Sandyenglish’s NewsCloud Journal

The statements made by Barack Obama during his visit to Afghanistan over the weekend verify that his campaign for president is the mouthpiece for a significant section of the American ruling elite that is insisting on a shift in US policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Far from proposing any retreat from militarism, Obama is arguing for a faster drawdown of troop numbers in Iraq and a reduction in tensions with Iran, only in order to facilitate a major escalation of US military operations in Afghanistan, potentially extending them into Pakistan.

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According to the American media, the emergence of African-American man and a woman as leading presidential candidates represents a social advance for masses of people-despite the fact that Obama was carefully groomed by wealthy corporate interests, while Hillary Clinton owes her political prominence to her marriage to the former president.

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Democratic presidential front-runner Senator Barack Obama said on Sunday he would endorse Bush’s nominee to direct US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout a region extending from North Africa to Central Asia. The pledge, made on the "Fox News Sunday" program, while predictable, serves nonetheless to thoroughly expose the antiwar pretenses of Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole.

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Over the past five days, media commentary on the US presidential election campaign has focused on the supposedly disastrous "gaffe" made by Democrat Barack Obama in his comments earlier this month at a San Francisco fundraiser, where he remarked on the mood of anger and bitterness in small-town and rural America, and how this was expressed in various political and ideological forms.

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The widely publicized speech Tuesday by Barack Obama on race relations in the United States was another exercise in walking the political tightrope for the Democratic candidate in his closely contested struggle with Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

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On the day after the Potomac primaries, BusinessWeek ran a special report entitled, “Is Obama Good for Business?” While the piece provided no direct answer to this question, the attitude taken by the business magazine appeared to be a qualified “yes,” based in large part on the private discussions that the Illinois senator is holding with top Wall Street and corporate insiders even as he is delivering his public appeals for “change.”

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The reality is that the senator from Illinois is himself backed not only by substantial sections of the Democratic Party establishment, but also by powerful interests within America’s financial elite. This has found clearest expression in the sharp shift of campaign funding towards his campaign, which recently reported collecting approximately $1 million a day—twice the amount flowing into Clinton’s coffers—after setting a record by taking in $32 million in January.

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The outcome of the Democratic primary suggests that Clinton benefited from a growing concern among working class voters over the state of the US economy. Clinton was the only candidate to raise the growing danger of recession in Saturday’s televised debate, and exit polls showed that the economy was the number one issue of those who turned out to vote, whether they cast a Democratic or a Republican ballot.

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In a transparent effort to bolster his reputation for toughness on national security issues and outflank his main rivals on the right for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois delivered a bellicose speech August 1 at a Washington think tank.

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