Or, for regular readers, let’s call it the Nishi Gambit. From the Washington Examiner, “Obama’s election year pitch leaves out white males”:
President Obama’s tricky, midterm election strategy relies on luring back the first-time voters who supported him in 2008 plus re-engaging women, blacks, young voters and Hispanics.
In a video message emailed to more than 13 million supporters, Obama said Democrats need a 2008 repeat.
“It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women, who powered our victory in 2008, stand together once again,” Obama said. “It will be up to each of you to keep our nation moving forward.”
Conservatives said the move was racially divisive — asking rhetorically what would happen if a president called for unity among white voters to win an election. But the strategy reflects political reality. Polls show Obama’s support among white males has dropped off — in large part over economic issues and his health-care plan.
“I think a lot of white men, a few Republicans but mostly independents, are the people leaving Obama in droves,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida. “Realistically the Democrats don’t think they have a chance of getting them back between now and November.”
Exit polls from the 2008 election showed Obama fared relatively well with white male voters, garnering 41 percent of white men and 43 percent of the white voters overall.
[…]
But with polls showing Obama’s job approval among men lagging women by 10 points and by a similar margin among white voters compared to the electorate, the Obama White House is looking elsewhere for votes.
“It’s always a tough race if you’re the incumbent in this kind of economic environment,” Obama said.
And without Obama on the ballot in November, persuading his 2008 supporters back to the polls will prove a major challenge for the Democratic Party, particularly among the 2008 first-time voters and young voters.
Exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia statewide races last year showed a significant drop-off among younger voters compared with 2008. Just nine percent of voters under 30 turned out in New Jersey, compared with 17 percent in 2008.
To that end, the White House is pushing climate legislation and immigration reform — keyed to specific special interests — as another way to drum up support in the fall.
[my emphasis] I’m not sure what’s worse: this administration’s entire political agenda designed to do nothing but entrench its own statist power, or the willingness of so many Democrat supporters to go along with the plan, regardless of what hastily cobbled legislation is used to secure those ends.
[…]
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to say which measure Obama would prefer to see completed first, saying the administration would like to see progress on both fronts.
Republican strategist Alex Conant noted the White House has yet to offer any policy draft on immigration reform, suggesting the administration wants to use the issue in the campaign without officially tackling it.
“This is an extremely political White House and no doubt the president’s advisors view immigration within the political context of dividing Republicans and picking up some votes while publicly pushing it,” Conant said.
We have reached a critical point in an already cynical political atmosphere in the US. Either our government is there to represent us — and act as an extension of our will — or it is there for its own sake and for the sake of an ideological class that will do anything to connive voters into allowing it to retain power to rule over us.
Such baldfaced pandering to identity groups is the logical end of progressivism in an electoral environment wherein the vote remains relatively free. Politics being about power and access, progressives are willing to form a de facto (and explicitly targeted) majoritarian coalition and rule by way of a majority tyranny, if in fact they can manage such an endeavor. And gone now is even the pretense that they are attempting to do otherwise.
Which, for good or bad, will put to the test nishi’s thesis about predictable demographic shifts in a democracy being the controlling factor for ideology, and so for electoral success. Or, to put it another way, we’ll soon see just how well the long march through the institutions — which has created a Balkanized country of grievance groups who have been taught that progressivism agitates for “social justice” while conservatism / classical liberalism is “greedy” and “filled with hate” for the Other — has taken hold.
A major component in enabling the attempt has been the takeover of language — specifically, what we think we’re doing when we are “interpreting”; coupled with leftist control of both the media and our education establishment, plus the soft, feel good issues (environmental issues, food labeling, etc.) that progressives have managed to institutionalize, but whose foundational assumptions always move practically toward statism and control, Americans have been effectively conditioned to see progressive policy as the status quo in a number of areas.
I and others have been trying to shine a light on what’s been happening and how. Now, the progressives, in a desperate effort to retain power, are letting the mask slip entirely.
But rather than being appalled, many Americans will rally around the identity politics at the root of this gambit.
It would be sad if it weren’t so thoroughly disgusting.
Many will flock to the grievance standard, but more will be repelled. Whence came NJ, VA, and MA election results?
So, this is what post-partisan and post-racial looks like.
