excerpt - In light of that truism, whether or not this moment is a fleeting spasm or the beginning of a transformative trend relies, in part, on what lessons the next generation of Democrats internalize from their party’s recent history — and in particular, the financial crisis that not only destroyed the economy, but pulverized <https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/under-obama-democrats-suffer-largest-loss-in-power-since-eisenhower/> the Democratic Party and birthed the Trump presidency.
“Absolutely, the financial crisis, bailing out the banks, bailing out the big industries, letting people walk away with golden parachutes, while those banks still turned around and foreclosed on people’s homes, while the average working person saw their retirement savings just disappear. And then we watched the political apparatus back up the people that broke the thing in the first place. I think that was huge. That broke a lot of trust.” Favreau responded by pretending that his old boss Obama and the Democratic Party leadership of the time had nothing to do with the obscene bailout of bankers who were foreclosing on millions of Americans. Of course, Obama most certainly <https://abcnews.com/Politics/story?id=5933734&page=1> did have a lot <https://www.politico.com/story/2009/01/obama-gets-first-major-win-with-tarp-017504> to do with that no-strings-attached bailout that saved his bank donors. He wasn’t reluctant about that savior role, either. He flaunted it, reminding <https://www.twincities.com/2009/04/03/obama-to-bank-ceos-my-administration-is-the-only-thing-between-you-and-the-pitchforks/> those bankers that “my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks” Favreau also claimed Obama made “sure that the banks pay all the money back with interest,” which is a flagrant lie <https://sirota.substack.com/p/the-12-trillion-bailout-was-not-paid>. Favreau recalled “talking to Larry Summers about” bankers’ bonuses and being told, “It’s contract law, we can’t claw back the bonuses, that’s illegal,” and somehow not mentioning that Obama had his aides throw cold water <https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/wh-dials-back-support-for-bonus-tax-020321> on Democrats’ House-passed legislation to claw back said bonuses. And Favreau insisted that at the time of the bailout, Obama decided, “We can’t let the banks fail because the whole system goes under” — which even if you believe that hypothetical, hardly justifies giving bank executives get-out-of-jail-free cards, letting them keep their same high-paid jobs, and using taxpayer cash to make bank shareholders whole while everyone else in America is immiserated. Except, it was Obama who helped his Wall Street donors block <https://www.propublica.org/article/dems-obama-broke-pledge-to-force-banks-to-help-homeowners> the promised bankruptcy reforms that would have allowed working-class Americans to get the same debtor protections for their primary residences as the wealthy owners of second and third homes already get. Obama was the one who promised that reform — and then made sure it didn’t happen, despite Democrats having massive majorities in both houses of Congress. You don’t have to believe me on that; we have the tape right here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGi30GErEKI>. “If you have a second home, if you’ve got a vacation home, then the court in bankruptcy is allowed to work that out so that you can keep it, but if it’s your first home, you can’t,” Obama said <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGi30GErEKI> in 2008. “If you’re rich and you’ve got a vacation home, then you can work that out in bankruptcy. If you’re a working family and it’s the only home you have, you can’t work that out in bankruptcy. That makes no sense, and it’s going to change when I’m president of the United States of America.” Soon after, Obama helped kill <https://www.propublica.org/article/dems-obama-broke-pledge-to-force-banks-to-help-homeowners> the Democratic legislation to fix that discrepancy, which could have prevented <https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28900/w28900.pdf?utm_campaign=PANTHEON_STRIPPED&%3Butm_medium=PANTHEON_STRIPPED&%3Butm_source=PANTHEON_STRIPPED> hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. Favreau expects us to forget this, which is a misanthropic-but-not-altogether-dumb bet in a goldfish-brain culture that forgets its entire world every 15 minutes. He expects us to forget the possibility that a Democratic president watching his Wall Street allies throw millions of families out of their homes <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/obamas-failure-to-mitigate-americas-foreclosure-crisis/510485/> while he betrayed such an explicit bankruptcy reform promise (and other housing-related promises <https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/obama-program-hurt-homeowners-and-helped-big-banks-now-its-dead/>) might have had at least something to do with 200-plus previously Democratic counties <https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016> going to Trump. But this isn’t about any one particular candidate. It’s about the larger divide in the party that depicts itself as the opposition to authoritarianism. Democrats can only be that opposition and become a majority party over the long haul if they come to terms with their party’s past participation in the nightmare we’re now immersed in — and then start making different decisions. https://portside.org/2026-03-04/democratic-partys-moment-reckoning -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40940): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40940 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118151710/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
