Inside Sasha Abramsky’s brain: believing in Obama
Sasha Abramsky is the author of a book called Inside Obama’s Brain. Maybe he’s spent too much time there, because he’s emerged befuddled.
In this Salon piece, Abramsky starts promisingly:
In 2008, candidate Barack Obama fashioned an appeal to independent voters and young adults based in large part not on specific policy pledges but on his promise to end the culture of hyper-partisan hyper-bickering that was poisoning the country’s political well.
Implicit in that promise was the assumption that through rational, consensus-building rhetoric and pragmatic policy solutions to America’s serious, and growing, social and economic problems he could reforge broken bonds of trust between the citizenry and its governing institutions.
No quarrel with that. It describes the “promise” of Obama quite nicely. And Abramsky even goes on to state with clarity one of the major flaws of Obama’s presidency so far:
In office, Obama’s failure to reestablish those bonds of trust, without which no major social policy reforms can command long-term, stable majority support, is the greatest calamity of his presidency.
How does Abramsky then segue to the rest of his article? His argument goes something like this:
(1) It is self-evident that only big government can cure what ails us.
(2) Obama made the mistake of thinking most people are smart and insightful enough to agree with him (and Abramsky) on that.
(3) His failure was therefore a failure (you know what’s coming) to properly communicate this to the American people.
(4) Those nasty Republicans finished the job by blocking his efforts (no mention of the overwhelming majorities Obama had in Congress, and the fact that he was actually stymied by Democrats who wouldn’t come along for the Big Government ride).
Abramsky’s article has a title that says a great deal about this mode of thinking: “Obama’s toughest task: make us believe again.”
As though “belief” were the answer, and as though it is disconnected from results. But Obama can’t ride on his early promise anymore; he can’t ask us to believe in him by the mere power of his rhetoric. Results are what counts, and his toughest task is to actually produce some that aren’t disastrous.
> Results are what counts, and his toughest task is to actually produce some that aren’t disastrous.
Ah, good luck with that endeavor.
When your head is that far up your *ahem*, it’s pretty hard to set a good direction to go in.
I say it again — In the end, the man will make rational people appreciate the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
As one wit said, the Obama voters overdosed on hopeium.
He would triangulate if someone could explain to him what a triangle is.
I went to the comments section. While there were a fair number of commenters who were not lefties, some of the lefty comments are of interest.
Middle-of-the-road. Most Liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007. Et al.
Such as the Gallup Poll , where from 1992 on, with the exception of 2006-2008, the Conservative/Liberal ratio has hovered around 2:1.
“”Obama’s toughest task: make us believe again””
Somewhere theres a used car salesman caught red handed ripping people off who faces this same dillema. And he too has a better chance of winning the lottery than winning back any customers.
I think that idealistic young people fell for the hopeium and change but were less interested in understanding what the results would be of policies implemented.
They overwhelmed the polls like never before. Usually the young are generally apathetic.
Now we have a return to the same ole same ole voting pattern with seniors who understand a little more than the young voting for anyone and everyone that seems to be for:
1) Personal responsibility
2) National security
3) protecting the U.S.’s future with respect to debt and obligations
There is NO WAY Obama can sell what he’s selling.
If he thinks he can sell slurpees in bulk to Eskimos – he’s high.
If he thinks he can sell America’s future under the noses of senior citizens and middle america – he’s high.
Sasha, he can’t and won’t commit any more generational theft.
America doesn’t have a serious and growing economic and social problem. American has a serious and growing federal government. That’s the problem.
Someone should round up all these guys – Sasha “the believer” Abramsky, James “the pragmatist” Kloppenberg, David “the promise” Remnick, Paul “the beard” Krugman – and have them perorate seriatim before a live studio audience, speaking their febrile minds on the subject of Obama-the-most-moderate-moderate-in-the-history-of-moderation.
Comedy gold, my friends.
Kloppenberg: “Like Lincoln, Obama liberated the innate pudding of centrism of America.”
Abramsky: “Like God, Obama once made us believe in ever-changing, moderate commandments written on two plastic Etch-A-Sletches.”
Krugman: “Like Republicans, Obama was a penny pinching tightwad, sticking way too close to the center.”
For the left, as far as I can tell, Obama is an old-school natural rights adherent (Lincoln); a deity (God); a right-winger (Republicans); and a moderate’s moderate at the center of the center. All things the left supposedly doesn’t take kindly too.
