Apparently a generational label for the current American left is overdue. Historian John P. Diggins (in 1992) identified four generations in his historical overview: the Lyrical Left, the Old Left, the New Left and the Academic Left. After reading David Morris, it seems overdue to identify a new category - the theory-less lumpen left.
The article is left populism, a seething rant against their usual demonic 'evil doers' (banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies, Wall Street, "giant corporations", etc.) and their machinations in the great recession. And what remains, by article end, is a residue of bitterness against Obama not doing more - his "more" not being measured by the degree of recovery from the recession (that seems irrelevant to the author), but in Obama's failure to punish individual enemies and dismantle the institutional class enemies.
What an opportunity for political exploitation - lost! In the venerable tradition of Huey Long and Elizabeth Warren Mr. Morris wanted the streets filled with financial blood. He bemoans "the could have been" had Obama mounted the barricades, red flag flying behind his upturned gaze, fist clenching the air in defiance, to the cheers of the yearning masses of proto-revolutionaries - why, Morris wonders, didn't he turn the capitalists over to those with the pitchforks?
Perhaps because, unlike the author, Obama was aware of he was not elected as Tsar or a one-party Chairman the the American Soviet? Might it have something to do with Congressional majority that contained cooler and more moderate Democrats? You know, like the ones that supported Obamacare but rejected a single payer Medicare system?
Or might it be that Obama made "the mistake" of listening to his own well educated economists, his own Treasury secretary, and his own financial system experts on the path to, and priority of, recovery?
Or, finally, might it be that he was well aware that his win and his Congress was the result of the "perfect storm" of a unpopular war, deep recession, a major hurricane, and several years of effective (and relentless) Republican bashing rhetoric over a "culture of corruption"? Could it be that he understood that his coalition was a fragile and temporary deviation, one that needed nurtured against the coming backlash?
I am not one to defend Obama, but its difficult to see how he could have been expected to do much more. Very shortly after he took office, a grass roots Tea Party arose to fight his "creeping socialism", his wall street supporters balked (e.g. Dimon), and his bank bashing class rhetoric effectively terrorized and alienated the blue dog moderates in his party's Congress. People were looking for a unify-er and hope generator, not a revolutionary.
It was not enough to be adored by academia, teachers, blacks, students, government employees, single women, the gays, the unions, wind power boosters, illegals, and Hollywood...although you wouldn't know it listening to the lumpen left.
As it was, the blue dogs got wiped out in 2010 and then, in spite of Republican blunders, so did many Democratic Senators (in 2014).
Guess it goes to that the lumpen, of either party, never let's reality cloud their passions (or bitterness).
