How Barack Obama Failed Black Americans

[David_TheMan]

They have to if they want to continue receiving federal funding

Those are two different things, and the problem I would say is the federal funding in the first place. Why did Obama continue these programs if he is for black americans?

 

[King Kreole]

I have to ask the people here: What would you have Obama do? Imagine you had his ear. Or imagine you're president. You were Barack Obama. How would you have not failed black Americans? Do you think it would have been feasible?

Help me understand this anger about Obama not helping black people. Open my eyes. What would you have done (or not done) in his shoes to help black people? I ask seriously to learn.

How America's Foreclosure Crisis Worsened Under Obama

If Obama ever reads this critique, I suspect he’d mutter under his breath, as he disclosed to Coates he does habitually when confronted with activist demands. “Where I got frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it,” Obama grumbles.

Nothing is sadder than a man who disclaims his power to preserve his reputation. The presidency is subject to countless veto points and constraints, but the foreclosure disaster was unique; Congress had already given the incoming president the authority to act.

Obama the candidate ran on allowing bankruptcy judges to cut balances on primary mortgages; Obama’s administration actively whipped against the policy. Obama’s transition team earmarked up to $100 billion in funds appropriated through Bush’s bank bailout to mitigate foreclosures; eight years later only around $21 billion has been spent. Obama the president promised 4 million mortgage modifications; to date less than a million have been successfully achieved.

No Republican sign-off was necessary for Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Treasury Department alone decided to run it through mortgage companies that had financial incentives to foreclose rather than modify loans. Treasury never saw the program as a relief vehicle, but a way to “foam the runway” for the banks, allowing them to absorb inevitable foreclosures more slowly. Homeowners were the foam being crushed by a jumbo jet in that scenario, squeezed for as many payments as possible before ultimately losing their homes.

But Obama’s Justice Department did not use this newfound leverage to obtain equitable solutions for struggling families. It didn’t prosecute those responsible for fraud. It reached a series of bank settlements that provided little meaningful relief. Fraudulent documents still get used in foreclosures today. And of course, no high-ranking executive saw the inside of a jail cell.

Coates cites the Shirley Sherrod fiasco as a “rare act of cowardice” for Obama. But Rick Santelli’s rant about “the losers’ mortgages,” which Coates also highlights, paralyzed the White House from aiding anyone other than “responsible borrowers,” an echo of Obama’s constant haranguing of irresponsible black fathers. The president never sliced up “responsible” and “irresponsible” banks in this fashion; instead, Wall Street’s balance sheets were privileged ahead of homeowners’. This decision didn’t just abandon millions in a time of need, it stunted the recovery, squandering Obama’s political capital rather than conserving it.

We have to stop removing Obama's agency, as if he was just some hapless victim of circumstance who really would have brought about the systemic changes many of his supporters wanted if only the danged Republicans weren't so intransigent! I keep seeing this ahistorical narrative being pushed by the Obama machine in all these hagiographies that are now coming out. Obama is not, and has never been, the radical he campaigned as. To his core, his is a neoliberal. That's his true political instinct. By nature he is conciliatory and centrist, not a ideologue firebrand by any means. We saw it shine through in almost every action he took in office. He pulled the okie doke by running as a populist campaign and then literally immediately shut down his populist, grassroots operation and started governing as a corporatist neoliberal. He (and this was a unilateral action, not subject to congressional approval) replaced his campaign economic advisors with a team of Wall Street insiders. The decision to water down the initial proposal for the stimulus is emblematic of the timidity displayed during most all of Obama's negotiations while in office. He is pathologically afraid of being seen as an ideologue. More than anyone else I have been railing against the President as King myth, but there are plenty of actions Obama has taken that deserve immense scrutiny and condemnation from the black community and the left. He abandoned many of his supporters, either out of cowardice (capitulation to the minority party) or ideology (putting forth tepid ideas).