President Obama has showed, both in his choice of advisors and his actions, that he buys completely into the Chicago School of economics. For those not familiar with that term, that's the school of thought that believes in "free markets" that will somehow magically fix all known problems. Yes, I'm exaggerating their central premise, but only slightly. People who think this have never been in the real world. You can safely count Barack Obama as one of those people.
[W]e‘ve got a country where there are 2 million people who are set to lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year.
This Christmas time, there are people who can‘t feed their kids. For the love of God, show some leadership, do something about this.
This isn‘t a situation where people care about your cheap political theatrics and whose—what party‘s going to get the one up on each other. It‘s not the time for symbolic votes, it‘s the time for real leadership.
'The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell' for Dec. 1, 2010
Yet there are still people out there who demand that the President man up, or cowboy up, or whatever euphemism you prefer to describe summoning courage, and do what's right for Americans who aren't filthy rich. There is absolutely no reason to expect this of him. He is getting what he wants, and the Democrats are letting him do it. That's what's going on here.
The only difference between Democrats and Republicans in DC these days, at least when it comes to economic policy, is that the Democrats haven't yet had the nerve to let the unemployment checks run out. They'll probably leave that to the GOP, but right now I'm not even willing to bet they have that much compassion.
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