I don’t think President Obama will stop his freefall for a while for a variety of reasons, but most telling is that the proposed medicines are worse than the raging disease. He is losing large slices of independents, moderate Republicans, and conservative Democrats who fear his polarizing attempts to transform America. At precisely the same time, his left-wing base is hectoring him to get even more self-destructively statist — as if proposed record tax hikes, corporate and bank takeovers, socialized medicine, cap and trade, race/class/gender agenda appointments, serial apologies abroad, and a $2 trillion annual deficit just didn’t cut it.
Worse still, his base is now arguing for him to get more partisan, get meaner, get angrier, and get more fired up — also at precisely the time that polls suggest he is falling for already doing just that — and losing his once bipartisan, no-more-red/no-more-blue-state supposed transcendence.
In truth, as partisans tell Obama to get nasty, his rhetoric the last 90 days has already been exclusively polarizing. The administration and its supporters have ridiculed tea-parties, town-hallers, Republican skepticism about deficits, etc. — evoking everything from Brooks Brothers to the Nazis, from being un-Christian to now getting “wee-weed up.”
Already, at eight months, the president is at a Clinton 1995 gut-check moment, but seems to have preferred instead the self-righteous, contrite, and hectoring Jimmy Carter solution.