President Obama on Monday kicked off his reelection campaign with a quiet video posting rather than the usual hoopla.
In addition to the video, titled "It Begins With Us," the Obama campaign sent an e-mail to supporters announcing the drive for 2012. The announcement had been expected and was signaled in reports throughout the weekend.
Obama pledged to focus on his job, but will pick up the tempo of campaigning this month with several fundraisers. The campaign is hoping to raise a record $1 billion.
Or roughly twice what it spent in 2008. When it had the fervor of a religious revival and the mantle of destiny.
With all due respect, Mr. President, it's going to be hard to drum up that kind of enthusiasm amongst even your ardent defenders, like myself. You know your campaign is in trouble when the best rationale you have to seek our money is "Keep me in office to keep them from their agenda."
Your second term shouldn't be about playing defense. Yes, you made some significant progressive moves in your first term, healthcare reform being the most obvious example. But you also capitulated to a corporatocracy that really doesn't give a rat's ass who's in power, so long as they remain there.
In truth, that's who runs this country, from the Oval Office to the Congress to the SCOTUS (anyone remember Citizen's United?) The people who adopted you early, your earliest fighters from the primaries, they looked to you for hope and change. The millions and millions who sent you $5 or $10 or $25, the people who are hurting the worst right now in the depths of this recession-that-technically-isn't, they looked to you for help and protection.
War was declared on we the people decades ago, Mr. President. Bill Clinton saw that, and saw that it was getting out of hand, that the nation needs its citizens whole and working. You do too. The difference is, he would have done something more than HAMPer us.
Trillions for banks. Nothing for Americans except a tax cut that no one even noticed and a healthcare reform bill that, if it survives, won't even kick in for another three years. Ahead of it, HMOs are gouging rates and doctors are overbilling all in the name of the rainy days to come.
When do we get to fight this class war back? When do we get to untie our hands and instead of being beaten, slapped and punched, maul those who harm us daily, with no regrets, without honor or loyalty to the nation that bestowed upon them the very gifts that our soldiers, We The People, have fought so hard for over the centuries?
When do you champion us? I'll give to your campaign. I may even contribute the same significant amounts I did in 2008. But it won't be with joy in my heart and hope for the kind of change we can believe in.
It'll be because I don't want a Mormon and a Moron running this nation.
You'll just have to settle. Like we have.
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