Critique of a Critique of Obama

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/23/a-man-child-in-a-promised-land/?fbclid=IwAR046KKaS80JStkvnakyPnpFK7T8O77PBVskqagznbouZ3_9qBAjY9st8Rs

I understand the perspective offered in the Counterpunch article, but with most of the reservations Tony mentions.  

Barack Obama, along with his many other roles in our culture, served as a Rorschach test.  As the first Black president—elected a mere forty years after Martin Luther King gave his life to make it possible for such a man to be elected for the content of his character (or perhaps his charisma), rather than his pigmentation—his ascendancy was attended by all the expected range of aspirations and fears.   

Many of the hope and fears were based upon the same two-dimensional caricature of the beholder, rather than by Obama’s promises or policies.  For every paranoid racist who feared a military-backed Mau-Mau uprising, there were others for whom that would be a prayer answered.  

But Barack Obama was not without a track record, and was not silent about his plans.  The author compares him disparagingly to the Clintons.  I feel that the comparison has merit, we should consider the alternatives.  I personally consider myself somewhat to the left of President Obama.  But when we consider the domestic and international ecosystem we inhabit, how much more progressive a candidate could be elected; indeed, how much more progressive could policies be, and hope to be enacted by a Congress which represents a center-right constituency?  Would we prefer a president whose administration went down in flames ‘fighting the good fight’ for a public option on healthcare, or one who will settle for a program that meets most of the needs, but leaves this important program to be taken up by a future administration?

We need perspectives like Paul Streets - though they could better be phrased more civilly.  We need to remember what has been left on the table, lest we forget and leave it there indefinitely.  But, as painful as it can be, we need to remember that politics plays out in the theater of the possible.  And we need to evaluate the success of an administration compared to the promises the candidate actually made, rather than those we imputed upon him or her, based upon our own aspirations.