Rev. Jesse Jackson Says "Some Level of Excitement is Gone" with President Obama & Black Community

Rev. Jesse Jackson tells Germany's Der Spiegel, "some level of excitement is gone" with President Obama and that "blacks were to first to embrace him" long before expensive donors stepped in.

I usually take whatever Rev. Jesse Jackson says with a grain of salt, but I read the transcript of his recent interview with Germany's Der Spiegel and I have to admit he is right that "some level of excitement is gone" where President Obama is concerned. Here's an excerpt of the interview:

SPIEGEL: But you were one of his early mentors in Chicago and the picture of your public tears in Chicago's Grant Park after his election victory in 2008 went around the globe. How would you describe your current feelings about his presidency?

Jackson: At that moment in Grant Park, we were finally winning, but I was reflecting on the long journey, the many years of struggle for civil rights. Obama ran the last lap of a 60-year campaign. I thought of all the bruises we endured during this campaign and I thought of Dr. Martin Luther King and wished he had been there just for 20 seconds to see how 60 years of struggle suddenly paid off. Sure, some layer of the excitement of that night is gone.

SPIEGEL: Is it true that even among African-Americans Obama's standing has suffered?

Jackson: We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work. We are number one in foreclosure, number one in short life expectancy, in loan default. Big banks steered their toxic products toward minorities and Congress did not oversee them properly because it is basically corrupted by all the money it is raising on Wall Street. So there is a lot of pain here in our community and this pain must be addressed.

SPIEGEL: During the recent negotiations on the debt ceiling Obama agreed to billion dollar cuts in public spending and received no tax increases in return from the Republicans. Is he too willing to compromise?

Jackson: I think he sometimes underestimates the force of the other side, how tenacious they are in their ideology. A few weeks ago, during the debt ceiling negotiations, Obama went golfing with John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House. Afterwards, they said their differences are not ideological, not philosophical. Really? If Republicans say they want to cut public spending drastically, they want to cut social security and Medicare and the social safety net for poor and working families, and cater to the wealthiest Americans, then that is a different philosophy. If the Tea Party is determined to kill the New Deal and Great Society programs we won in the past, that is a different ideology. And if the right wing of the Republican party is determined to shield themselves from tax obligations or to fight the Civil War again by pushing voter suppression legislation to take away minority voting rights across the country, that is also a very different ideology. Source: Spiegel Online

Interesting. When Rev. Jesse Jackson is the voice of reason, you know you have a really serious problem. Jackson will always have zero credibility in my book, but he is right on some points. I am still amazed that it took President Obama three days to talk to the press about the S&P downgrade. He waits until the last possible moment to flex his muscles. That's not good enough.