Kloppenberg knows philosophical pragmatists can have no truck with Lincolnian natural rights. Abramsky knows that “God is dead,” as all good leftists do; and so on.
It’s more than funny to note something that follows from this.
Curtis has been commenting lately on the human need for transcendence, and all of these qualities that the left projects onto Obama are in one way or another related to transcendence – natural rights/Lincolnianisn in a God-given human nature; God in his infinite perfection; and the right-wing, indirectly, in their firm dedication to the great principle of the Declaration that unites natural rights and the Deity. “Centrism” or “moderation” is their way of saying that he is in touch with the General Will (he just can’t communicate it, dammit).
Really, do they project these qualities onto Obama because they see them in him and are disappointed, or because they secretly yearn for them but cannot admit it, and hence need to find some backhanded way to pay homage to them?
Both? Perhaps they contain multitudes.
Curtis,
and a dependence on that government.
It’s a catch 22.
IgotBupkis wrote “I say it again – In the end, the man will make rational people appreciate the presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
don’t you mean “I say it again – In the end, the man will make rational people appreciate the presidency of James Buchanan.”
Actually there is quite a good deal of good coming out of the Obama administration. For one the more perceptive will realize that Obamacare is a threat to our freedom and vote accordingly, the criteria for being elected President will now be different than being elected American Idol, a generation who could take prosperity and freedom for granted now has to realize they can count on neither. In short, at least some are wiser.
As for Sasha Abramsky, news must travel slow in Wonderland. Apparently he has not heard that world leaders at the G20 conference gave Obama the same treatment they gave him at the Copenhagen Climate conference. Nor has he heard of the number of Democratic politicians gently suggesting that Obama not running in 2012 would improve his standing in the party. Apparently the Messiah has not communicated effectively enough with either of them as well.
Future generations will disbelieve the history of his administration or assume that it is a parody of some sort.
Is Obama already completely irrelevant and beside the point?
All the action right now is on the new GOP House as to what they will or won’t do. No one seems to care much about Obama, except that he might foul this or that up by vetoes, or much up the Dem primary by actually running again!
He’s a feckless loser now abroad as well as at home.
He will sign the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and that will be the last thing of significance he does, unless it is signing or vetoing other House bills.
I don’t even think he could get his own Supreme Court nominee through.
He is totally toxic. He is his own Superfund Project.
The spell is utterly broken, left and right, and he can’t talk his way out of it. People are sick of hearing his voice (which is grating btw, the way he whistles his esses), and no one thinks he has any good ideas.
Even if he did have one, no one would believe it.
He deserves every bad thing that he gets. He earned it. And so do the Dem pols and voters. They put the country through hell, and it will be years fixing.
But the Tea Party spirit is setting the agenda and issues now.
Obama is so gone it’s not even funny.
Ah…I feel so much better now understanding I’m too ignorant to comprehend Obamessiah’s scripture. Damn! He was laying out his commandments and all I could see was scorched earth. Bloody honorable of him though to shoulder the responsibility of being too intelligent to dumb down his scripture to a level where we mortals could comprehend his utopic vision.
There must be ripples in our Narcissus’s reflecting pool for his perceived beauty is becoming very distorted and disjointed.
No one can end hyper partisanship between liberals and conservatives nor do they need to to implement major legislation.
Some one just needs to build a consensus between one end of the political spectrum and the middle. Which ever end is left out will always feel screwed.
Obama blew his chance for a strategic realignment.
Otiose,
Any chance we can have that in English?
I just saw over at the Corner a post from John Yoo noting a recent election analysis from AEI.
It turns out that postgrads were 20% of the electorate, and went Democratic 54-46. Those without a high school diploma were 3% of the electorate, and they went Democratic 60-36.
All those in between went Republican.
Yoo suggests that perhaps this means that over-educated voters have no more common sense than under-educated voters. Or it might mean that neither group has much contact with productive and budgeting concerns (because, in effect, both are taken care of by the state).
Some other results are remarkable. Blacks voted 90% for Democrats, and were 10% of the electorate (same as 2006; in 2008 they were 13%).
The electorate was too close to evenly divided on whether Obama’s policies would help or hurt the country (44% said “help;” 52% said “hurt”).
Women almost went evenly between the parties (49% Democrat; 48% Republican).
