re: #123 Blind Frog Belly White

I’d really like for someone to tell me why, and in what fashion, it ‘looks bad’.

I mean, he’s not IN office. He’s not RUNNING FOR office. He’ll likely never run for office again. He has already done whatever it was he was going to do as President.

That’s pretty easy. A mild version of the story runs like this:

Obama gets in office in 2008 and is confronted with the reality that the US is a plutocracy and that actually doing something about the big banks is difficult/impossible. So nothing much is done, relatively weak reforms are passed through Congress, and Obama will personally do well out of the whole affair, both in prior Wall Street campaign donations and likely future rewards on the speaking circuit.

The more lurid and ridiculous versions of this story paint Obama as a mustache-twirling villain indistinguishable from a Republican.

Whether or not one believes in any version of this story, the underlying issue of opposing US plutocracy is real, and one of the weaknesses of the Democratic party is the lack of a decent answer to this problem.

Personally I don’t think Obama is a sell-out on the banks issue, but the lack of hearings, investigations and prosecutions vs. the banks makes this more of an act of faith than it should be.