Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing — even lampooning — Barack Obama as a one-term president (“one and done”). Centrist Democrats up for reelection in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the new pariah lose them votes.
Left-wing think tanks, environmentalists, and academics vent their anger against Obama for supposedly being too soft on Republicans and too ready to compromise with right-wingers. But what really has caused the left-wing falling-out, less than three years after the hope-and-change crush on Barack Obama?
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For now, it’s the polls.
Obama’s popularity has plummeted to little more than 40 percent approval. Suddenly, Democrats worry that the public anger could be contagious. It might infect them as well — in the way a sinking George W. Bush hurt congressional Republicans up for reelection in 2006.
Yet the Left cannot fairly blame Obama. After all, he rammed through on a strictly partisan vote the century-old liberal dream of a federal takeover of health care — something that Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton never could do. Keynesians never dreamed that a president could actually borrow $5 trillion for domestic spending in less than three years.
The Obama administration even tried to shut down a brand-new Boeing aircraft plant on the shaky argument that the company might thereby be hiring fewer union workers somewhere else. For environmentalists, Obama kept oil producers out of new fields in Alaska, the American West, the Gulf, and other offshore sites. Hundreds of billions in borrowed federal money went to failed “wind and solar” plants in an effort to jump-start “millions of green jobs.”
The Obama revolution that occurred under the radar was even more insidious. Open-borders activists were promised that the government would not bother illegal aliens unless they were wanted for felonies. Never before has the United States joined a foreign government in suing one of its own states — in the way that the Justice Department and Mexico have either filed or joined suits seeking to overturn Arizona’s immigration law.
From January 2009 through 2010, Obama advanced the liberal dream with a passion not seen since the New Deal days of Franklin Roosevelt. He bulldozed all opposition and rammed through most of what he wanted with the help of a Democratic Congress: Obamacare, record borrowing, record spending, and hundreds of hard-left presidential appointees and judges.
Far from being namby-pamby, Obama has gone after opponents like no president since Richard Nixon. He urged Hispanics to “punish our enemies.” He called his political opponents “hostage takers.” The affluent were lumped together with the super-rich and derided as “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate-jet owners,” and “fat cat” bankers. His supporters in unions and the Congressional Black Caucus freely blasted the Tea Party with slurs — with the unspoken assurance that the president’s constant calls for civility certainly did not apply to them.
Critics may lampoon Obama’s use of a teleprompter, but he still uses it to good effect in his near-daily speeches. Obama is a far better megaphone for left-wing policies than was the lackluster Jimmy Carter, the pompous Al Gore, or the condescending John Kerry. He easily outshines the wooden Harry Reid and the polarizing Nancy Pelosi. Compared with Obama and his smoothness, an often gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden can seem a liability. Obama is as charismatic as “I feel your pain” Bill Clinton — as we saw in 2008, when Obama destroyed the primary challenge of Hillary Clinton.
So the Left cannot really complain that Obama either betrayed the cause or proved particularly inept in advancing it. Instead, what Obama’s supporters are mad about is that the public is boiling over chronic 9 percent unemployment, a comatose housing market, escalating food and fuel prices, near-nonexistent economic growth, a gyrating stock market, record deficits, $16 trillion in aggregate debt, and a historic credit downgrading. And voters are not just mad, but are blaming these hard times on the liberal Obama agenda of more regulations, more federal spending, more borrowing, more talk of taxes, and more “stimulus” programs.
A mostly moderate-to-conservative public has concluded that it does not like the new liberal agenda. After three years, it believes that the big government/big borrowing medicine made the inherited illness far worse. Voters may or may not like Obama, but they surely do not like what he is still trying to do.
In response, the Left needs a sacrificial lamb. So it has nonsensically turned with a fury on Obama as if he were culpable for pushing through the Left’s own agenda. If Democrats do not blame the public’s anger on their once-beloved messenger, then they are left only with their message itself. And that is something they simply cannot accept.
How true. But sad to say it's almost three years into the bog and the swamp monsters are finally provoked.
Well strike 'sad', but what do you suspect from murk-dwellers?
AttackWatch could be the pinnacle of Obama's demagoguery and hypocrisy.