And check this out: 3% of voters were self-identified homosexuals. They went 30% for Republicans (up from 24% in 2006 and 19% in 2008).
Still, a majority (54%) of the electorate said gay marriage should not be made legal.
Urban voters went Democratic 56%-41%. Suburban voters were the opposite: 54% – 43% in favor of Republicans (and remember they went for Democrats in 2006 and 2008).
The report states that voters with family income of $100,000 or more went Republican by a big margin, but unfortunately they weren’t able to do a finer-grained analysis and see how the “super rich” voted.
Overall, one thing seems pretty clear: The Democrats lost big time the one group they never cease talking about – the middle class.
And to paraphrase LBJ, if you’ve lost the middle class, you’ve lost America.
Positive thinking, Mike Mc., but the educational system hasn’t even begun to be toppled. I plump for our victory too (if your reading, thank you very much Occam’s Beard for that word -what a wonderful way you have with words ) but the spell remains, and so much so that a quite large chunk of people believe Obama betrayed them. He didn’t go far enough. Obama’s spell may be gone, but these people will find another.
Are you familiar with Revelations? I’m not a literal believer and I’m not calling Obama the anti-Christ or the beast or whatever, but I do find the following generally meaningful. “And I saw one of his [the beast’s] heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.” (Rev. 13:3)
Mike Mc. —
Do NOT make the mistake of underestimating Barack Obama. He may never before have run anything larger than a nylon stocking, true… but he got his start in politics with classic dirty-tricks campaigning. During the 2008 campaign, he made it abundantly clear what would happen to those who crossed him. (He hasn’t stopped. Remember the college that refused to grant him an honorary degree, as President, to which he responded that they’d find out what an IRS audit feels like? He was just kidding, of course…)
He may be utterly clueless as to what average Americans really want and need… but don’t count him out. In fact, expect to see him, sometime soon, acting like a cornered wild animal, lashing out in all directions… and taking some big names down with him.
He’s down, but he’s definitely not out. We underestimate this man at our peril.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
“I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.
(APPLAUSE)
I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.
(APPLAUSE)
And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
(APPLAUSE)
We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.
(LAUGHTER)
And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.
Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.
(APPLAUSE)
As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.
(APPLAUSE)
I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.
OBAMA: And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.
(APPLAUSE)
America, now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.
You know, Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance.
(APPLAUSE)
I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.
And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.
(APPLAUSE)
Now — now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American.
(APPLAUSE)
If you have health care — if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.
(APPLAUSE)
And — and as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.
(APPLAUSE)
Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent.
Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses, and the time to protect Social Security for future generations.
And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.
But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy. ……..
You don’t defeat — you don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don’t protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can’t truly stand up for Georgia when you’ve strained our oldest alliances.”
kolnai
There is yet another explanation for those with graduate degrees going Demo. Around 25-30% of those getting postgrad degrees are getting them in Education, a field which is saturated with liberal ideology and political correctness. It is no accident that Billy Boy Ayers was a Professor of Education. The indoctrination that Education students get in the classroom carries over into the voting booth. Of the 25-30%, figure there is at least a 2/1 ratio in Dem/Pub. It is probably more like a 4/1 to 9/1 ratio. That is the difference.
GRE scores indicate that those getting postgrad degrees in Education are not the brightest bulbs on the tree.
[I have looked up these stats before, but will not bother to document them. Those who are interested can get them.]
Gringo – I know you’re right about the stats (I saw them second-hand in Sowell’s “Inside Higher Education”).
I just wasn’t sure about the proportion of total postgrads who were in education (I’ll take your word for it that it’s between a quarter and a third).
And based strictly on my own experience with ed students, I’d guess your 9/1 ratio is probably right on the bullseye.
I would love to have the raw numbers so I could see what the effect of postrgrad-education students is on the total postgrad vote.
Another factor is probably age. I would bet younger postgrads are more liberal while older postgrads are more conservative (the category includes those both currently pursuing and already possessing a postgrad degree).
Because, to be honest, the post-grad institutions I’ve been involved with have had overwhelmingly leftist faculty and students in every field included in the social sciences and humanities (can’t speak for the hard sciences and the business schools). When I saw the election breakdown, my reaction was, “ONLY 54-46 Democrat?”
There has to be some factor or factors counterbalancing the lopsided leftism of the social sciences and humanities. My trial balloons would be the hard sciences and age.
“Obama’s toughest task: make us believe again.”
