The Worst Things Obama Can Do

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted January 24, 2009.

Racetoinfinity also points to the consequences of Clintonian triangulation and begs Obama to avoid that path:

I just want thank you for this post and re-emphasize that so-called Clintonian centrism is a fraud, and its DLC neoliberal triangulation is really a full accommodation to right-wing, moneyed, elite interests, a collusion and joining with them against the people's interests. We got NAFTA, repeal of Glass-Steagall (a major cause of the current great depression), American exceptionalist thinking, refusing to hold Bush and Co. criminally accountable for their anti-Constitutional crimes, and so on. Obama: Please don't go down that road to be a conventional Bilderberg Group "success'' -- it's the same wrong retrograde way we've been going since 1980 (going backwards to conformist competitive individualism and/or resisting moving up the spiral to neo-communitarianism [a new "trans-socialism" -- really an interdependent "integralism" containing full individuality [independence], and/but aware of the transcendent connection of all to all -- our planetary interdependence, a necessary awareness now, sooner than we had thought, perhaps].

Many commenters shared their vision of what Obama should (and shouldn't) do in order to move Democrats away from Clintonian triangulation and in a progressive direction:

Monkeywrench points out that our corporate-owned, biased media is direly in need of heavy-handed reform:

What Obama needs to do for No. 11 on the list is work with the FCC to return honesty in reporting to the news and develop punishments for any serious, outright lying that is discovered in news broadcasts. The First Amendment does not apply in slander and libel, and the American public has the right to receive honest and accurate reporting free of politically motivated omissions.

RevolutionNet writes that Obama can't move forward without confronting America's past:

For President Obama to allow the human filth of the Bush administration to escape punishment for what they've done to our nation and our world.

"If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again." Paul Krugman

And Gracchus calls on Obama to take a sane approach to Cuba:

It is time … to end the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba.

While it is too soon to tell how Obama intends to grapple with these difficult and politically sensitive issues, one thing is clear, beandang says:

No doubt about it, it will be interesting to see what Obama does. Anything he does will surely be better than the nothing Dictator Bush has done over the last eight years. Good riddance to the Bush regime!

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Tana Ganeva is an assistant editor at AlterNet.

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