Buyer’s Remorse? Cornel West Vehemently Declares His Disillusionment With Barack Obama

West excoriates Obama’s choices of what he calls “neoliberal[s]” like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner to his economic team. He admits:

I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do.

Yet West fails to acknowledge the presence of radicals like Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power among the president’s team of “czars,” not to mention Van Jones, the man who would be czar. People like those three are tried-and-true radicals who filter every decision through a far Left prism, sacrificing all other thoughts to their socialist, statist agenda. Obama has clearly surrounded himself with people who are no mere liberals.

Another fact that West neglects to acknowledge is that Barack Obama is, first and foremost, a politician. As much as he’s done for the leftist cause since he was inaugurated, Obama always has to consider the prospect of losing the next election. This is a reasonable explanation for his stopping short of many of the most radical solutions to America’s problems. He’s also bound by the constraints of the checks and balances of the American system. It’s not quite the way West characterizes it:

He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

West should also bear in mind that we’ll likely see a much more aggressive radical agenda should there be a second Obama term. (No, I don’t want to see one either. We’ve got work to do, people.)

There may be another reason for Cornel West’s buyer’s remorse, one that Hedges somehow slips into the article. West views Obama’s “betrayal” as personal. That’s right — it’s a case of sour grapes.

West apparently saw himself as a close friend of Obama during the campaign, until he discovered that, though Obama would not return his calls, he would return others’ calls. Then, West wasn’t given a ticket to the inauguration. He was hurt by the man he worked so hard to help.

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

Whatever the reason, whether it’s because Obama hasn’t governed from far enough to the Left for West’s tastes, or whether it stems from hurt feelings, Cornel West has clearly become disillusioned with Barack Obama. Like many people across the political spectrum, West feels as though he was sold a bill of goods by the man who promised hope and change but instead has delivered an uninspiring, murky, and somewhat bewildering brand of Leftism. West suggests that the Left take a stand:

In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous [sic] with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties.

Astounding, isn’t it? This type of buyer’s remorse is a far cry from the breathless fawning over Obama which we saw back in 2007 and 2008. If the far Left seriously contemplates abandoning Barack Obama, will he find himself standing alone come 2012? It will be interesting to see how many people are truly seeking to trade him in on a newer model next year.

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Chris Queen hails from Covington, GA. Check out his blog, Random Thoughts From The Revolution, and follow him on Twitter.

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