Do You Really Rock With Barack? /
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama ran on the message of change—that message inspired people across the United States and even reached to the smallest nooks and crannies of the globe. Many of us went to the polls for the first time emboldened with the prospects of, one-- having a black-American president and two—finally having a say in our nation’s political process. This generation put a young rock star in the White House and black homes across the country hastily made space on their walls for a picture of the newest addition to their families: President Barack Obama.
To ignore the fact that somewhere along the line the adrenaline that propelled President Obama to the highest office in the world subsided, would be a discourteous to the previous generation’s worth of hard work it took to get him there. It seemed that the president’s call for change ended at the ballot box. This was especially evident during the passage of the nation’s health care law. During the campaign, when candidate Obama said that he wanted to reform the national health care system so that all Americans would be insured, it wasn’t empty campaign rhetoric. One of the first things that President Obama did when he got to the White House was send a bill to Congress that would massively overhaul the United States health care system. It was evident, even back then, that the loudest proponents of Barack Obama, including folks like Russell Simmons, Jay-Z and our beloved Oprah Winfrey, became mute. Most recently, there was the debt ceiling crisis—a crisis that most people wouldn’t have even noticed had it not been for the threat of government workers not receiving paychecks. Again, the President found himself in a lonely position, fighting for the same people who chanted “Yes we can” just two years prior. Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture employee who was fired for misconstrued statements back in 2010, said it best—no longer is it about black and white—it is about haves and have not’s. Last year, over 80 percent of this country’s income went to the top 20 percent of the nation’s earners. That’s a pretty exciting statistic if you’re in that 20 percent, but the majority of us are not. In the United States, a staggering 1 in 6 people now live in poverty—the highest poverty numbers this nation has seen since 1997. The reason why America is contracting is because we continue to ignore the failing heart of her economy—the middle class.
When Barack Obama took the oath of office there was a twinkle of optimism in his eye. Although he had warned us that the road to change would be long and hard, it was clear that he was ready to gas it up and put it in drive. I would assert that it was the millions of people who chanted “Yes we can” that never made it out of neutral
By: Tim Harris, Political Editor
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