“Obama is No Pro-Worker President” or: He’s Just Not Into You

“In response, hundreds of janitors in Houston walked off the job last Tuesday, and there have been solidarity strikes in Denver, Minneapolis and a number of other cites…. If Obama wanted to offer a textbook example of a major campaign theme — America’s widening income gap — that would also signal his commitment to helping workers, he could at least release a statement supporting the strikers, yet he and other Democrats seem content to let the janitors fight alone.”

Orthodox, unthinking Obama boosters invariably accuse critics-from-the-left of secretly rooting or working for Romney to win. This is silliness; you’d be hard pressed to find any critic from the left who thinks Romney actually deserves to be elected.

Speaking for myself I’ll vote for any genuine, progressive-left, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobia, working-class oriented Democrats (or Leftist Independents, Greens, Reds, etc.) with a demonstrable, substantial track record of being exactly that.

Vote for whomever you want, but while we’re playing the game of lesser-evilism in which corporate-owned Democratic Party bosses demand everyone from the center-left onward perpetually lower our sights for empty, ultimately meaningless electoral gain, let us at the rank-and-file at least have the dignity not to pretend that Obama actually deserves re-election either.

We can’t keep having a long, slow bleed in which every four years the decision boils down to who sinks the knife into the back of the working-class the deepest; of who sells us out for the lowest price. That’s not a real choice and if unthinking apologists keeps pretending that it is, we’ll all be subjects of the ultra-reactionary GOP free-market fantasyland sooner than they can possibly believe.