Should we all start clapping now? It worked to keep Tinkerbell alive.
Curtis, re http://neoneocon.com/2010/11/15/inside-sasha-abramskys-brain-believing-in-obama/#comment-200460
Thanks for your kind comment.
Just history re-cycling. Louis XIV announced that he WAS the State and would decide what was best for the great masses. Lenin thought the proles were too dumb to understand the great Revolution, so he invented the Vanguard to lead the way. Hitler viewed the masses as either idiots or overly-emotional women – repeat the Big Lie or woo them with speeches. And now The Messiah is struggling because the rubes and hicks in fly-over country are just too dumb to grasp how wonderful his great deeds are. He obviously has it backwards – we understand perfectly, Barack, and it is YOU who got a message on November 2 and will be getting another one in 2012.
“– Most clinical writers seem unaware that narcissists’ self-reports are unreliable. This is troubling, considering that lying is the most common complaint about narcissists and that, in many instances, defects of empathy lead narcissists to wildly inaccurate misinterpretations of other people’s speech and actions, so that they may believe that they are liked and respected despite a history of callous and exploitative personal interactions.”
“[from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, 1994, commonly referred to as DSM-IV, of the American Psychiatric Association. European countries use the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization.]”
Daniel in Brookline,
I am counting Obama out. I was one who saw his menace by February 2008, and I’ve coubnted him not as anyone I hate but as someone I fear.
But he is done. The fever has broken. He cannot be put together again.
He has no more tricks up his sleeve except dirty ones, and they are all he ever had, and they’ve been seen through.
I guess he might still get 40% if he ran, maybe tops 45.
But I doubt even that.
And if he would max out at 45%, there is no way the Dem elite let him run. It’s not his loss, but another major major defeat in House, Senate and Statehouses that would accompany his 45%.
The Dems will probably become a 3rd party anyway, unless they get back to normal. They have enough problems without Barry. With him they are wounded animals at best.
They will make noise. They are probably hoping the R’s screw up again. But the Wild Card now is the tea Party movement and spirit. The Wild Card is that there really are good people on our side, and there are no good people on the other side.
Obama, if he doesn’t get it between now and January, gets nothing else. He wouldn’t be able to triangulate and tack center like Clinton even if he wanted to.
You don’t call the other side, other Americans, “enemies” and survive politically. Not when you are President. he blew it. He’s done. He’s over.
We should speak of him in the past tense, as in remember when Obama wanted this or that, or when we thought Obamacare might be real, etc., etc.
cont’d….
The real energy and focus for Republicans and Conservatives and Americans now should be cutting Federal spending (in real terms and in percentage terms) and slowly paring back the liberal state. We have to get it back about 10% overall. That is huge, but doable a year at a time.
The Tea Party is the only energy force that can do this, and I hope they/we can keep up the energy. I think so, since this has been like a near-death experience for the USA.
There are also the X-cards of terrorism and world events. Obama may really hurt us there. But R’s need to step forward now and start speaking foreign policy and international relations as if Obama was not even there and does not count. Basically, he is not there and does not count as soon as the R’s start campaign 2012 which begins late winter/early spring in 2011.
We have a few more months to sweat things out and then this joker is 100% officially over and America can begin to dust itself off and get back in the game.
kolnai:
Depending on whether you include doctorates or for what years, I have chosen 27.5% as a reasonable number for graduate degrees in Education.
58% of those with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama in 2008, according to the CNN Exit Polls.
If you assume that 80% of those with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 58% figure.
If you assume that 75% of those with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 52% figure.
There will be similar figures for 2010.
IOW, the Education cohort has a big influence. Ironic also that it is assumed that those with graduate degres are brighter, more accomplished et al, and given the GRE scores and what is taught in Ed schools……
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1
CorrectionIf you assume that 75% of those with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 52% figure.
If you assume that 75% of those with postgraduate degrees voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 58% figure
I need to proofread better:
If you assume that 80% of those with postgraduate degrees in Education voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 58% figure.
If you assume that 75% of those with postgraduate degrees in Education voted for Obama, and 50% of the rest with postgraduate degrees voted for McCain, you get the 52% figure.
Academic bigotry is now a prerequisite. That way, you never ever have to listen to anyone, as everyone is beneath you, and all answers spring forth from your particular branch of study
been battling it for years. No matter how many things i anticipate, and describe, and detail. Or the computations behind the accurate anticipation, none are enough as none were engaged by that self appointed pinnacle.
