My case for Obama for those who are less than enthusiastic about him
I, too, have been disappointed with President Obama in many ways, but voting for him (or, if you please, against Romney) was not a difficult decision.
I'll take it this far: I do not believe America will survive a Mitt Romney presidency. That statement is not intended to be hyperbolic. The Republican plan is to "win" the election through voter suppression, cut taxes on the very wealthy and raise them on the very voters they suppressed. Taxation without representation is as much tyranny today when the Republicans do it as it was 240 years ago when King George did it. Private citizens will be expected to give up their rights and government benefits and get nothing in return. The income gap will widen, more middle class workers will slip into poverty and the Wall Street bankers will continue to fleece the public and party like eighteenth century French aristocrats. The deficit will go up and the only solution that will be considered is more austerity. The children of the lower classes, including what is left of the middle class, will be expected to fight and die in pointless and ultimately unwinnable resource wars waged for the benefit of robber barons. That state of affairs can only be maintained with a police state. The hope and dream that was America will be as dead as Thomas Jefferson.
Some may say that four more years of President Obama won't be any better, but on that I beg to differ. Perhaps the Wall Street bankers, like the Bush administration war criminals, will continue to go unpunished, but under Obama the social safety net has remained in tact and even expanded somewhat under that which reactionaries derided but is now more universally hailed as Obamacare. Women's rights have been protected under measures such as the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Abortion will remain safe and legal. No Democrat will ever vote to privatize Social Security or voucherize Medicare and few will even think out loud about a national right-to-work bill. When President Obama leaves office after the election of 2016, many problems will remain, especially if the House of Representatives remains under control of racists, misogynists and corporate fascists, but things will not collapse and might even be at least marginally better.
I would be more encouraged if the President ditches his Wall Street friendly economics team and replaces it with people like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman and replaces the feckless Eric Holder with an Attorney General who will prosecute war criminals, robber barons and industrial polluters. However, to paraphrase an unrepentant war criminal, we vote for the candidates we have, not the ones we wish we had.
