Blaming the voters
Biden, Obama bash Dem base
Last Updated: 12:32 AM, September 29, 2010
Posted: 10:43 PM, September 28, 2010
Comments: 9sports_story_lower sports_page quigo_lower 1482096 871776 440 225 * -->John Podhoretz
On Oct. 24, 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole got up at a campaign rally and promptly lost it: "I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about, or if people are thinking at all," he shouted. "Wake up, America!"
Those words -- an unmistakable harbinger of the humiliation Dole would experience by losing to Bill Clinton in a landslide 12 days later -- seemed to echo painfully like Taylor Swift singing without the benefit of an auto-tune machine in the bewildering comments made over the last couple of days by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
sports_story_lower sports_page quigo_lower 1482096 871776 440 225 * -->
AFP/Getty ImagesNot off the leash? Joe Biden's "stop whining" lecture to Democrats echoes the president's "inexcusable" comments to Rolling Stone.
It's odd, to put it mildly, that the veep chose to go to New Hampshire on Monday and declare that Democrats disappointed with the president should "buck up" and "stop whining."
Vice presidents are at times tasked with issuing direct broadsides against enemies while the top guy stays above the fray. But never before has a vice president served as an attack dog against his own party's voters.
One might have chalked up these wild words to Biden's propensity to speak incautiously. But then Rolling Stone released excerpts of an interview conducted 11 days ago with Obama in which the president said almost exactly the same thing: "People need to shake off this lethargy," he insisted. "People need to buck up."
He went on to offer a prospective denunciation of anyone who'd voted for him in 2008 but might fail to turn out to vote in congressional races in 2010: "It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election."
Even worse, the president was promising he'd judge such "irresponsible" people harshly when it came to their seriousness of purpose: "If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place."
Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them -- even if their employees have it right.
The thing is, from this conservative's perspective, the president is right, and on all counts.
Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called "progressives" should be thanking him for it -- even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.
He's right that if such people want more of the same, their only hope is to send politicians to Washington who will help him, or at least to create some kind of firebreak that will protect the liberal agenda from the mortal blow we conservatives wish to visit upon it on Nov. 2.
He's right that the complaints issued against him from the left -- the stimulus should've been twice as large, the health-care bill is a sellout, he should've attacked Wall Street even more than he has already -- suggest a level of political delusion that must truly be maddening. Obama has every reason to be proud of just how far he has pushed the debate to the left.
Even more interesting, he's right that if his voters fail to turn out in 35 days and hand his party the unprecedented defeat he fears, it'll show a fundamental lack of seriousness about their commitment to "change."
But here's the problem. Facts are facts. Things are bad. Voters, even Democratic voters, have scant confidence in the future, even the near future. Those who believe Obama and his party bear a large share of the responsibility for the national condition have profound reasons to go to the polls come hell or high water on Nov. 2.
For those who believe in the progressive agenda, these are dispiriting times. They can learn from the continuing doldrums that the Keynesian policies they have long sought don't work as they thought they would. Or they can blame Obama for not having implemented them properly.
That's a depressing choice. And it can't help to be threatened with the questionable judgment of the politician whose job is to work for you, not to scold you for your irresponsible, inexcusable, unserious lethargy.
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Topics
- Barack Obama
- U.S. Democratic Party
- U.S. Republican Party
- Bob Dole
- Bill Clinton
- Taylor Swift
- Joe Biden
- Rolling Stone
Comments (9)
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Dr. Risk
09/29/2010 9:44 AM
This behavior is most perfectly exemplified by university professors who design a grand scheme to explain some phenomenon. In order to have any credence, of course, they have to test the theory with real data. If the theory is confirmed everything is fine. If it isn’t, there are two possible responses:(1) the realist says “Something is wrong with the theory, I need to work on it some more.”
(2) the pie-in-the-sky idiot says, “The theory is correct, the data is wrong, therefore I need to massage the data”, which, of course, he will do until the end of time, if necessary.
Two recent examples come to mind: second hand smoke and global warming. Both are complete hoaxes supported by no scientific theory, methodology, or facts whatsoever. And it is mainly liberals who believe this nonsense.
The problem is that liberalism is a pseudo-religion. The tenets of a real religion cannot be proven but is just accepted on faith alone. A pseudo-religion, no matter how many times it has been disproven by the facts, lives on in the minds of its adherents as if it were “established fact”, when it is actually well established fiction.
Ziggyballz
09/29/2010 9:40 AM
Nothing is free. The gov't doesn't earn money; it collects taxes. Can anyone sustain their household budget the way the gov't runs their own? Of course, they didn't even bother to pass a budget this year.
Dinerboy
09/29/2010 9:40 AM
Obama does not consider himself anyone's employee. His election victory was tantamount to a coronation, and he's livid that anyone challenge his imperial authority.
Barack_Mugabe
09/29/2010 9:13 AM
Tim Buck -- Kerry's sentiments are no different from the rest of the radical left, and that includes the corrupt leftwing media, which plays the "voters were ignorant/clueless/uninformed/fooled" card every time a Democrat loses an election.
Tim Buck II
09/29/2010 8:52 AM
"We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening."
This insight is from Senator John "Clueless" Kerry.
You see, it's the voter's fault - we're stupid. Otherwise, we'd appreciate all they have done for us commoners.
How do we know it's not Senator Kerry who fails to pay attention. Did he notice at all that a Republican now occupies the senate seat once occupied by Ted Kennedy? Did that change convey any information at all to Kerry or does he believe that all the voters in his own state are stupid too?
Could it be that Kerry is the one who is stupid or that he may be the one who is not paying attention?
Kerry's comment demonstrates a complete disconnect from the voters - even the voters in his own state and is symptomatic of a ruling "elite" that is utterly out of touch with the voters/taxpayers/people.
In 34 days, we should throw these bums out.
Mickey B
09/29/2010 7:38 AM
Isn't "lethargy" a synonym for "malaise"? Wow, Obama's similarity to Jimmy Carter is becoming eerie!
JimmyD
09/29/2010 6:26 AM
I constantly disapointed by both parties candidates. We're the most powerful nation on earth and in the last election we had to choose between Biden and an Alaskan soccer-mom who dressed up like a biker chick to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. Given the choices it's not a big surprise that Obama won.
Bill V
09/29/2010 5:54 AM
Things are bad. Voters, even Democratic voters, have scant confidence in the future, even the near future
deomcratic voters? dem voters are either union workers, or welfare hand outs and both are making out like bandits
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Blaming the voters
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