the economy so people actually did better. Barack Obama's slow motion growing of the economy didn't keep up with the increasing predation of banks like Wells Fargo and many others. Bank consolidation has increased massively during the Obama administration and his appointees have largely either done nothing to stop that or to enable it.
The announcement right before the election of the large increases in premiums in Obamacare is emblematic of too much of how the Obama team has thought of giving something to the middle class and lower income people who elected Barack Obama to office, twice. I have to say, important as it is, as big a step as it was - before it is destroyed - Obamacare has seemed like meager crumbs as compared to the lavish rewards the banker, CEO class has enjoyed as a result of policies his appointees have put into place.
I strongly believe that Hillary Clinton would not have made those same mistakes, there was every evidence that she knew that if she tried to make those kinds of appointments that she would have Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others to deal with. I think that she is far less likely to have overlooked issues benefiting the working class than Barack Obama. I honestly doubt anyone, with a straight face, could say that Barack Obama has demonstrated the kind of devoted commitment to economic justice for working class and poorer people that his campaign rhetoric led people to hope for in 2008 and, to some extent 2012. If he had worked as hard for that as he has for the TPP, for bailing out the banks, the Democratic Party would be in great shape instead of being KOed by a total fraud who will disappoint his supporters hopes even as he plays on their fears and insecurities to manipulate them for his own benefit. I know that disappointment among Donald Trump's cult following is coming, I can guess who he will blame for it, the only question is if it will take. The cabloid and other media will be supporting his narrative.
Listen to the videos, it might rouse you from the stunned shock we are all rightly in today. It should be shocking to any Democrat that this kind of questioning of a Democratic President's appointees and situations allowed under his administration was appropriate and necessary.
As we try to recover, as we try to rescue democracy or to remake it after the Trump-fascist regime destroys it, no one who could make such appointments and make such policies should be part of the effort. Whatever gratitude Democrats owe Barack Obama, we owe the American People even more, we owe it to them to take their lives entirely more seriously than they have been taken.
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