Tim Egan still believes in a mythical Obama

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan wonders why Obama isn't simply following in Warren Buffet's footsteps in asking the rich to pay more in taxes.

He doesn’t have to launch a class war — merely to engage one that’s already underway. So far, surprisingly, he has not taken a side.

Sorry, Tim, but not surprising.

He's following in the footsteps of Robert Rubin instead. After all, this is the man whom Democratic national procurer Vernon Jordan walked before a dog-and-pony vetting show of Wall Streeters back in 2003, before he even had won a Senate primary.

Ken Silverstein besides providing the dog-and-pony show details mentioned above, adds to that with his message of how Obama had already become a trimmer by 2006.

That included this bit of warning:

(A)lthough Obama is by no means a mouthpiece for his funders, it appears that he’s not entirely indifferent to their desires either.

And this one:

I recall a remark made by Studs Terkel in 1980, about the liberal Republican John Anderson, who was running as an independent against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter: “People are so tired of dealing with two-foot midgets, you give them someone two foot four and they start proclaiming him a giant.” In the unstinting and unanimous adulation of Barack Obama today, one wonders if a similar dynamic might be at work.

That sounds about right. Yet, people still make their own "projections" of Obama. Even those, like Egan, who should know better.

Also read Silverstein's farewell post, from September, 2010, from his spot at Harper's Washington Babylon, where he compares Obama to the Slickster for all the bad reasons on both their parts.

That said, Silverstein notes it's not just Obama, because Obama is emblematic of today's Democratic party:

The current GOP is truly a scary party, but if not for that it would be impossible to care about the midterm elections. When you’re reduced to rooting for soulless hacks like the current Senate majority leader—and he’s typical of today’s Democrats—you’ve lost something fundamental at the core of your humanity.

The same holds true a year later, as we look toward 2012.

And, since I've been talking more about Obama again recently, and in mind of Silverstein's words, it's time to update readers, in the near future, on what's happening in the Green Party world.