by Randolph T. Holhut Chief of AR Correspondents Dummerston, Vt. December 31, 2010 On Native Ground PRESIDENT OBAMA'S STILL LOOKING FOR HIS MOJO Back to home page Printable version of this story DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Has President Obama got his mojo back? After one of the most productive lame-duck sessions of Congress in history, some are saying that he has. But I would hold the applause, for his supposed victories have very long strings attached. Tax relief for the middle class came at the price of extended tax cuts for the wealthy and a cut in Social Security payroll taxes that may ultimately threaten the long-term survival of the program. Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and allowing gays to openly serve in the military came at the price of a ban on trials in civilian courts for Guantánamo detainees and indefinite detention for many of them. Ratification of the START treaty should have been a formality, but Republicans intent on denying the President a political victory were willing to risk destroying the first significant arms reduction treaty with Russia in years. And the President still faces an opposition party that has repeatedly announced its intention to make him a one-termer by obstructing and/or repealing every act of the Obama Administration and by launching investigation after investigation of everything the Administration has done over the past two years. There are some things going in President Obama's favor, though. His approval rating is in the upper 40s, while Congress is in the mid-teens, according to Gallup's polling. Rahm Emanuel is gone and a new White House team is being assembled to focus on the 2012 elections. And, many Americans aren't buying what the Tea Party folks are selling. Unfortunately, the President will not be using these advantages to help the average American. The talk coming out of Washington is that Mr. Obama will be using his annual State of the Union address to push the austerity program that his deficit reduction commission came up with - cutting Social Security and Medicare and rewriting the tax code to benefit the wealthy. If President Obama gets behind any of the commission's recommendations, I say he forfeits his chance of re-election. Democrats will feel betrayed, while Republicans will be justified in calling for more spending cuts and more tax breaks to achieve their long-cherished goal of obliterating the remnants of FDR's New Deal and landmarks of LBJ's Great Society. However, Republicans in Congress shouldn't get cocky. You may see many of them getting voted out of office in 2012, thanks to the Senate's rejection of the DREAM Act, a bill that would have provided a path to citizenship to undocumented youth who were brought to the United States as minors by their parents. The conservatives in the Senate slammed the door in the faces of the estimated 2 million undocumented children in the United States who cannot obtain a driver's license, get a job, or qualify for federal student loans to attend college because they don't have their "papers." The Tea Party folks may love this, but the biggest ethnic group in America - Latinos - will remember the GOP's vote that unanimously rejected the DREAM Act. Dreams die hard. I feel confident in saying that the Republicans' decision to placate the nativists and xenophobes will cost them the Latino vote for many years to come. As a country, we are changing and becoming a younger and more ethnically diverse nation. The young people who fought so hard for the DREAM Act aren't going away; they are going to the polls. Just the same, Democrats squandered the energy and enthusiasm of the people who helped elect President Obama in 2008. The result was the largest-ever pickup of House seats by Republicans in a mid-term election. If Democrats continue to ignore their base, 2012 will be even worse. Since I live in Vermont, I am blessed with an intelligent, hard-working and progressive Congressional delegation. That nine-hour speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor on Dec. 10 was perhaps the first time that many Americans have heard a coherent explanation for why the gap between rich and poor is the widest it has ever been since the 1920s. We've been hearing of this from Sanders here in Vermont for years. That's why he keeps getting elected. He has never shied away from issues of class and economics, and is always reminding people where responsibility for the current recession lies - with big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them. Sanders can say these things because he is an Independent and a socialist. He is not beholden to the Democrats, too many of whom are captives of their donors on Wall Street and thus too timid to take them on. President Obama falls into this category. He refuses to tell this narrative, and as a result, has played himself into the hands of the conservatives who claim that our economic troubles are all the fault of "big government" and the intellectual and cultural elites who support it. If the President really wants to get his mojo back, he could start by defending Social Security and Medicare; fighting for increased investment in public infrastructure; winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and taking on the big money interests who are consolidating their control over every aspect of our lives. To those who say this is unrealistic, I say it's the only realistic thing he can do. The Tea Partiers will continue to hate him and continue to call him a Fascist/Communist/Marxist/Muslim/Nazi, no matter what he says or does. So why not cast his lot with the people who are looking for a real alternative to crazed conservatism? Chief of Correspondents Randolph T. Holhut has been an American Reporter columnist for nearly 14 years. He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com. Copyright 2013 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.