How has Barack Obama done in his first term as a "progressive president," especially in relation to his campaign assertions? This book analyzes the performance of Obama and his administration in promoting progressive causes in a wide range of policy areas, including the economy, education, immigration, healthcare reform, criminal justice, and foreign affairs. Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader is written in clear language that is free of jargon and from a leftist perspective, offering a comprehensive analysis and critique of Obama's performance as a progressive president during his first term. The authors provide in-depth analyses with respect to Obama's handling of specific issues, including the economy, education, healthcare, criminal justice policy, the environment, immigration, Iraq and Afghanistan, race relations, gender issues, and gay/lesbian issues, covering topics in detail that general biographies of Obama and examinations of his political career miss. This book presents clear, accessible information for general readers, and contains in-depth discussion of topics useful to high school, college, and university students of sociology, government, political science, philosophy, and history.

Throughout much of the Western tradition, human subjectivity has been regarded as a major source of error. Thus, adapting universal standards devoid of corrosive human influences has been thought to be a requisite for building an optimal society. This tendency, which is predicated on social ontological realism, historically encouraged projects of colonization, as Western standards of development became synonymous with universal reason and civilization. Currently, neoliberal globalization is an extension of this realist legacy and demands all aspects of social life to be determined by the presumably universal wisdom of the market. Yet, in Latin America, neoliberalism has normalized extreme inequality and cultural mutilation as innocent outcomes of market dynamics. The present work, accordingly, draws from Alejandro Serrano Caldera, a Nicaraguan philosopher and social critic, to critique realism and develop an anti-realist social vision on which to build a new type of nation, ethic, and politics grounded on human praxis. The point is made that this anti-realist shift offers the possibility to democratize the current process of globalization.