I saw on the web that someone is selling Obama Toilet Paper. Pal, if you're out there, you're missing a grand marketing opportunity: tagline - "Fight the Smears"
Liberalism is a lot like gas prices.
When they crossed the $2 threshold - we complained, Prices retreated, then we accepted $2 gas.
When it reached $3 -we squalked, prices retreated, then accepted $3 gas.
When it crossed $4 and was heading to $5, we got angry and prices fell a tad. Today I paid $3.97/gal.
I agree wholeheartedly with your article. At first I didn't see how Lefty could "abandon" such success, and proclaim it a "failure" in public? But of course, this is Lefty. They'll rename ObamaCare as PelosiCare, and pin all the Ill-will on Obama!
Sure we are angry and complaining. Libs may even retreat for a tad and let Cons try and deal with the problems they created, and there they will be, waiting in the wings to reclaim the ground they have staked out.
I was wondering what would happen when the liberal agenda inevitably began to show itself as an abject failure. And now we know! My liberal acquaintances have resorted to misdirection when yet another of their grandiose left-wing dreams comes crashing to Earth. It's like a little kid putting his hands over his ears and chanting "NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA!" when his mother tells him to turn off the video game and go to bed. Record unemployment? Record deficit? Near-zero growth? Credit downgrade? No problem: let the chant begin! Nothing unpleasant, challenging or disagreeable is permitted to touch the liberal mind.
There are many Liberals howling at where we're at. The Progressives at CommonDreams.org, for example, are saying we've got big problems. There may be some in denial, but characterizing the Left as you do seems way simplistic.
And that was just his domestic agenda. This does not touch on his gutting of the Department of Defense in the upcoming budget cycle while fighting in three wars or the precipitous withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan on a purely political time table that was openly opposed by GEN Petraeus and ADM Mullen. Glad to see the community organizer/college professor knows better than our best and brightest war fighting Flag Officers.
It does not mention his naïve approach to Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, or China. President Obama treats these global competitors (and in several cases, enemies) as a mere inconvenience that distracts from his fundamental transformation of America and leaves us weaker in the eyes of our friends and foes alike. It is hard to look ahead when you are “leading from behind.”
It does not mention his failure (thankfully) to significantly alter the national security protocols of the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Nor does it mention the fivefold increase of Predator drone strikes (assassinations) in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Obama is as charismatic as “I feel your pain” Bill Clinton — as we saw in 2008, when Obama destroyed the primary challenge of Hillary Clinton."
That's almost poetic in that the sentence would be meaningful if it referred to John Edwards but means all of that and something more since it refers to Hillary.
Victor, you say, "...as if he were culpable for pushing through the Left's own agenda." I think your terminology here implies that there is "culpability" at all. Actually, it seems to me that the Left is upset with Obama for being "culpable" for NOT pushing through ALL of the Left's agenda. What you seem to be saying is that the Leftist bloggers, etc, are upset about is that Obama got them "half a loaf" of total socialism, instead of the whole loaf. That Obama didn't go far enough to suit them.
That is the only way that I can reconcile your statement that the Left simultaneously is angry with Obama for "supposedly being too soft on Republicans and too ready to compromise with right-wingers."
Your are correct that the Left "cannot fairly blame Obama," precisely for the reason that Obama did ram through much of the Left's big-agenda items. But, then, who among the Left is ever "fair"?
I am not really sure of the whole point of your posting, unless it is that the Left thinks that if Obama is tanking in the polls and his policies are a robust failure, it is because Obama didn't go far enough in his radicalism!! If this is the case, it is only testimony to just how divorced from reality the extreme Left is. The Left is ready to double down on Obama-ism; but the general public has seen the results, and wants no more to do with Obama.
But then, we on the Right already knew that, didn't we?
Who among the Left is ever "fair"? When in possession of "The Truth" the Left does not have to be fair, being the very definition of fairness. Unlike the captain of the Titanic the Left will demand full speed ahead unable to realize that this will cause the ship to sink faster. Obama may order the watertight doors shut but the result is the same. The Left will never blame him for not changing course.
Mr. Hanson makes one statement that we read constantly from all directions of the political compass.