Imagine if Bush did this. In fact, I remember Bush being criticized for hanging with old white dudes.
Racist!
Why does Barcky hate white people and Asians?
He just wants to fuck this little country up anyway he can I thnk, and this was a smart gambit towards that end. How fun to stoke racial tensions during bad economic times.
That’s very America, Mr. Obama.
Good job.
This is a tip-off of what they intend to do by 2012 and answers the question about why they are pushing radical legislation through, ignoring public opinion: they have no intention of allowing a fair election in 2012. That’s why they’re acting oblivious to our concerns; our vote no longer counts. They have the majority and they intend to keep the majority.
We have to acknowledge that we have a big problem on our hands: Obama is a radical with a totalitarian mindset, statism is in fashion, the Constitution and the rule of law are out of fashion, and the ends justify the means. Wresting control from the Left will be more than a mere matter of voting. When the healthcare refornm bill was signed a month ago, it was effectively a covert, but quite genuine, political coup. This does not end peacefully.
Evidence they have run out of gas. Immigration/cap and tax isn’t so much a pivot into any particular direction; it’s all a head fake. They are attempting to force their opposition into committing in some tangible way. A way that can then be spun by their media enablers to maximum effect.
That their main opposition remains predominantly amorphous, while also being quite sizable, is problematic and has them severely confuzzled. Hence the need to go with that which appears to be most capable of polarizing and creating the needed shibboleth.
They need some smoke to go with the mirrors. It’s all very keyed in on maximizing the hateyness.
Thomas D – I think it would be wise wise wise to take no position other than to secure the borders more effectively until Barcky and the Dems have produced an actual bill that people can read. This should begin immediately, and the Republicans should not allow themselves to be drawn into a debate about hypotheticals, but rather, debate the actual legislation as presented.
NO!
progressivism agitates for “social justice” while conservatism / classical liberalism is “greedy” and “filled with hate” for the Other — has taken hold.
That is wrong….liberalism advocates for progress and social justice, conservatism advocates for retention of the status quo with incremental change……that is what conservatism IS.
Since white males WERE the status quo, that is simply why they favor conservatism.
JD I concur. It is one of those Sun Tzu thingies – Obama cannot attack something that is so formless. With his latest moves he’s gone reactive and so long as we don’t give him an easy target he’ll remain substantially paralyzed.
He’s a poor excuse for a leader who fears making a mistake. We can use that.
And right on schedule, Nishi shows up to prove Jeff’s point.
Progressivism advocates for statism and loss of individual liberty. Nothing more, nothing less.
Senor LaRoche notes, correctly, that progressivism advocates for statism and loss of individual liberty. Nothing more, nothing less. That is who you are, nishit. That is what you ARE.
Convenient then, Nishi, that you and yours simply declared actual liberals — the classical kind — “conservatives,” and dubbed progressives from the New Left “liberals,” a label they once boisterously rejected.
Games.
Nishi is an artful Turing Test; best ignored.
Oh, post racial? Obammy thought everyone meant pro racial. He’s always fucking things like that up. He’s such a card.
Because nothing says ‘post racial’ quite like telling people to vote their skin tone.
You are racist WEC’s what like Wedge Theory, in favor of LDS baby daddies, and hating on immigrants while 98.58372% Christians and have no idea why people hate hate hate you.
This is about as unshrewd a move as I can imagine: Isolating the largest, most politically active and at the same time least idealogically homogeneous demographic group, thus threatening to make them a “bloc” for the first time in American history, aligned against YOU.
If it didn’t serve the purpose of ensuring Obama’s debilitation (’10) and demise (’12), I’d weep harder for the years we’re going to spend repairing our polity.
Americans will rally around the identity politics at the root of this gambit.
The identity of obstruction? Republican obstructionism is partisan calculation on their part. If Republicans can keep unemployment high, the economy poor, then they believe that they will have a better chance to elect more Republicans in the November elections. Election results tend to follow unemployment rates very closely. Instead of choosing to participate in our economic recovery, the Republican Party has chosen a path that puts them against the interests of the American People. They think they will be rewarded for this.
The Republicans, who apparently have gotten religion about deficit spending, claim that any deficit/offset spending is “theft.” Preemptive war, tax cuts for the ultra-rich, and sweetheart no-bid contracts for their big business buddies never bothered the GOP, but helping the poorest of our people in a time of crisis somehow is somehow “theft.”
