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Posted on 11/13/2011 3:06:39 PM PST by Victor
A year out from the election finds President Obama in parlous political circumstances. The poor economy he inherited has been very slow to recover, with unemployment stuck above 9% and long-term unemployment at record post-war levels. The housing sector, where most people’s personal wealth is concentrated, remains mired in deep recession.
Although the President had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in his first two years, he has only two major legislative achievements to his credit: the stimulus bill and Obamacare. But the first is widely perceived as both a total failure — the administration said it would keep unemployment under 8% — and motivated more by politics than economics. Its $800 billion was directed towards public service union members and liberal causes, such as “green energy,” rather than economic recovery.
Meanwhile, Obamacare remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.
Budget deficits have soared during the Obama years, with three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row. This has caused the national debt to swell to a level that, relative to GDP, has not been seen since the end of World War II. For the first time ever, the United States has lost its AAA credit rating, a deep embarrassment for the country and thus the administration.
Not surprisingly under these circumstances, the President’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline, with some of his key supporting groups — such as the youth vote — abandoning him. No recent President has been re-elected with unemployment above 7.8%, and that was in 1984, when unemployment was falling rapidly as a major economic boom accelerated.
Few Presidents in modern times have had as weak a hand to play as they sought re-election. Even fewer have won re-election with such a hand.
How did this come about? How did the man who three years ago won a higher percentage of both the popular and electoral vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide almost 50 years ago find himself fighting uphill odds to keep the White House?
The answer to that lies in the peculiar circumstances of the 2008 election and in the personality of Barack Obama.
In 2008, the American electorate was thoroughly fed up with both the Bush administration and the Republican Party, which had lost its majorities in Congress in 2006 for the first time in 12 years. The Republican field of presidential candidates in 2008 was a relatively weak one, with the eventual winner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, widely perceived as too old for a job that clearly called for a new approach to meet new problems.
Obama, in contrast, seemed like a breath of fresh air. He was only 47 years old, personable, articulate and the first African-American to be a candidate for a major-party nomination with a serious chance of winning. His biggest opposition was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate with a serious chance of winning. But she was already well known to the American people, having been First Lady for eight years, and necessarily carried a lot of baggage from her husband’s administration.
Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate. He had only served a few years in the Illinois State Senate, where his record was thin (he voted “present” a number of times rather than take a stand on an issue), and less than a single term in the U.S. Senate, where his record was even thinner. This allowed people to project on to Obama what they wanted to see, an immense advantage in politics.
The Obama campaign used it to the fullest. He cultivated an image of a new kind of president, one who would cut through the old Washington merry-go-round of partisan bickering and special-interest pandering. He would be post-partisan, a President who would throw the special-interest moneychangers out of the temple of the nation’s capital. This tapped into the public’s obvious yearning for serious change in how Washington worked.
Perhaps his biggest advantage in the 2008 election was that the mainstream media, to put it bluntly, fell in love with Obama. This media infatuation was so obvious that, as the Democratic primary contest still raged, “Saturday Night Live” satirized it with a mock debate. The first question put to “Obama” was, “Are you comfortable? Would you like a pillow?” Evan Thomas of Newsweek called Obama “a sort of god.” Chris Matthews of MSNBC admitted that Obama caused a tingle to run up his leg.
And, for the first time ever, the presidential election was conducted in the midst of a full-blown financial crisis, in which Obama came across as cool and collected while McCain seemed to flounder and look a bit foolish.
But running for President and being President are two entirely separate matters. Once in the White House a new Obama emerged, one quite different from the post-partisan, special-interest-bashing candidate. What appeared instead was a hyper-partisan liberal ideologue who attended to his special interests, such as labor unions, as assiduously as any other Washington politician.
An arrogance and rigidity that had not been seen in the candidate became increasingly evident in the President. In the State of the Union speech in January 2010, he publicly criticized the Supreme Court — many of whose members were sitting in front of him — for one of its decisions, an unprecedented action.
He made little if any attempt to reach across the aisle for Republican support. (“I won the election” he bluntly told Rep. Paul Ryan as the latter tried to negotiate regarding Obamacare.) As a result both his major pieces of legislation passed with hardly any Republican votes in either house, and partisan rancor deepened dramatically.
A groundswell of opposition to the Obama administration’s big spending ways also quickly emerged and became known as the Tea Party. But Obama largely ignored it.
Republican candidates did very well in the off-year election of 2009, winning the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia with control-the-spending campaigns. A Republican even won the special election to fill the Senate seat of Democratic icon Ted Kennedy in deep-blue Massachusetts in January, 2010, despite Obama’s campaigning for the Democratic candidate.
