Une appréciation critique de Obama

Il y a l’enthousiasme des milieux libéraux-progressistes européens (accompagné bien sûr par l’enthousiasme de la presse MSM séduite par les thèmes simplistes) pour la victoire d’Obama en Iowa, en général applaudie d’une part parce que le candidat est Africain-Américain (en réalité, “bi-racial” selon le terme politically correct puisque de mère blanche et de père noir), d’autre part parce qu’il présente une rhétorique qui voudrait faire croire à un changement peut-être radical, peut-être révolutionnaire dans la politique US. C’est effectivement le stéréotype du rêve des libéraux-progressistes avec la réconciliation de leur vision morale et politique avec l'image qu'ils chérissent des USA, – puisqu’il va sans dire que cette opinion libérale-progressiste implique évidemment un pro-américanisme zélé et fiévreux de la part de ceux qui la manifestent.

Une autre approche, radicalement différente, est développée dans un mode très critique contre la candidature Obama. Dans ce cas, l'origine raciale du candidat est perçue comme un argument de circonstance pour habiller une candidature d’une apparence novatrice et de haute tenue morale alors qu’elle s’apparente au contraire à une candidature classique pro-establishment. Dans ce cas, Obama aurait été au départ le candidat de l’establishment de réserve derrière Clinton, et il jouerait effectivement ce rôle de candidat de l’establishment si Clinton ne parvient pas à remettre sa campagne sur une voie victorieuse.

Une telle approche critique est exprimée d’une façon très argumentée et bien documentée par le site WSWS.org ce jour. Dans ce cas, la vision systématiquement pessimiste du site trotskiste nous est très utile puisque, débarrassée de toute illusion et particulièrement attentive aux réalités du système derrière les apparence rhétoriques, et bien informée à cet égard, elle nous restitue dans le cas d’Obama par rapport au système une image réaliste.

»Despite the attempts of the media, in the wake of his caucus victory, to build up Obama as an insurgent figure, the senator from Illinois is anything but. He has been assiduously promoted by sections of the Democratic Party establishment since his US Senate campaign in 2004, when he was given the role of keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.

»His top campaign staffers are largely drawn from Democratic congressional circles, particularly those linked to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt.

»Obama’s presidential campaign raised more money than any Democrat in history in the year preceding the general election. While Internet fundraising from small donors accounted for a well-publicized portion of this, the bulk came in large donations from well-heeled financial backers of the Democratic Party, who boosted Obama’s credibility as a presidential contender when he topped Hillary Clinton’s quarterly fundraising totals last year.

»A profile last year in the Washington Post described his key fundraisers in these terms: “veterans of the Democratic financial establishment: a Hyatt hotel heiress, a New York hedge fund manager, a Hollywood movie mogul and a Chicago billionaire.” His billionaire supporters include investor Warren Buffett, currency speculator George Soros, hedge fund mogul Paul Tudor Jones and the Henry Crown family. Obama raised more money on Wall Street than either Hillary Clinton or former New York mayor and Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani.

»There is no doubt that the increased turnout in Iowa and the heavy vote for Obama among young people reflect popular hostility to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq—which both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, Obama’s principal rivals, voted to authorize in 2002. But the beneficiary of this popular sentiment is a conventional bourgeois politician whose program and political appeal do not challenge in the slightest the consensus of American big business politics.

»Obama specializes in hollow rhetoric about “hope,” “change” and “unity,” exemplified by his remarks Thursday night after he was declared the winner in Iowa. The very emptiness of his appeal makes it possible for voters opposed to Bush and disgusted with figures regarded as the “old guard” of the Democratic Party to project their desire for progressive change onto a politician who has no substantive differences with his Democratic rivals.

»While he claimed Thursday night that, if elected, he would end the war in Iraq, Obama has refused to set any deadline for the withdrawal of American troops, not even by 2013, when he would be inaugurated a second time if elected this year and reelected in 2012. He has called for intensifying US military action in Afghanistan and crossing the border into Pakistan, and has echoed the Bush administration’s campaign of economic sanctions, diplomatic saber-rattling and military threats against Iran.

»Obama’s talk of “choosing unity over division” is calculated to obscure the reality of a class-divided society. There can be no genuine unity of interests between the class of multimillionaires and billionaires, who increasingly monopolize the national wealth and income, and the vast majority who work for a living and struggle to make ends meet.

»The senator from Illinois has been promoted by elements in the American financial aristocracy because of his (relative to his peers) rhetorical polish, lack of connection to previous administrations, and bi-racial origins. Obama in the White House would not represent any fundamental change in the direction of US foreign or domestic policy, but he would, it is believed, put a new face on US imperialism, sorely needed after the debacle of the Bush presidency.»

Mis en ligne le 5 janvier 2008 à 06H46