Posted on 11/03/2012 10:55:03 PM PDT by neverdem
The homemade sign for Mitt Romney in the yard of a well-manicured but modest home in Leadville, Colo., forlornly signals the fracture of another onetime supporter of Barack Obama.
If Romney wins the presidency on Tuesday, the national media, the Washington establishment and the bulk of academia will have missed something huge that happened in “flyover” America under their watch.
It is a story that few have told.
It reminds one of the famous quip by New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael following Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 victory: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”
Two years after suffering a historic shellacking in the 2010 midterm election, Democrats astonishingly have ignored Main Street Americans’ unhappiness.
That 2010 ejection from the U.S. House, and from state legislatures and governors’ offices across the country, didn’t happen inside the Washington Beltway world.
It didn’t reflect the Democrats’ or the media’s conventional wisdom or voter-turnout models. So it just wasn’t part of their reality.
In Democrats’ minds, it was never a question of “How did we lose Main Street?” Instead, it was the fault of the “tea party” or of crazy right-wing Republicans.
Yet in interview after interview — in Colorado, along Nebraska’s plains, in small Iowa towns or Wisconsin shops, outside closed Ohio steel plants and elsewhere — many Democrats have told me they are furious with the president. Not in a frothing-at-the-mouth or racist way, as many elites suggest. They just have legitimate concerns affecting their lives.
These Main Street Democrats in seven battleground states supported Obama in 2008. Now they are disappointed by his broken pledges: Where is the promised bipartisanship? How could health-care reform become such a mess? What direction is the country going in?
Their overriding sentiment is uncertainty over where the president is taking the country. They have no idea but get the feeling it isn’t the direction that traditional Democrats want.
They certainly haven’t gotten guidance from the president’s re-election slogans: class warfare, a hyphenated America, spreading the wealth around.
Over and over, these folks expressed unhappiness that fixing the economy doesn’t seem to be Obama’s focus; they have noticed that those in charge have high opinions of themselves but aren’t taking responsibility for the lack of progress.
It took Romney just 90 minutes, in a debate hall just a three-hour drive from that Leadville home’s sign, to convince many Americans (including many Democrats) that he passed their threshold test.
He came across as a qualified alternative to Obama who believes in their vision of an exceptional America and convinced them he can win.
And, just like that, “flyover” America was ready to vote its conscience.
What a shame that those from Kael’s “special world” don’t grasp the vicious cycle of their growing disdain for those alienated by their own actions.
They create dangerous narratives through Twitter and on TV that polarize and promote the rigidity of their ideology rather than introspection.
Never once have Main Street Americans heard Washington elites ponder, “What did we Democrats do to lose the confidence of so many voters?”
Plenty of traditional Democrats have voiced such concerns but are not being heard.
Conversely, Romney seems largely to have figured out what he did wrong in 2008 and what George W. Bush did wrong previously.
Obama’s progressivism no longer seems universal, upbeat and forward-looking; instead, it appears divisive, shrill and based on the worst kind of shortsighted power calculations.
Yesterday’s “special world” liberals, such as Kael, could be gently chided for their heart-in-the-right-place, head-in-the-clouds idealism.
Yet it is something else altogether to have today’s arbiters of political correctness order you to march “Forward” to a future with less promise, fewer choices, more intrusive government — and to justify it by telling you to accept that the new normal of high employment, low growth and diminished world influence is good for you.
Is it any wonder that Main Street America is in revolt, since no one is telling its story?
Perhaps election night will tell it, at long last
Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/2883641-74/democrats-main-street-america-obama-romney-americans-election-kael-media?printerfriendly=true#ixzz2BEGIHUjb Follow us: @triblive on Twitter | triblive on Facebook
McGovern and Nixon: A reminder that the two main political parties, switching back and forth, have aimed primarily at increasing their own power while reducing the freedom of the individual citizen. Being elected and re-elected is far more important to all of them than preserving the Constitution.
this is true. but at this point we become cuba if we don’t elect romney. so, we do that first, and we get a 4 year grace period to regroup.
Nixon is also responsible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).....the government’s official wealth redistribution mechanism.
