Next Gen News

Left and right turn on president, raising questions over his chances of winning the White House again

Outside the Aragon ballroom in the north Chicago neighbourhood of Uptown, little sign remained of the president's 50th birthday party. The night before, 2,000 well-wishers had crammed inside the beautiful old building to mark Barack Obama's half-century. They had partied and danced as R&B singer Jennifer Hudson crooned "Happy Birthday".

Yet the debt deal is now just one liberal complaint among many. Leftist Democrats decry the influence of the banking sector among Obama's economic staffers. They bemoan the toothlessness of his financial reforms. His promise to shut Guantánamo Bay remains unfulfilled. He preserved huge tax breaks for the wealthy. He has upped the war in Afghanistan and not delivered on climate change and immigration reform.

Liberal commentators express their dismay as enthusiastic as they once praised him. New York Times Ross Douthat columnist said last week that he was afraid, "... we 're living through another failed presidency". Even some of Obama 's most loyal supporters have once pulled no punches. Princeton professor Cornell West, a leading black intellectual, recently described Obama as a "... a black mascot of the Wall Street oligarchs". He shied away from not that incendiary opinion last week, said a black media conference in Philadelphia: ". I '. M an angry brother, Barack Obama is not evil ... He' sa different kind of brother"

It's huge envy for some progressives on the role of the Tea Party on the right side. Even if they denounce their goals, they look longingly at his ability to influence policy. A progressive organization, the Campaign for America 's Future is organizing a conference in Washington in October at the formation of such a movement on the left side off. "We have to be an ideological force that is as energetic as the Tea Party and the Democrats pushing bold," Co-director Roger Hickey said the Observer

Obama is set to embark on a bus tour of America's heartland, where he will attempt to put jobs at the centre of his political message. But it might not be enough. Even on the streets of Bronzeville there was an understanding that economic times were now very hard, no matter how much one supported the current occupant of the White House. Jones admitted that the collapse of the housing market meant plumbing jobs were few and far between: "Nobody needs a plumber these days. It's slow. I have had to cut back, tighten my belt."