“The people are starving!”
“Then let them eat stories”Let them eat dreams (from my father)
Every time that Obama complains about the current state of things, the only thing I can think of is:
As infuriating as the conclusion is, I think the premise is actually worse somehow
making goals materialistic and instrumental
When the hell did they do that?! All I can remember was:
“Brat summer, genocide, and lie”I voted for Obama because I thought he was gonna use the power of the state to help striking workers at the Congress Hotel in Chicago and was gonna do other things to make it easier to organize unions.
He didn’t do shit.
I was living in NYC in 2008, and I remember that when it was announced that they’d officially called the election for Obama, there was an audible cheer across the city. People were literally out dancing and partying in the streets. We really believed he was gonna do some shit other than just drone strike more poor people. Free healthcare, closing Guantanamo, and end to Iraq and Afghanistan wars–he pretty much promised the would and lots and lots of people believed him. It was pretty fucking wild in retrospect.
Yeah, I remember riding my bike around Chicago that evening and people were celebrating all over the place. I don’t wanna hear his voice ever again, so I’m definitely not gonna go back and listen to his campaign speeches to remember what he actually said, but he had a lot of us (myself included) thinking we finally had an ally at the top. Absolutely demoralizing.
Yep. I remember Scott Walker destroyed collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and Obama did not uphold this promise. It was a very illuminating moment for me as a teenager. I marched in Madison in solidarity with the unions because my parents were both teachers, and Obama (the first president I ever cast a vote for) didn’t do jack shit.
even that was too much. obama is asking for buttigieg levels of not saying anything here.
Eh Biden and Kamala did lean into the cost of living stuff, and there was the whole “If you vote for us we’ll pay you $600” shit too. A far cry from what Obama is really referring to, which is his 2008-2012 campaigns that were the pinnacle of the immaterial, vibes-based neoliberalism that propelled him through 2 presidencies without much bother.
Though he’ll forget to mention the difficulty in legislating with a contested senate/house given how quickly his vibes fell apart at midterm elections, and how the failures ever since have been from fighting the legacy of his nothing-burger politics.
“Stop demanding the $2000 I owe you! That was aspirational!”As if $2k would even make a dent in everything costing twice as much
The $1600 stuff was OK, but it was a one-time response to a crisis, it was identical to what Trump had already done and there was no discussion about some systemic change.
There was a brief moment in the beginning of the campaign where she promised to crack down on compagnies that are price gouging, but that idea abandoned later https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-price-gouging-ban-inflation-65dc8844bb41159d76886f752b6cab28
she did the same lightning flip-flop on healthcare. the only thing she’s steadfast on is the need to murder children for the zionists
Hey now, that’s not fair! She also showed uncritical support for a rapist and child-killer.
Its so hard to tell with this guy. He’s so cynical. We can’t assume he is speaking the language of leftists, because he isn’t one. We also know he isn’t talking to leftists, he is talking to mainstream liberals. So I feel like he might be saying something to them, the DC liberal elite, in a language they understand.
What is “instrumental” to a DC democrat? Its basically like winning elections via existing power power structures, so like pragmatism. The tendency to cynically play 5D chess with every situation. He might be saying, stop talking about politics as the levers and machinery of power.
Being “materialistic” is a little funkier, because if we think about what he means compared to the second half of his statement, about a “moral and ethical story” to us it seems like a contradiction, like he’s telling mainstream liberals to be more idealistic. I don’t quite think that’s what he means. We know he’s been having conversations with Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed and seeing the power of their populist mesaage. But liberal democrats believe they are more materialist, and that the left is idealist. So in order to prevent the Dems from continually losing to Democratic Socialists and social democrats, I think he’s saying they have to adopt the populist messaging.
We’ve seen this before, in 2020, Democratic presidential candidates shifted far to the left in their messaging, due to Sanders. Every candidate was advocating for Medicare for All, except for Biden. The Medicare for All messaging was instrumental (there’s that word again) in the rug pull which defeated Sanders.
This is also the guy who won with “The Audacity to Hope” messaging, and then was the most cynical president since Nixon. So given the deep cynicism we know to expect from Obama, the upcoming elections, and the actual nature of the Democratic Party, I think Obama is saying that Democrats are probably leading too much with the political machinery messaging, the “lesser evilism” message isn’t working anymore. Lots of liberal voters have been using this calculus to justify voting blue, but now there are viable (seeming) alternatives. People are willing to vote for an alt candidate, or even withhold their vote entirely. Cynical calculus is going to lose, is what Obama is saying.
So expect democrats to shift left on their messaging for virtually every issue. The party is structurally incapable of following through with deep structural change, but they can feed us a line of bullshit to kick the can down the road another 2 years. The democrats have been saying, “you may not like it but you’re going to have to marry this pig” and Obama is saying to put some lipstick on it and dress it up real nice and call it a lovely person, so maybe people won’t notice the pig until after the election.
He’s using the words of Marxism, but his meaning is totally opposite. He cannot conceive actual materialism, so to him “materialist” is just another word for whining about winning an election. Since the only material conditions he understands are being elected or not.
I hate this fucking guy so much!
I just made a post about how he personally got involved to defang BLM by talking the NBA players out of a strike!
Fuck this fucking guy! Forever! I’m so sick of this assshole acting like he’s above this mess. Smug motherfucker acting like his hands aren’t red to the elbows.
Dude’s presidential library is a brutalist obelisk overshadowing low income housing.
It tells a story.Kate Wagner (of Mcmansion Hell) called it the tombstone for neoliberalism (or something close to that) and then realized that it’s almost within sight of the University of Chicago, where neoliberalism was born.
It really does tell a story
Darth Vader’s Mustafar castle ass library
Does he think we’re stupid?
Yes.
“Democrats made the mistake of making measurable promises they weren’t going to even try to deliver on. We need to make vague platitudes so no one can hold us to account.”
He’s not wrong though
Liberal love for him is largely predicated on the ‘vibes’ he brought for wont of a better term
Truke
He’s right. The dems have the most success when they just lie about promising sappy empty bullshit and they are at their worst when they refuse to ever back down from materially supporting genocide.
let them eat vibes
That’s not a bit account. What the fuck?
Obama is, unfortunately, indeed not a bit account, but 100% like that.
“healthcare pls”
Yea, the American people care a lot about morals and ethics. I’m sure. Just don’t talk to any of them.
I’m not starved for moral and ethics asshole I’m starved for food that isn’t moldy, full of metallic objects, full of poisons, and is something I can afford to feed a family of three on one persons paycheck.
idgaf about moral and ethics. I give a fuck about my material conditions.
Sorry pal best I can do is restoring the soul of america.
A shining city on a hill, where diesel is $11/gallon and the agrimonopoly passes the costs on to you, the food enjoyer!
food enjoyer
to be fair it’s kinda hard to enjoy food that either gives you lethal diarrhea, heart attacks or zombie deer disease
Nobody said the hill wouldn’t be a landfill
They paved over Staten Island and made it a *checks notes* Cuomomintang fortress
I’m going to tell my boss this at my next review and see how it goes. Sorry boss I actually think you yearn for the story about how I fit into the team rather than my measurable KPIs!
Honestly, that’s how my annual reviews feel. The only time I’ve ever used an LLM was to generate my self review because it’s pointless.