AKA the Direct Wealth Redistribution Transfer Payment System.
I like to throw that in whenever EITC gets mentioned, as many still don’t understand this. Not here at FR, but out in the world in general.
They didn't ignore it, they simply tried to reframe "Misery" as "Happiness". Right along the lines of "Work will set you free"...
South Vietnam was abandoned to the communists under the Republican administration of Gerald Ford. In 2006 communist Vietnam signed a special trade agreement with the US reducing tariffs to 15% or less for most Vietnamese goods brought into the US and eliminating completely all textile and apparel quotas. The legislation was signed by Republican President George W. Bush. The Vietnamese communists we sacrificed over 50,000 lives and billions of dollars to defeat are now major trading partners. It is ironic the Republican Mr. Bush decided to sacrifice American jobs to build up the economy of still communist Vietnam. Seems like something Mr. McGovern would applaud.
Then they'd better hail the return of strict tariff laws!
The ONLY way to get manufacturing jobs back is to price the world out of the competition.
Either that or a collapse of our monetary system.
“McGovern and Nixon: A reminder that the two main political parties, switching back and forth, have aimed primarily at increasing their own power while reducing the freedom of the individual citizen. Being elected and re-elected is far more important to all of them than preserving the Constitution.”
Yup.
South Vietnam was abandoned to the communists under the Republican administration of Gerald Ford. In 2006 communist Vietnam signed a special trade agreement with the US reducing tariffs to 15% or less for most Vietnamese goods brought into the US and eliminating completely all textile and apparel quotas. The legislation was signed by Republican President George W. Bush. The Vietnamese communists we sacrificed over 50,000 lives and billions of dollars to defeat are now major trading partners. It is ironic the Republican Mr. Bush decided to sacrifice American jobs to build up the economy of still communist Vietnam. Seems like something Mr. McGovern would applaud.
Here is a sign in my front yard “FLUSH OBAMA” right next to a toilet. Yes that is right a toilet. many photos have been taken of the sign and the toilet - only one complaint has been lodged in city hall and city hall just told the complainer (a life long democrat politician) to pound sand. this county went purple in 2008, prior to that wa always red.
“As the economic situation worsens, I’m here to warn conservatives that this wrath will turn back on the GOP and conservatives if they don’t produce results.”
If the gop gets the Senate and the Presidency and does what it did last time it had them, 2016 will not be pretty. Results matter.
Complaining to city hall about a noncommercial sign in your yard? The city has no ability to do anything about it: free speech and all.
As the economic situation worsens, I'm here to warn conservatives that this wrath will turn back on the GOP and conservatives if they don't produce results....read the rest ofNVDave's response and warning.
Suicide might work, works for me.
>> There are too many self-indulgent interests who place themselves and their interest ahead of the interest of the entire country and have decided that they’re going to seek financial gain through rent-seeking.
Yep.
For just one small example, really “reducing the size and influence of government” translates to “firing lots of government employees” as surely as night follows day.
You can’t reduce the overreach of the EPA for instance, unless you eliminate a number of EPA initiatives and directives ALONG WITH the employees that administer them.
Who actually believes this will happen?
I received this Bible verse and Daily Quote on my home page today.
James 4:7
New International Version
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.
- William Durant, founder of General Motors
“Being elected and re-elected is far more important to all of them than preserving the Constitution.”
Agreed. There are no “statesmen” in office these days. I was trying to explain to my 16 years old son the other day how it doesn’t matter what the issue is, neighter party will let the other have a “victory.” Meaning IF Republicans were to suddently embrace a concept that Dems had pushed for years....the Dems would block Reps attemptes to enact it (and visa verssa). It is ONLY about partisan victories now....nothing more. The Constitution is NOT revered nor anything that forms the basis of the compact that created this country. A conservative today is yesterday’s “moderate.” And a real conservative is a “radical” in the eyes of most. Hard core liberals are a true minority...but they weld and enordinate influence.
We don’t have “freedom of the press”....we have liberal control of the press.
Things are a real mess.
I vow on my solemn honor to do just that.
LLS
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