Still, Obama made few if any political adjustments. Then in November, 2010, a tidal wave election gave decisive control of the House back to the Republicans and added seven Senate seats to their column, while Republicans won races for governor and state legislative seats across the country.
When President Bill Clinton took a shellacking in the 1994 midterm election, he quickly tacked to the center and easily won re-election in 1996. Obama admitted he had taken a shellacking — he even used the word — but seemed no more willing to change his ways than before. His latest plan to stimulate the economy is little different than his first one two-and-a-half years ago and has no chance of being enacted. He has made only grudging attempts to negotiate with the Republicans who now control the House.
Presidents have a great ability to recover politically. And luck may turn Obama’s way. The economy may begin a more robust recovery. The Republicans may nominate another weak candidate. The Supreme Court may uphold Obamacare (or avoid making a decision before the election).
But, as in personal life, the faster one falls in love politically, the faster one is likely to fall out of love. And once gone, sudden love is rarely rekindled. Candidate Obama was like a handsome, attentive suitor. President Obama is like a husband who insists on having his way.
That is Barack Obama’s biggest problem as he seeks re-election.
He said he was going to transform America and he joked that socialism is just sharing that republicans hated.
2008-Hope and Change, World will love us again etc
2012-Ok you are worse off than 4 years ago and so is our government. But we need more time.
This just will not sell, unless they run against Romney.
Obama is exactly the man the media endorsed, protected, and validated, while ignoring his radical past, Marxist philosophy, questionable associations, and lack of any meaningful experience to lead.
Obama is the disaster that many of us tried to avoid, even to the point of holding our noses to vote for a horribly unconvincing John McCain.
Obama (along with his lackeys in Congress) is partly the reason the Tea Party movement, which the media has denounced as a bunch of violent radicals bought by big business, and a terrifying threat to free speech and peace in America! Never mind the fact that there is not one instance of violence, rape, disease, lewd behavior, or anything else at the Tea Party rallies. Meanwhile, the OWS thugs are given pass after pass for their lawlessness and crude behavior.
There is no hope for the mainstream media. They are simply cutting their losses so they can fight to spew the same garbage another day.
Personally, I’ve prayed for his conversion....but am also praying that his days as a leader be few (Ps. 109) and that another, who looks to God for wisdom, will lead us. The days ahead will be the most difficult in our history.
That is because it is his goal to destroy (fundamentally change) this Nation.
Why is that people seem surprised?? There may be hope but it's for the wrong reasons imo.
We will never prevent another happening like this if people don't understand or won't acknowledge what this marxist madman is doing.
Obama chose to govern from the Left rather than the Center. Unlike Clinton, who was a political opportunist who tacked with the political winds, Obama is an ideological leftist, a true believer. He’s not likely to change to get re-elected. And he knows exactly what he is doing, even in the face of stout opposition from the American people. He may get a second political life if the GOP is foolish enough to nominate the Republican Clinton, Slick Willard to face him next year. We must deny him that safe harbor of salvation for the sake of our country.
Larry Sinclair has been responding to comments and questions over at Hillbuzz if you care to make a comment.
Larry Sinclair: What Would You Ask Him About Barack Obama If You Had the Chance?
Read more http://hillbuzz.org/larry-sinclair-what-would-you-ask-him-about-barack-obama-if-you-had-the-chance-80649
http://hillbuzz.org/larry-sinclair-what-would-you-ask-him-about-barack-obama-if-you-had-the-chance-80649
And we are all paying dearly for this screw up of a President! I wish there was a place to escape to with the little I have left. I understood everything he said before he was elected, ticks me that those who voted for him weren’t listening.
When it becomes obvious that the end design is not going to happen, which entity will be the first to eat zero alive...and have the platform to do it?
How long will their occupy failure, Herman Cain rise lead to the anointed one dropping out and putting his support behind Hillary for Prez!?!?!!????
“Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate.”
Hogwash! There was plenty of evidence this man was not equipped to be POTUS but the electorate acted like 2nd Graders who were promised soda from a drinking fountain. Stupid, gullible and wishful thinking made for an historic mistake! Grow-up people. It’s time to act and vote like adults.
He is not one of us. Nuff said
He’s not the man America DIDN’T vote for, too.
Of course he’s the man they voted for. It’s just that they had their rose-colored glasses on and refused to listen to the truth when it was in front of them. They turned a deaf ear and a blind eye, to anything or anyone who tried to shed light on this man’s past and associations. Suckers!
” - - - Meanwhile, Obamacare remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.”
HEY! John Steele Gordon! Yeah, YOU! We, told you, and told you, and told you that Obama”care” was illegal!
Coward-in-Chief Obama biggest problem is that he is a crook!
BTW, he also violates the US Constitution at EVERY opportunity.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/obama-man-america-voted-article-1.976962#ixzz1ddauw8w3
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