Groups Barack Obama (the bringer togetherer) has managed to alienate:
Gays
Christians
Whites
Seniors
Jews
Muslims (they hate weakness)
Young blacks (they hates teh punks)
Brits (they don’t vote, but still)
Legal immigrants
Doctors
Potential GM buyers
Stockholders
The military
Prediction: Even with ACORN running the census in order to manufacture the maximum number of fake votes, the Democrats will still be obliterated in November.
Watch for all the Dems to begin pushing same-day voter registration laws in every state in a last ditch attempt to stave off the electoral bloodbath that they now see coming.
Barry’s only hope is to invite a large domestic attack with his weakness in order to suspend the Constitution.
Yes, FYI. If only we’d all just allow the progressives to do what they wish, everything’d be peachy. Obstructionism is what’s causing unemployment, massive new entitlement spending, a remarkable shift in foreign policy, et al.
If Republicans simply went along with the plan to spend billions we don’t have, the economic “recovery” would go along swimmingly.
By the way, how’d that obstructionism of the health care reform bill work out for Republicans?
At the root of progressivism is the decidedly optimistic yet myopic view that this crop of Teh Right People™ will prove the answer to all the world’s ills. There’s not a thing that more creativity and more effort and more management and more thought and more manipulation cannot solve. We shall overcome; we are the age of Aquarius, we are womyn, we are who we’ve been waiting for, we are we, we.
Progressivism seeks revolution, at least until its forces occupy a majority, at which point we see them scurry around erecting fortresses inside of which they affect everything they possibly can. This is how they are educated; this is their religion and the fruits of their mental labors. Oh yes we can. There are no natural, classical systems.
Progressivism abides no natural law. It despises the classical nature’s god” — it cannot and survive as progressivism. Progressivism is therefore at best the expression of narcissistic humanitarianism and in that way progressivism is antithetical to classical liberalism, which seeks to conserve what had already been proved functional.
So, sorry noogie.
Convenient then, Nishi,…..
well this is what I think….all the artificial constructs like what Noah is working through at TAS are just word games for intellectuals….for example….classical liberal has no modern meaning because use is meaning, and you are the only contemporary intellectual that seems to use it.
I think the real underlying structure is a large moderate middle with two tails….one that is dogmatically open and one that is dogmatically closed.
And I think where any invidual peggs on the distribution is largely based on genetic and memetic inheritence.
Rather, Progressivism abides no natural law — it despises the classical “nature’s god” — it cannot and survive as progressivism.
You can also describe the two tails as rational and religious if you like…..i think that makes sense.
Except when it did.
There’s a reason that when I spoke to NPR in ’08 I told them that McCain was an awful choice — and why I’ve been so down on the GOP establishment.
Just as there’s a reason the TEA Partiers tend to be more anti-incumbent than anti-Democrat per se. This is the soft civil war I’ve said is coming. Arizona just fired a shot. The response has been predictable: RACISTS! CIVIL RIGHTS!
— And yet 70% of those in the state have so far ignored the shaming and support the law.
Maybe the media has skewed what people believe people believe.
Obama was never elected because a majority of Americans wanted progressivism ascendant. He was elected because a majority of Americans were duped by a complicit press that should be roundly rejected.
Tar and feathers might work.
Why Don’t Liberals Care About Voter Intimidation?
I’d say Barry’s answered that question fairly well already.
I’m not the only one. But, to answer your concern, the best way forward, then, from the perspective of your love of memetics, is to keep using it and so hope to increase its usage.
FYI is a mental midget. Obstruction is not a bad thing. If you are a passenger in a car that is speeding headlong towards a cliff, it is a good thing to stomp on the brake. The rest of your comment was just pure drivel, typical “but Bush!” crap. The idea that Republican obstruction is the root of Barcky’s problems is laughable on its face. If only they went even more left, all would be good?
I love it when nishit to lying genocidal twat proves how vapid she is.
This is what happens when folks begin to believe in their self-serving taxonomies.
It’s almost religious in its beliefeyness.
i think that makes sense.
Only inside your little vacant head.
