>>That is no doubt true...as far as it goes. But there is also a highly disturbing aspect to your argument: There are a helluva lot of Americans who ARE completely brainwashed.
I don’t think so. The great majority of American voters are not brainwashed, they’re just waiting to see what each side will give them. They voted for Obama because they saw a somewhat moderate black man that could be transformational. What they got (and after attending a conference with some of these folks last week - yes, older, single women working for the government) was a tremendous disappointment. I’ve never seen a group of women like this (and many of you know the type) look up at the TV in the restaurant we ate lunch in and say, “OMG, not Obama again, would you turn the channel for g** sakes? I can’t stand the look of him!”
I didn’t ask for further elaboration, but I do know that with a combination of Cruz and Rand (yeah, I know I’ll get a lot of flak for this) that the GOP has the chance to pull away SCADS of voters from the Democrats. Young, old, female, etc. and if illegal immigration is portrayed as an invasion of black American jobs, who knows.
The problem is that the current GOPe are sitting on their hands doing JACK.
An excerpt from the President's presentation to a fundraising group in Seattle this weekend:
I am very proud that we have ended one war, and by the end of this year we will have ended both wars that I inherited before I came into office. (Applause.) But whether people see what’s happening in Ukraine, and Russia’s aggression towards its neighbors in the manner in which it’s financing and arming separatists; to what’s happened in Syria -- the devastation that Assad has wrought on his own people; to the failure in Iraq for Sunni and Shia and Kurd to compromise -- although we’re trying to see if we can put together a government that actually can function; to ongoing terrorist threats; to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. Part of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people.
Thus, a president who has made an absolute hash of our foreign policy presents an inarticulate assessment of his performance and outlines a world in turmoil -- chiefly due to his ineptness.
The folks at that fund-raiser paid $32,000...and were rewarded with this drivel. They have money, so they have been successful. Presumably, they are well-educated. Yet, if they were reasonably intelligent and alert people, wouldn't they be wondering why this SOB was worth the $32,000 they'd just forked over.
Is there no critical thinking amongst the Democrat base? Do they all approve of his ineptitude? Do they all have such low standards?
It is people like this and the people who dominate the Comment section off the New York Times that leave me wondering if a significant minority of the populace has been fully and irreversibly indoctrinated.
That was kind of my assumption in 2012. That 2008 was, not exactly a fluke, but an oddity. People had a chance to vote as you note for a moderate-appearing black guy and that novelty/guilt/idealism together with his lack of a negative record was enough to put him over the top. Under that line of reasoning, he should have got slaughtered in 2012, because the novelty/guilt/idealism had been used once already, plus now he had baggage of well-known incompetent job performance, most notably ramming OsamaScare down everyone's throat despite widespread opposition. Like I said, even against Willard the Giant Rat Moron, I expected him to get creamed. How do you explain his reelection? I can't, other than to assume the American electorate is (perhaps permanently) been taken over by the gibmedats and the idiots.