A leftwards nudge

[Mark Baker]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/07/uselections2008-barackobama

Barack Obama supports the death penalty, falls short of offering truly universal healthcare and has made crudely hawkish noises about Afghanistan and Israel during the campaign. His stirring talk of change has sparked expectations which way outstrip anything he can either deliver or even seems to wish to. I know all this perfectly well, yet watching the results roll in on the small hours of November 5 I felt (more or less) unalloyed joy, an unfamiliar political emotion. And many lefties I've spoken to since admit to feeling the same way. Is this a case of being wilfully duped?

I don't think so. For one thing, there is the undeniably moving symbolism of a black family moving into the White House – a defining moment in American history certainly, and arguably a significant one for global north-south relations. Then, of course, there is great pleasure in seeing a line drawn under the Bush years. That line is all the clearer because on two principle crimes of the Bush-Cheney era, namely Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Obama took a progressive position early. The prospect of action on climate change is a more practical reason that many progressives cite to explain their pleasure.

Some interesting comments as well.

[bemildred]

1. Eh, we will see. This is new ground.

Obama looks very pragmatic to me, not any sort of ideologue that I can see. The most important features of this campaign (IMHO) were the return of public participation and public money to politics, and the failure of divide-an-rule politics and the state propaganda organs in controlling the outcome. One of Mr Obama's problems, which somebody will have to confront eventually, is that the US' decline in political power will not be reversed without a reversal of the decline in economic power, and that will not occur under the economic/social status quo.