It should be quite clear to anyone who reads this blog that I don’t like Obama, for reasons that I’ve posted about for more than a year. The lines are being drawn for the elections in 2012 and there are an awful lot of people out there who still cling to the idea that Obama really has the best interests of the American people at heart – that he is just being outfoxed by those mean, mean Republicans. I don’t buy that at all – I think he is a Republican at heart. Or a DINO, if you prefer.

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was a Socialist who ran for President in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. In 1893, he organized one of the first industrial unions in the United States, the American Railway Union. If you are interested in learning more about Debs, the Wikipedia article is as good a place to start as any.

I’m quoting from some of his speeches here to show that nothing has changed in 100 years. With Obama’s latest capitulation, we are rapidly heading back to the days before Debs became politically active in the 1880s. I like the last of the Debs’ quotes the most and it is the reason that I will not vote for Obama in 2012.

“The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties — differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests — they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.”

“The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.”

“It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

If you substitute “corporate/corporatist” for “capital/capitalist” and “worker” for “labor”, how is what he said then not the truth today?