Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Obama loses the left


It's not just gun-toting rightwingers who distrust Obama. US progressives have lost faith in his commitment to change

Dan Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 September 2009

(Cartoon by Khalil Bendib)

"Last Tuesday the liberal host of MSNBC's Countdown, perhaps the loudest Barack Obama cheerleader on cable news, singled out the Obama White House in his sarcastic Best Persons in the World segment for the "best impression of the Bush administration".
Obama's sin: hiring the Rendon Group, the beneficiary of Bush-administration largesse, to screen journalists seeking to be embedded with US military forces by picking over their past coverage.

"It gets worse," Olbermann continued.....

Among progressives, discontent has been building pretty much since inauguration day over issues ranging from civil liberties to torture prosecutions, from Obama's tepid support for gay and lesbian equality to his – well – tepid support for a government-run insurance option in the healthcare reform plan now stalled in Congress.

Glenn Greenwald, whose blog for Salon is among the most important stops for liberal activists, has been getting on Obama for months now. Greenwald wrote way back in February that the president had "resoundingly and disgracefully" failed his first civil liberties test by adopting the Bush administration's "state secrets" privilege in dealing with detainees who'd been subjected to extraordinary renditions.

More recently, Greenwald endorsed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's view that Obama had lost the trust of progressives on issues such as terrorism, financial reform and, of course, healthcare......"

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