To any Obama supporters out there who still consider Obama a “people’s” candidate, a Washington outsider, or a grassroots candidate after last week’s decision to forgo public financing, the first presidential candidate to do so since the system was put in place, or his support for the pathetic capitulation of House Democrat’s over the FISA Amendements Act of 2008, I think I finally understand what you mean when you say he gives you “hope.”

You hope he’ll do the opposite of what he’s saying and doing now once elected.

You hope he’ll withdraw from Iraq, even though his plan for Iraq maintains the Green Zone, our embassy (built on slave labor), and the puppet government the Bush administration has propped up, while keeping a residual force for counterterrorism operations.  Obama himself has explicitly stated that he would not commit to unconditionally withdraw all occupation forces by 2013.  But you hope he’ll end the war in Iraq.  Yeah.

You hope he’ll represent the people’s interests in Washington, even though he receives disproportionate contributions from the richest 1%, who own 40% of our nation’s wealth and account for 80% of contributions over $250.  Through April 2008, Obama received $89 million from contributors contributing $1,000 or more, just $8 million short of McCain’s total funding.  His top 12 contributors are as follows:

1. Goldman Sachs ($571,330)
2. University of California ($437,236)
3. UBS AG ($364,806)
4. JPMorgan Chase & Co ($362,207)
5. Citigroup Inc ($358,054)
6. National Amusements Inc ($320,750)
7. Lehman Brothers ($318,647)
8. Google Inc ($309,514)
9. Harvard University ($309,025)
10. Sidley Austin LLP ($294,245)
11. Skadden, Arps et al ($270,013)
12. Time Warner ($262,677)

Yet you hope he’ll listen to your voice once in office.

You hope he’ll undo the Neoliberal economic consensus that has led to gilded age wealth inequality, yet his staff, according to Naomi Klein, contains a healthy sampling of Chicago School Boys including “Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right.” Goolsbee described Obama as having “a healthy respect for markets.” Of course, we can just look in Obama’s Audacity of Hope to find such gems as, “conservatives and Bill Clinton were right about welfare,” and his praise for the reactionary Reagan era: “A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities … Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.” Or take his recent flip-flop on NAFTA. The list goes on.

Yet you still have hope. Hope he’ll do the right thing. Hope he’ll come out on the right side of things once elected. Hope that this year’s business candidate will come out on the side of the people. Keep hoping my friends.

(H/T to Paul Street on ZNet for the analysis on campaign contributions)