Is Robert Gibbs Right About the "Professional Left"?

By Mike Whitney

August 13, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- I figured it out.

I figured out why White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is so pissed off at the professional left. It's because the P.L.'s thought that Barack Obama was sincere when he promised to close Guantanamo, end the war in Iraq, pass a decent health care bill, clean up Wall Street, push through "card check", restore habeas corpus, and change Washington. They didn't realize that the "Hope Campaign" was a fraud and that Obama was another flannel-mouth, silver-spoon, Harvard-educated phony who'd promise anything to get elected, and then kick his supporters down the stairwell as soon as the votes were tallied. They believed in him. They trusted him.

But it isn't the professional left's fault that Obama's numbers are in the toilet or that the Democratic Party is going to get trounced in the upcoming midterms. Oh, no. Our strutting, celluloid hologram president managed that feat himself. All Obama had to do was "fight the good fight"; take on the corporations, the banksters, the Pentagon, the special interests. No one expected him to win.....The winning-part wasn't even important. What was important was sticking up for the little guy who can't afford a high-paid lobbyist to help him keep his house or his job or avoid destitution because his kid broke his fu**ing arm on the school playground and he doesn't have the $150,000 to pay the fu**ing hospital bills. That's all we expected; someone who'd represent ordinary working slobs. Not superman; just somebody who gave a shit.

But that's not what we got, is it? Obama won't fight for anything, because Obama doesn't believe in anything. Period. It's a character-thing; either you got it or you don't. It should have been obvious that Obama didn't have it during the campaign, when he knifed his pastor Jeremiah Wright in the back and tossed him to the sharks to placate Sean Hannity and the right-wing media rabble.

So much for loyalty, eh?

Ask yourself this: Why would anyone give an inch to rightwing blowhards after we just got 8 years of their protofascist vision for America? Huh? Why?

The truth is, Jeremiah Wright is a bigger man than Obama will ever be, because Wright stands for something, believes in something, and has put his life on the line for something.

What does Obama believe in? Charter schools? War in Pakistan? Cuts to Social Security?

Obama can talk-the-talk, but he can't walk-the-walk. He can roll up his sleeves, point at the horizon, and work his magic on a stadium full of fans. But he can't shut down Gitmo, indict a few bankers who blew up the financial system, nationalize an oil company that poisoned an entire quadrant of the country, or charge the people who dragged the country to war on a "pack of lies". Obama is WAY too busy for any of that stuff. He's got much more important matters to tend to. Just think of the photo-ops he'd miss.

Gibbs is right about the professional left. We aren't happy. We are disappointed; crushed really. Dejected, depressed and despairing. It may be the worst case of buyer's remorse in history. We thought we were voting for FDR and we got Ronald Reagan. We got reamed.

The worst part of it is that Obama has cleared the way for a GOP landslide in November followed by 8-years of President Sarah Palin.