Obama Is the Favorite of the Republican Fat Cats

This is David Gottfried's post on the WaPo blog "Right Matters."

Although the public is beginning to understand that a candidacy based on a vague, inchoate promise of "change" is not enough, Obama presents another problem.

Actually, I think Obama has definite policy goals and objectives, but his goals are NOT what his supporters think they are.

Most of his supporters, I think, consider him a progressive. Indeed, some polls indicate that he performs better among more liberal democrats. When our media does deign to compare his policies with those of Clinton -- and it is rare that they do this as they prefer to talk about all sorts of baloney like Hillary's crying spell and a stupid, fabricated racial controversy about King -- the media generally says that Obama is very similiar, in policy, to Clinton and Edwards.

But he is not. Obama is much less progressive than Clinton and Edwards:

1)His health care proposals are vastly inferior. He would not mandate that all Americans get health care, and he criticizes his Dem opponents for including such a mandate (they would provide subsidies for Americans who couldn't buy health insurance.) Obama tries to make it appear that his plan is therefore freer, but it is a plan that is doomed to failure. If his plan is optional, then healthier Americans and Americans with other health care options would not participate in it, the plan would be populated with sicker people, and there would not be enough healthy people, in the plan, to pay for the claims of ill Americans. An insurance scheme only works when some people pay premiums but don't make claims because they are well; this is essential if the plan is to remain solvent. But Obama, apprently, wants the plan to fail so he can keep the insurance industry riding roughshod over the American people.
Furthermore, by criticizing Clinton and Edwards for making their plans mandatory, he provides ammo for Republicans, in the fall, should Ed or Hill get the nomination. The GOP will say, "even Obama recognized the lack of freedom inherent in the Clinton/edward plans." But in a debate there is no time to talk about how systems of insurance work and Obama prevails courtesy of the peoples' boundless ignorance.

2) Obama supported the energy bill that was a give away to the oil and gas industry

3) Obama routinely voted present, in the Illinois legislature, when controversial issues arose

4) Obama's tax stimulus plan, for the oncoming recession, provides tax breaks for all Americans, unlike the Hill or Edwards plans that provide tax breaks for only Americans who are middle class or poorer.

Obama is the perfect candidate for the corporate elites. They know that America is in a more progressive mood, and that a Dem will probably get elected, and they have found their man: Obama, someone who appears to be a progressive, who will capitalize on and exploit the electoral energy of progressives, and then ditch them when he ascends to power.

And the media, in reporting on the "love fest" at last night's Vegas debate, left out so much. Edwards noted that Obama had raised more from the insurance industry, and pharmaceutical titans, than any other candidate in this race. When he asked Obama why they might have given him money, Obama lamely said that they were inspired by his "message." Hardly a word of this in the media.