Law Professor Roberto Unger's Critique of President Obama and the Public Policy Failures of the Democratic Party Neoliberal Elite

"BEYOND OBAMA" BY ROBERTO UNGER

"BEYOND STIMULUS" by DR. ROBERTO UNGER:

All,

As a fellow independent leftist who also strongly objects to and opposes Obama's endless political opportunism and glaringly obvious ideological and social policy weaknesses vis-a-vis both the Republican and Tea Party right, as well as his evasive tepid incrementalism masquerading as a generally substantive alternative to the oppressive domination of Wall Street, multinational corporations, and openly rightwing policies, programs, and positions in the areas of labor, women's rights, and massive racial and class disparities (not to mention major and increasingly worsening structural inequalities in employment, income, housing, healthcare, and education) I agree emphatically with every single thing that Professor Unger says here EXCEPT his monumentally irresponsible, oxymoronic, absurd and untenable position that the 2012 presidential election should be won by Mitt Romney(!). That would be a far greater political and economic catastrophe than the re-election of the President in both the short and long term at this point and anyone who doesn't see and understand that fundamental FACT is not simply 'wrong' but DELUSIONAL...

Having said that however we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that President Obama is remotely 'progressive' or even a dedicated liberal. The truth is that we are currently trapped in a profound political and economic dilemma. On that score Unger is 100% correct. Because like the Democratic Party generally, Obama is nothing but a self serving political moderate and neoliberal hack AT BEST and thus should not be perceived as a politician who's primarily concerned with fighting for any truly significant or large scale economic and social justice and democracy in either our political economy specifically or civil society in general.

As always: NOTHING IMPORTANT AND LASTING IS GOING TO PROGRESSIVELY CHANGE IN THIS SOCIETY UNTIL WE COLLECTIVELY DEMAND IT AS CITIZENS WHO THROUGH SUSTAINED AND ORGANIZED MASS DEMOCRATIC ACTION SUBSEQUENTLY PROVIDE THE FUNDAMENTAL ALTERNATIVES THAT WE SAY WE SEEK AND NEED.

Until such time as we get really serious and actually do the grassroots organizing work we desperately need to do to transform our lives we will all simply remain dependent, complicit, servile, and exploited "prisoners of the American Dream" as the renowned social activist and political theorist Mike Davis so aptly put it back in the 1980s. No matter what we must all be willing and able to "face reality" (as CLR James used to say) in politics and life and this election (and its dire consequences "one way or the other") should not be dismissed or evaded. We all got a LOT of work to do-- to say the least!-- and it's only just begun...(and I'm talking about far more than just the election here)...

Kofi

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/roberto-unger-obama_n_1602812.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Roberto Unger, Obama's Former Harvard Law School Professor, Says The President 'Must Be Defeated'

by Bonnie Kavousi

June 17, 2012

The Huffington Post

One of President Barack Obama's former professors appears to have turned against him, according to a recent YouTube video.

"President Obama must be defeated in the coming election," Roberto Unger, a longtime professor at Harvard Law School who taught Obama, said in a video posted on May 22. "He has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States."

Unger said that Obama must lose the election in order for "the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life."

He acknowledged that if a Republican wins the presidency, "there will be a cost ... in judicial and administrative appointments." But he said that "the risk of military adventurism" would be no worse under a Republican than under Obama, and that "the Democratic Party proposes no new direction."

"Give the bond markets what they want, bail out the reckless so long as they are also rich, use fiscal and monetary stimulus to make up for the absence of any consequential broadening of economic and educational opportunity, sweeten the pill of disempowerment with a touch of tax fairness, even though the effect of any such tax reform is sure to be modest," he said. "This is less a project than it is an abdication."

The professor went on to list his complaints:

• "His policy is financial confidence and food stamps."
• "He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices."
• "He has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money."
• "He has disguised his surrender with an empty appeal to tax justice."
• "He has reduced justice to charity."
• "He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight."

"He has evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle."

Unger also criticized the nation's current economic policies in a recent YouTube video called "Beyond Stimulus."