It Turns Out that Elections Don't Have Consequences

I'm all about giving Obama the benefit of the doubt and waiting to see what he actually does and even telling people we should trust him because when he does things like put Social Security in play, he's just putting on the conservative sheep's clothing to cover up the progressive wolf - as Avedon puts it: trust him because he is a liar - I'm all about all of that.  But it's very hard to think that Lambert is wrong when he says this:

NOTE Having already stolen two trillion for Hank Paulson's golfing buddies, it's only natural that the Village would try to loot Social Security. It's the only big pot of money left.

Obama is a friend of Wall Street, which means that he believes the economic theory that says that we exist to create wealth so the elite can steal it.  That's what happened the last time SocSec was tinkered with in bad faith.  That's what will happen this time with not enough honest brokers on the floor and with the ones who are out there being too weak to matter.  He needs to be beaten back on this swiftly and forcefully.  I don't think that's going to happen to our Precious.

It's interesting to me that whenever Obama is criticized by someone from the left, he tells us to calm down because he's gotten this far without listening to us and anyway, we should trust him.  Except he hasn't gotten this far without us, as his hasty retreat on Social Security during the campaign showed us.  He's only here because the economy conveniently collapsed, McCain was a horrible candidate who ran a horrible campaign and Obama, in large part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, had the early and overwhelming support of the youth and the left, which helped him beat Clinton.  The comment about Social Security, something he didn't need to do and so must be something that the guy believes, makes it very hard to feel like we aren't being played.