"Obama is a far better megaphone for left-wing policies than was the lackluster Jimmy Carter, the pompous Al Gore, or the condescending John Kerry. He easily outshines the wooden Harry Reid and the polarizing Nancy Pelosi. Compared with Obama and his smoothness, an often gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden can seem a liability. Obama is as charismatic as “I feel your pain” Bill Clinton." I apologize to all including Mr. Hanson but I disagree, President Obama is very far from conveying President Clinton in "feel your pain". And while the list of speakers listed certainly does not present a single person with the polish of President Obama it misses the entire other side: The continual arrogant professorial tone is grating on the US public nerves, we do not like to be lectured, hectored and scolded, continually told that we do not know how to think or what to do. The President is a creature of the academic left, as many NR authors and others have pointed out. Central to that perspective is the omnipotent and omnipresent role of that supreme authority the professor, this is also as the same esteemed authors have pointed out. In contrast to President Bush the polish of President Obama mesmerized the American public (and short changed a person who I feel was more than adequate and elegant on the campaign trail though not quite as smooth in Senator McCain). We as a country elected the delivery of a speech, not its substance, in 2008, again as noted by many astute people. What I think many of these same astute people may be missing to a degree is that our current President is tone deaf, he is almost incapable of listening and triangulating. Every time he does listen to his own inner voice or that of the left he delivers a speech in a tone that is turning off the public in growing proportions... these are the vast majority of his speeches including the most recent job tirades and the campaign he is currently on to sell the jobs program. My view is that the largest handicap that the President has is delivery of his speeches, people are tired of being schooled.
Big thank you to Mr. Hanson for the rest of the article.
Psychoanalysing public figures is a sketchy passtime at best, but my sense is that Obama's "inner voice" is that of a lonely little boy who just wants people to like him.
All the policy stuff is supplied by "peer pressure" (a red diaper baby who's never been exposed to much outside of his "radical" pseudo-intellectual circles), and the tactics come from "Chicago" (chiefs of staff Rahm Emmanuel & now Bill Daley; Axelrod and Jarrett.)
I see him as an empty suit with a petulant child inside, surrounded by crooked adults.
Agreed. In that sense, Mr. Obama is more like Woodrow Wilson in his professorial, lecturing style of speaking. People don't like to be talked down to.
(Captcha: "too bad")
This is dangerous. Soros and company will not be pleased if BHO appears to be headed for a major defeat in 2012, with a loss of Congress. He will not be permitted to lose.
BHO will be bounced from the ticket in 2012 if a Dem catastrophe appears likely. BHO could retire, come off the ballot, or be made unable to serve in a variety of ways, even at the last minute--remember Bob Torricelli?
Federal electors are not bound to vote for their stated candidates. Thus an October 15, 2012 "illness" requiring BHO's removal from the race could lead to a sympathy vote for BHO and the election of Hilary or Joe or some other apalling liberal.
We need to not gloat, to keep our powder dry, to frame the argument as being against liberal policies and not against BHO personally. We can't beat him if he is not on the ballot.
"Federal electors are not bound to vote for their stated candidates. Thus an October 15, 2012 "illness" requiring BHO's removal from the race could lead to a sympathy vote for BHO and the election of Hilary or Joe or some other apalling liberal."
I take your point, but no more far-fetched than the Tilden-Hayes election scenario or the 2000 Hanging Chads election where criminality in liberal voting/election-rigging was aided and abetted by the Florida Supreme Court (and before all you liberal trolls start whining about the US Supreme Court's re-implementation of the rule of law in that election, the US Supremes, including the liberals, voted 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court's hijinks were unconstitutional).
Yes it is far-fetched, but so was the resignation of Senator Torricelli from the race AFTER the deadline for a new candidate to be placed; so was the defeat of John Ashcroft by a dead man; so were the three recounts necessary to seat Christine Gregoire as governess of Washington; so was the blatant fraud needed to get Al Franken (my default appalling liberal) "elected" as senator from Minnesota.
Obama is now a terrible liability to the power-sucking left. They will find a way to be rid of him without getting rid of him. We have to prepare for the far-fetched.
Flying hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers would once have been considered a far-fetched method of terrorism...