Usage is meaning is one of the more vapid memes that nishit has constructed.
That is wrong….liberalism advocates for progress and social justice, conservatism advocates for retention of the status quo with incremental change……that is what conservatism IS.
Nishi: “Conservatism” is a relative term, defined by what it is you’re conserving. “The status quo” is a nice little negative term, but it doesn’t cut it.
And given that political labels are almost never precise—having been provided by opponents to skewer or by oneself to aggrandize—it’s stupid to look to the dictionary to see what the conservatives are all about.
Stupid, nishi. STOOOPID.
We don’t want to preserve the status quo. The status quo is an enormous, burdgeoning government that has far exceeded its enumerated powers. We want to get rid of a lot of that “status quo,” but the standard by which we will judge what is to stay and what is to go is the Constitution, not by something’s “status quo-ness.”
It would be nice if you had the power to grasp the categories on offer instead of clinging to your virtual reality, but alas, you don’t see it in your interest to do so.
Me, I’m just articulating things for my own sake and for the sake of others.
Not for you. You’re a lost cause. And you revel in it.
I’m not the only one.
who else?
How is it that the lying genocidal twat types what appears to be English, at times, but very rarely does it translate into English as used in day to day life? Plus, she never told us where she got her dictionary that allows her to make up definitions of things.
you are the only contemporary intellectual that seems to use it
I see and hear it all over the place.
Even ::gasp:: Glenn Beck ::gasp:: uses the term.
You don’t consume as much of the conservative spectrum of info as we do, nishi. Stop arguing from ignorance.
dicentra.
conservatism
Conservatism (Latin: conservare, “conserve”) is a political and social philosophy that says that traditional institutions work best and society should avoid radical change. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.
lawl…..Jeff seeks conformity with Glenn Beck?
haw haw haw
not difficult.
FYI:
What makes you think we’re all about the team colors over here? We think the GOP is laughably incompentent and corrupt. We hates them for being complicit in the DC crime syndicate just as we hate all of those who are corrupting the country.
Your tu quoques and “But Bush!”-ing?
Spittin’ in the wind. You gots to bring your A game if you want to play at pw.
Just sayin’
Wikipedia and nishit get to define us. Not us. Nope. Nishit the lying cunt and wikipedia know better than us.
Nishi:
Didn’t I just tell you that recurring to the dictionary is exactly the WRONG method for determining what the “conservative” side of the aisle is about?
You look at what “conservatives” or “classical liberals” actually believe, then you go from there.
By going to the dictionary and then insisting that it has the power to characterize half the country shows how shallow your thinking is.
WHAT A MAROON! WHAT AN IGNORANIMUS!
di – when referring to nishit, the proper term is ignoranus.
While you’re at it, Nishi, look up “misnomer.”
Gotta get to work, peeps. Back in a few.
I only actually read Jeff, AllahP and Patterico.
the rest of the conservosphere is unintelligible GIGO and also kills brain cells.
di..ok then….Stand Athwart History Hollerin’ Stop………Buckley himself.
maintaining the status quo.
Gotta preserve (or conserve) the few remaining, I suppose.
Barack has managed to be so laughably bad that he has not only sealed the fate of the Democrats, but perhaps the entire Capitol Hill Whorehouse and Brothel Corporation.
States Rights never had a better friend than Barry H. Soetoro.
An’ the trolls all know it!
JD, why do you call me genocidal?
specifically I mean.
Because you advocated genocide in the discussion about condoms and food in Africa, nishi. You advocated a position that would result in the deaths of countless people, and you shrugged your shoulders. Plus, you have repeatedly talked of your desire to genetically engineer out those that disagree with you. Other than that, no reason. Now, you can resume your lying inanity.
All that reading hasn’t helped, has it?
JHo – She may have read, but not for comprehension.
JD,
I suppose the passengers of United Flight 93 could be called “obstructionists”…
Speaking of comprehension, does she even comprehend that every comment she’s made in this thread is proving Jeff’s contention?
C’mon baby, don’t feed the griefer.
Is it a sign that I’m old that I heard B.O.C. when I read that, cranky-d?
Well, it’s a sign I’m old as well because that’s the result I was looking for.
What, exactly, have republicans been able to “obstruct”?
Health care “reform”?
Stimulus spending?
