You have other tens of millions on the dole who will vote for him regardless of position because he promises to keep pilfering the public largess for them.
Still othes of millions will vote for him simply because he is black.
Other millions will vote for him because they know exactly who he is and what he represents and agree with his anti-American positions. The first three are all what is termed, useful idiots, a term coined by Lenin for the dupes he got to support him.
Excellent analysis, Jeff. Thanks for the links — I'll help to spread the news about this radical socialist Trojan Horse.... who is being "sold to us" using the full-bore techniques of Madison Avenue to "manufacture" demand for this guy as if he were some kind of high-end automobile that we really can't afford, but which they wish to persuade us to buy anyway. From his own mouth we learn virtually zero about what he actually believes — he ever strives, it seems, to be on both sides of the same issue all at once. We infer what he actually stands for from his life-long associations; but then we are told that this is not permitted, that the ideology of Obama's friends sheds no light on what Obama actually thinks or stands for. Right. And I've got a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you....
Here's a meditation from the great economist Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942) that bears on our problem:
...[T]here are many national issues that concern individuals and groups so directly and unmistakably as to evoke volitions that are genuine and definite enough. The most important instance is afforded by issues involving immediate and personal pecuniary profit to individual voters and groups of voters, such as direct payments, protective duties, silver policies and so on. Experience that goes back to antiquity shows that by and large voters react promptly and rationally to any such chance. But the classical doctrine of democracy evidently stands to gain little from displays of rationality of this kind. Voters thereby prove themselves bad and indeed corrupt judges of such issues, and often they even prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively....Pretty sobering stuff, I think. (Schumpeter took the view that capitalism — and democracy — ultimately would perish by means of their own success.) Certainly we can see that the Obama campaign is using irrational marketing slogans which are impervious to rational analysis, e.g., "Yes We Can" and "Change You Can Believe In." These are "memes" offered as a substitute for rational thought, designed to turn off the critical faculty, and to appeal to extra-rational, even irrational, emotional responses. And obviously, these memes have been highly successful in operation.What strikes me most of all and seems to me to be the core of the trouble is the fact that the sense of reality is so completely lost....
This reduced sense of reality accounts not only for a reduced sense of responsibility but also for the absence of effective volition. One has one's phrases, of course, and one's wishes and daydreams and grumbles; especially, one has one's likes and dislikes. But ordinarily they do not amount to what we would call a will — the psychic counterpart of purposeful responsible action. In fact, for the private citizen musing over national affairs there is no scope for such a will and no task at which it could develop. He is a member of an unworkable committee, the committee of the whole nation, and this is why he expends less disciplined effort on mastering a political problem than he expends on a game of bridge.
The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgment in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations. Information is plentiful and readily available. But this does not seem to make any difference....
All this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct. It persists even in the face of the meritorious efforts that are being made to go beyond presenting information and to teach the use of it by means of lectures, classes, discussion groups. Results are not zero. But they are small. People cannot be carried up the ladder.
...[T]he typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective. And this entails two further consequences of ominous significance.
First, even if there were no political groups trying to influence him, the typical citizen would in political matters tend to yield to extrarational or irrational prejudice and impulse. The weakness of the rational processes he applies to politics and the absense of logical control over the results he arrives at would in themselves suffice to account for that. Moreover, simply because he is not "all there," he will relax his usual moral standards as well and occasionally give in to dark urges which the conditions of private life help him to repress. But as to the wisdom or rationality of his inferences and conclusions, it may be just as bad if he gives in to a burst of generous indignation. This will make it still more difficult for him to see things in their correct proportions or even to see more than one aspect of one thing at a time. Hence, if for once he does emerge from his usual vagueness and does display the definite will postulated by the classical doctrine of democracy, he is as likely as not to become still more unintelligent and irresponsible than he usually is. At certain junctures, this may prove fatal to his nation.
Second, however, the weaker the logical element in the processes of the public mind and the more complete the absence of rational criticism and of the rationalizing influence of personal experience and responsibility, the greater are the opportunities for groups with an ax to grind. These groups may consist of professional politicians or of exponents of an economic interest or of idealists of one kind or another or of people simply interested in staging and managing political shows. The sociology of such groups is immaterial to the argument in hand. The only point that matters here is that, Human Nature in Politics being what it is, they are able to fashion and, within very wide limits, even to create the will of the people. What we are confronted with in the analysis of political processes is largely not a genuine but a manufactured will. And often this artefact is all that in reality corresponds to the volonté générale of the classical doctrine. So far as this is so, the will of the people is the product and not the motive power of the political process.
The ways in which issues and the popular will on any issue are being manufactured is exactly analogous to the ways of commercial advertising. We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious. We find the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are. We find the same evasions and reticenses and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people. And so on. Only, all these arts have infinitely more scope in the sphere of public affairs than they have in the sphere of private and professional life.... [bolds added for emphasis]
Sigh. So you can see I really am worried. The culture war is joined. I hope and pray we do not lose it to a radical Marxist who is sympathetic to a wide gamut of radical causes, presumably including black separatism, unrestricted abortion, black liberation theology, "socialist revolution," and arguably even Islamofascism.
And who'd he put on the Supreme Court if elected? Why, I imagine the likes of Laurence Tribe and Eric Holder....
And then we can all just kiss the Constitution good-bye.
But perhaps the videos you link here will be helpful in turning the tide. They have the virtue of being "pictorial."
Thanks for all you do, Jeff. And thanks for the ping!
he will raise up friends, bring about events, and so influence things that the right shall prevail. He has promised us as much (II Chron 7:14) and I believe that promise still holds.
But we must answer His call.