Obama's Weakness - Fund Raising!

“Obama will not take money from registered lobbyists like me,” the lobbyist said with some bitterness, “but that doesn’t mean that he won’t take money from people who are lobbying. There’s a big difference.” Obama Backers Tied to Lobbies Raise Millions, By ERIC LICHTBLAU, New York Times, October 28, 2011

This is what makes it so hard for many voters to throw their heart and soul into supporting Obama. He made several blunders in his first term as a result of lacking experience. We can now, however, rationalize he has the needed experience. I suspect that if asked, behind closed doors with no microphones, about accepting campaign contributions from lobbyist, he would say that he cannot do any good for the country if not re-elected and he must accept money from lobbyist in order to remain in office. What a tragedy.

Here are other examples of the problem.

• He promised health care reform and let Washington fight over the issue for a year before he got into the fray. He did nothing to reduce the control of the industry by the oligopoly that runs it and he did not sell it to the public. The result is a low approval rating and wide frustration over the plan.
• He rescued the banks and wall street, which he needed to do, but never aggressively prosecuted anyone at the major institutions causing the problems.
• He has allowed the banks to remain too big to fail and never enforced anti-trust laws against them.
• He gave the senior executives of wall street firms and mega-banks a tongue lashing; then attended a fund raising dinner for his reelection with the same executives.putting up $40,000 each.
• He replaced his Chief of Staff with a senior mega-bank executive who previously oversaw the political lobbying efforts at one of the financial institution that contributed to the financial crisis.
• He praised small business for being the engine to create jobs and appointed the CEO of one of the largest multinational companies, General Electric, to head a committee to develop a plan to create jobs. The committee has done nothing of substance and the multinational company paid little taxes last year.
• He caved into a hostage taking Republican Congress on the repeal of the Bush tax cuts and on the debt ceiling crisis. The result is we have no plan for creating jobs while investing in the future of America and a Super Committee has been formed to address our debt problems.The Super Committee is destined to fail unless a pre agreed to plan is implemented.

That is why his approval ratings have dropped. Obama needs to walk-the-walk; not just talk-the-talk Things will not change in Washington until there iscampaign reform brought about by amending the constitution. We need more than a change in leadership. In fact, if the republican candidate emerges from the current group of front runners, Obama should be reelected. He will be the lesser of the evils.