James Petras: US Elections: From the Lesser to the Greater Evil!

There is ample evidence that the Obama Presidency has pulled the US political spectrum further to the Right. On most domestic and foreign policy issues Obama has embraced extremist positions surpassing his Republican predecessor, and in the process devastating what remained of the peace and social movements of the past decade. Moreover, the Obama Presidency has laid the groundwork for the immediate future, promising a further extension of regressive policies, following the presidential elections: Cuts in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Incumbents and their opposition compete over hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funding from wealthy donors, which they will have to repay in the post election period in billion dollar handouts, subsidies, tax abatements, anti labor and environmental policies. Not a single positive proposal was put forth by the Obama campaign, but numerous militarist and regressive social policies were articulated. The Obama campaign ran a fear campaign, playing off of the reactionary proposals of the Romney Tea Party alliance: A coverfor his own record of unprecedented military spending, sequential wars, immigrant expulsions, mortgage foreclosures and Wall Street bailouts. In the process, critical liberals have crossed the line, surrendering their integrity by deflecting attention from Obama's militarist socially regressive policies, to focus on opposing Romney as a greater evil: Progressives and critical liberals have multiplied and magnified the duplicity of the Obama political apparatus. In the name of opposing Romney, the current greater evil, they dare not enumerate and specify the wanton political crimes and monumental socio economic in justice perpetrated by their lesser evil candidate Obama. Will the progressives ever honest and publicly state: We back Obama in swing states because he has only murdered 10,000 Afghans, 5,000 Iraqis, is starving 75 million Iranians via sanctions, gives $3 billion for Israeli displacement of millions of Palestinians, personally oversees the arbitrary executions of US citizens, and promises an extended kill list, because Romney promises to be worse.