Hi David!

Great to hear from you! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. You make a lot of good points. You’re right that Obama was sincere about tackling the health care industry and costs, which in my disappointment over the public option, I sometimes forget. But, as you say, being a “free marker guy” it wasn’t in his DNA to really crack down on Wall Street, but, I would add further, to take on the Health Care industry or Big Pharma. He believes in Rubin inspired ideas, as does Geithner. He was the guest speaker at the inaugural meeting of Rubin’s Hamilton Project when he was still a Senator. At that meeting he defined himself as a free market advocate and honored the guy whose policies helped bring the economy to its knees. He then hired the people he had mentored.

Very eloquent and basically correct. It also describes my own journey, except that I was enamored of Obama only for a brief moment, basically from the time he beat Hillary until he appointed Geithner and Summers. At that point I said to myself — oh, yeah; now I remember what I thought of him when I realized he took favors from Tony Rezko; when he gave up in advance on Medicare-for-all; etc.

One small point, however. I do not believe that Obama totally gave into the health insurance companies quite so willingly. He has the intelligence and clarity of thought to realize that the medical system is truly bankrupting the nation, and in fact, threatening the whole structure that keeps the the plutocracy going. For historical reasons, the system we have transfers far too large a share of the pie to a very large industry — the doctors, health insurance companies, pharma companies, medical device makes, etc. And (a) it’s getting worse and (b) the amount of money involved is driving us toward public and private bankruptcy, unlike the financial sector which is smaller and we can “afford” to keep sending $$ to.

The idea of the public option was to rein that in, at least enough to keep the system going. But the Repubs got it into their head — with political and, yes, racial motivation — that they needed to defeat Obama at any cost and regain control, even if it meant bankrupting the country in the short and long run. And the racial reaction that bubbled up from the bottom of the pot (or was stirred up with the code-word “socialism”) in the form of the tea party also drove the Repubs as a party even further into that irrational position, so that they had to oppose even what they so loudly supported a few years ago — RomneyCare.

So, I believe Obama was basically sincere about trying to put our health care finances back into the the realm of rationality. Had he tacked wall street first and in a tough way while the pain and criminality were still vivid — which, as you note, was never really in his DNA or the way he ran the campaign — there never would have been a tea party, and real health finance reform would have sailed through Congress on the heels of a populist and wildly popular smackdown of the financial industry. But he waited until the pain passed, and the moment was lost. Instead he did health care finance first, with the result we see.

And one more ironic tragedy. Obama thought he needed wall street money to win the election, and if it hadn’t been for the financial crisis, he would have. As it happen, with the meltdown breaking at just the right moment and McCain totally fumbling it, he could have turned on wall street and still won. He’d have lost their money perhaps during the election and certainly afterwards, but it might not have mattered. He’d have had the the country in his pocket with a clear road to a truly progressive future. Trouble is, it isn’t in his DNA and never was, despite the ink-blot rhetoric.