State of the Illusion

For anyone on the left who's tempted to relapse into 2008 euphoria by the president's early-campaign turn to rhetorical populism, this remains as true as it always was: Obama is not your ally who's been co-opted; he's your enemy who is co-opting you.

Comments

[Barry Soetoro]

obama is our friend and our brother, and now at last he is able to express the love for the common person which he has always had, but has previously had to de-emphasize in order to be politically realistic and accomplish as much as was possible at the time

[John Caruso]

You could almost call it 11-dimensional chess.

[Brian M]

Heck...as a lefty I have no "love" for the common person. I just think a society should be designed to allow for more fairness and limit the abilities of our sociopathic "betters" to amass even more wealth and power.

[Lewis from Chicago]

I supported Obama early on despite hearing about his right-wing connections. That leads me to this conclusion: The most important thing to understand is that financial backers of a politician will predict his decisions more than his promises.

Since facts don't play into his calculations, it's no wonder my former hero George Lakoff has become massively delusional.

[Amanda Rex]

Uck. God, that speech was gross.