Lenin on the Death of the Obama Dream

Read it here.

Here's an excerpt:

The unpopularity of Obama's proposals cannot be reduced to right-wing hysteria, which is only persuasive for about a fifth of Americans and two-thirds of Republicans. Such shrill nonsense motivates a right-wing base and, for that reason, cannot be dismissed - but let's get some perspective here. For a start, Americans hate the current healthcare system. The majority in poll after poll favours something like a single-payer or national insurance health system. That isn't reflected in every poll, of course, but the overwhelming trend is for Americans to prefer a government-run health system to the private, heavily subsidised, system. Secondly, this is Massachusetts we're talking about here. This is a state where a powerful majority voted 'yes' on a ballot initiative favouring a single payer system in 2008. The vote against the Democrats in their heartland was not a vote against socialised medicine, because that is not what was on offer.

Best line in the piece:

It is easy to blame the lousy performance of Croakley, or whatever her name was.