If people weren’t so stupid and would actually never make a choice that Abramsky wouldn’t make, he could stop thinking about them, and return to the really important work in a post modern nihilistic pointless existence…
Kolnai y Gringo:
The same voter/education pattern occured in ’08. Don’t remember the numbers or levels of stratification, but I was struck at the time that similar-sized majorities of 1) the most-educated, and 2) the least-educated, voted for Baraq.
So politically the most-schooled think, or at least vote, like the least-schooled.
What does that tell us about schooling?
LET us be honest.
A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of the ‘potential’ American electorate is stupid.
ONE voter I know, an ‘independent’ who voted for Obama, could neither identify the three branches of government nor knew who George Washington fought during the Revolutionary War.
I even gave him a clue, “the (blank) are coming, the (blank) are coming”.
ANSWER: a deer in the headlight stare
THESE are the people who showed up in droves in 2008.
THESE are the people who stayed home in 2010.
Sorry Mike Mc,
Hyper partisan bickering is the natural order of our political system, so Obama’s promise to end it by whatever means was delusional.
Competition to get something done with broad support comes down to either end of the political spectrum finding the means to persuade the independents to join them on whatever issue.
Obama had his chance, and probably due to overconfidence (reminds me of Hillary Clinton and her health care reform when she basically told Sen Dole the equivalent of ‘elections have consequences’ and ‘we won’) failed to get the broad support. His failure has created an alliance of the right and the independents and not only threatens the legislation he forced through, but will likely limit his future options. It’s also oddly creating a rebellion among his own left wing.
Hyper partisan bickering is the natural order of our political system, so Obama’s promise to end it by whatever means was delusional.
Was it? Or did people assume that whatever the change they were referencing, the political system would remain?
Did you ever think that the vote for the delusion in terms of the current system, was to acquiesce to the steps to grant the delusion?
ie. that if you agree we are going to drive from NY to California, you also agree we will cross state lines, will have to fill up with gas many times, sleep, etc…
they never said what they were going to do, they always spoke in vagaries that played up to the litany of propagandist fashionable bs over the past decades …
those who couldn’t separate what was said from what they themselves inserted to “finish the story”, couldn’t see or get that they themselves were filling in their deepest wishes.
By not stating what was really being asked for, everyone could join in conflicted unity thinking they all wanted the same thing which happened to be what they had in mind.
I would not be so quick to count Obama and the Democrats out.
The independents are a flighty bunch and when they find out that their money or government program is getting cut don’t be surprised if many move back to support the Democrats who will very energetically point out in detail the victims of every spending cut proposed by the Republicans.
That Pelosi and Reid are still going to be their faces in Congress is a huge gift, but they and the media are biding their time until the Republicans actually make concrete spending cut proposals.
Control of the House will stop a lot of the worst from continuing, but stopping something from happening is less rousing for the voters than something bad happening in their faces that gets highlighted on Fox and talk radio every night.
McConnell should move just enough to attract a few of the more conservative Democrats (particularly those up for election in 2012) in the Senate and try to take the initiative away from Reid on as many fronts as possible.
A series of votes in the Senate supported by the House that Obama is forced to veto will go a long way to keeping him off balance until 2012 and his departure.
The counter attack on the legislation already passed should be on two fronts – one is in the public eye to repeal outright and/or defund significant aspects (likely to be vetoed) and the second should occur behind closed doors.
Since the Democrats in the House will be losing staffers and the Republicans gaining, the Republican staffers should be concocting literally thousands of sentences neutralizing specifically and broadly as much of the crap in those thousands of pages no one read before voting on. Either by boredom or overwork hopefully some will get through reconciliation.
Artfldgr,
I agree that a lot of people filled the blanks left by Obama with contradictions that he could never resolve.
For me the question is whether Obama himself understood he was deceiving people, or did he really believe that people would fall over themselves to drink his kool-aid?
If any of you have not seen this video, it’s a must-watch, about how “the Ben Bernanque’s” implementing of “the quantitative easing” benefits “the Goldman Sachs.”
Seriously, enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&feature=player_embedded
Re the highly educated and the uneducated both voting heavily Democrat, I remember seeing similar stats after the 2004 election.
—–
Vieux Charles Says:
November 15th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I agree, but the sophisticated leftists say the same thing about the ignorant rubes in flyover country.
