"Neo-liberal, Unprincipled, Spineless Slimeball"

Krauthammer, as I showed in my last post, is almost glowing in his admiration for Obama recently, a very strange position for a rabid neo-conservative like him.  He makes an attempt to be critical, but it doesn't come across as very convincing, really.  What is one to make of this?

My guess is that Krauthammer is increasingly appreciative of Obama's foreign policy, which (especially in its Zionist aspect) is almost the totality of Krauthammer's concern.  Therefore, he is inclined to be supportive in his own kind of way.  Since Obama is getting so little love from the liberal-left, perhaps Krauthammer thinks that some strokes from his side with go a long way with Obama and make him more inclined toward the conservative cause.

Someone not so supportive of the President is Alexander Cockburn, the leftwing coeditor of Counterpunch and columnist for The Nation.  Suspicious of his intentions, Cockburn suspects that Social Security is going to be the target for Obama and the Republicans in the New Year.

Twenty years ago the supreme prize of the Social Security trust funds – the government pensions that changed the face of America in the mid-1930s - seemed far beyond Wall Street’s grasp. No Republican president could possibly prevail in such an enterprise. It would have to be an inside job by a Democrat. Clinton tried it, but the Lewinsky sex scandal narrowly aborted his bid.

If Obama can be identified with one historic mission on behalf of capital it is this – and though success is by no means guaranteed, it is closer than it has ever been.

This brings us to the upcoming 112th Congress, reflecting Republican gains in November, which will spend the evening of February 2 listening to Obama’s “bipartisan” agenda laid out in his State of the Union address.

The Politico website – reflecting informed political opinion in Washington DC - recently predicted that in this next address, “the teleprompter in chief is expected to announce cuts in Social Security.” As Robert Kuttner of Politico speculates: Obama’s rationale will be “to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R,Wisconsin), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April."

But surely for progressives, infuriated by the tax giveaway to the rich, and whose support Obama will be counting on for re-election in 2012, cuts in Social Security will be the last straw? Don’t bet on it. As political beasts of burden, progressives have backs that can sustain a virtually infinite number of straws.

Against the tax betrayal these middle-class progressives will tout the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Identity politics will trump class politics, as has been the case for middle-class progressives for the past quarter-century.

Cockburn ends his anti-Obama diatribe in classic style:

As with Clinton, we have a opportunistic, neoliberal president without a shred of intellectual or moral principle. We have disconsolate liberals, and a press saying that Obama is showing admirable maturity in understanding what bipartisanship really means. Like Clinton, Obama is fortunate in having pwogs to his left only too happy to hail DADTell as the rationale for continuing to support this spineless slimeball.