The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power

A sequel to Street€s Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, this new book documents and assesses Obama€s newly emergent record on domestic and foreign politics against his original agenda for change. Although mainstream journalists have noted discrepancies between Obama€s original vision and reality, Paul Street uniquely measures Obama€s record against the expectations of the truly progressive agenda many of his supporters expected him to follow. Taken together, the list of Obama€s weakened policies is startling: his business-friendly measures with the economy, the lack of support for the growing mass of unemployed and poor, the dilution of his health reform agenda, the passage of a record-setting Pentagon budget, and the escalation of U.S. military violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Street€s account reveals these and many other indications of how deeply beholden Obama is to existing dominant domestic and global hierarchies and doctrines. His new book yields a perspective on Obama and current politics that is scarcely found in mainstream media. No progressive reader will want to miss it!

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