—–
I’m not counting out Obama. I think he is still capable of doing serious damage as long as he is still in office. Many of the bills he and the Democrats have already passed are like ticking time bombs, with provisions set to go off in the next couple of years. He also has the capability of ruling by executive order, and he has his unconstitutional and unaccountable czars seeded throughout the federal regulatory apparatus.
Bear in mind that the economy still sucks, and is not likely to get better anytime soon thanks to the dead weight of government suffocating it. The Republicans will have to start making serious budget cuts, and pretty much anything they do will alienate some portion of the electorate.
The devaluation of the dollar is already causing food and energy prices to rise, which lowers the standard of living for the middle class and the poor. I expect that to get significantly worse, and you can be sure that the media will constantly remind people that all this is happening because the Republicans control the House and are blocking Democrat efforts to provide relief.
I don’t trust the independent voters. I think most of them have no coherent political ideology, and can be stampeded in one direction or another by events. They went Democrat in 2008, Republican in 2010, and there’s nothing to prevent them from swinging back to the Democrats in 2012.
John Hinderaker at Powerline thinks Sarah Palin’s new reality show is another stroke in a brilliantly-executed marketing campaign. Sorry, John. Very nice of you to say so, but Sarah is just being herself and her success is the success of honesty and goodness and authenticity.
I believe there’s a lesson in contrasting Sarah and Obama, an oh so simple lesson.
With Obama, the more you learn, the more you have to explain, justify, rationalize, juxtapose, contextualize, and finally apologize. He oversold himself. Boy, oh boy, he oversold. In quantity and quality.
With Sarah, the more you learn, the more you enjoy. And this is true for anyone who lives honestly from their core; who is–to steal an abused liberal word–authentic.
Obama is wooden prose. Sarah is poetry. And this is ironic because Obama tried to sell you that he was the canvas you could write your dreams on. But that isn’t poetry. It strikes me as creepy. Here, see yourself as me. No thank you.
Poetry is when you are the nut, the kernal, the germ; the power of life communicating and learning from its environment. And Palin enjoys the huge advantage that while Obama is trapped in his past and his pronouncements, Sarah is free to learn and to experience. That is life and that is authentic. It is what Obama tried to sell but was short on its supply. It’s what Sarah has in abundance.
We are on the verge of Weimar II….
I’m a post grad (with very high GRE scores) who voted Republican. I have a masters degree in electrical engineering.
However, I note this: at work, most engineers are conservative. Among the few older engineers who are liberal, most have Phds (and we don’t have many Phds as a percentage).
It seems to me that there is something going on besides the education nexis.
I’ll also note that the Phds have typically not worked out in leadership roles, and have mostly ended up as creative technical individual contributers or leaders of small teams.
Perfected democrat, thanks for the comment from the DSM-IV. It explains a lot.
Does it say anything about the 53% who voted for this basket-case?
Curtis,
With respect to Palin and Obama you are 100% right. You nailed a big part of it.
Otiose,
Thanks.
So what do we know about Ben Bernanke? What is his background, his political ideology? Is he a closet leftist? Is he trying to hollow out the capitalist system from the inside?
His policies are so wrong-headed that even the Chinese communists and the European socialists are aghast. (Probably because they know that if the U.S. economy flatlines, it will take them down too.)
I think that’s what I’m trying to say, but not just events – they’re vulnerable (or oblivious) to a certain slickness, to the distortion truth, and to the demonization of opposition, an ability to which ×¢bamah excels.
Our only hope is that stupidity is randomly distributed amongst independents.
The problem is that Democrat policies and prescriptions are crafted to appeal to the cognitively challenged, viz., those who consider “hope” and “change” to be a substantive policy proposal.
Odd how liberals denigrate faith at every opportunity, yet think faith in his ultimate goodness and superior intelligence will save NoBama. Reminds me of saving Tinkerbelle. Clap your hands everyone! C’mon, Tink….er…Barackerbelle, you can do it! Belief trumps all! Oh, the unicornity!
“In the latest email from the White House insider known as the modern-day ‘Deep Throat,’ received by Ulsterman, the anonymous whistle-blower says that Obama returned from his overseas trip ‘dejected,’ ‘confused,’ and even ’emotionally debilitated.'”
From:
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/email-from-deep-throat-s-says-obama-dejected-confused