Sotomayor?
What?
Filibuster proof majority in the Senate (until Brown), huge majority in the House, the Presidency and the support of the Main Stream Media, and still they whine about John freakin’ Boehner and the rest of that sad lot of GOP congresspersons? Pathetic.
We have reached a critical point in an already cynical political atmosphere in the US. Either our government is there to represent us — and act as an extension of our will — or it is there for its own sake and for the sake of an ideological class that will do anything to connive voters into allowing it to retain power to rule over us.
Yes.
“progress and social justice”
There’s precious little “progress” in “social Justice”…just the opposite, in fact.
Hey cranky, I started singing it as soon as I read your comment. Nice one. And I have no idea what the loon even says anymore, save when someone else quotes her or when Jeff makes her an object lesson.
OI, I don’t read her stuff either. Like you, I only see what others are saying about what she’s saying. TrollHammer™ is my friend.
“your desire to genetically engineer out those that disagree with you”
I advocate raising the global mean of IQ through genetic engineering, and using genetic engineering in utero to repair genetic disease..
Does that mean low IQ people and people with genetic disease uniformly disagree with me?
“Because you advocated genocide in the discussion about condoms and food in Africa, nishi.”
ummm…i advocated handing out birth control along with international aid…like food and medicine.
I also pointed out that neglecting birth control education coupled with a half century of feel-good infant mortality reduction programs has resulted in triple-digit population growth in sub-saharn africa, which is demonstrably true.
No, it means you are a fucking liar. You cannot rewrite history, you lying little twat.
link then.
bring it on.
We were all there, nishit. Unfortunately for you, we will not allow you to rewrite history.
sry…need the linkage.
Hee hee. The lying twatwaffle who hasn’t engaged in a single good-faith argument in living memory is demanding that we provide evidence!
Give it a link to some random wikipedia article that bears only the most tangential relation to the question at hand, JD. That’s what it usually does.
You look at what “conservatives” or “classical liberals” actually believe, then you go from there.
Exactly the root of the discussion. The only way you can evaluate a political group is by looking at the policies it espouses, and the only way to evaluate the policies are by looking at the real world effects and alternatives to the policies. I have a friend who earnestly told me he was a progressive because he believes in justice and fairness. The unstated response, “I’m not a progressive. So I don’t believe in justice and fairness?” Words like “justice” and “fairness”, like “freedom” and “hope” are values, and different people evaluate policies against those values different ways.
More importantly, values judgments, including moral judgments, are not scientific. There is no correct answer as to which is best. We can look at the effects of various values and see that most if not all progressive values have long-term effects at odds with each other and at odds with the stated intentions of the values. Progressives claim to value peace, but their policies with stated intents to foster peace have a long-term effect of generating most of the conflict in the world today, up to and including FYI’s harping on “preemptive war”.
If there was a way we could force them to give a straight answer, the easiest way to stop these idiots would be to force them to answer for their misrepresentations. The Republicans, who apparently have gotten religion about deficit spending, claim that any deficit/offset spending is “theft.” Preemptive war, tax cuts for the ultra-rich, and sweetheart no-bid contracts for their big business buddies never bothered the GOP, but helping the poorest of our people in a time of crisis somehow is somehow “theft.” FYI’s a drive-by troll who can’t make coherent arguments, but we could ask him to define “ultra-rich” and state precisely which of Bush’s tax cuts applied to this demographic, we could ask him how Democratic policies were any less beholden to big business in their effects, and how any of Obama’s policies would end up helping the poorest Americans or anyone other than Democratic constituents.
What was thoroughly disgusting was my meltdown Sunday night.
Sorry – I’ll be better. I’ll behave better.
are hollyweird actors, sports stars, kennedys, kerry/heinz, googlethings, soros ultra rich?
is goldman sachs ultra rich and why do they give so much to the demorats?
I do not think you are melty Mr. NTH. You were all good I thought.
My apology stands as it does. I regret the language I used. I do not regret the intent.
My language ought to be better. I know I have access to a better vocabulary.
As someone who lurks more than comments, I have an observation that may be obvious to the regulars. There are two kinds of trolls-those who regurgitate talking points, regardless of content or context, and those whose pseudo-intellectual droppings are so obtuse as to be unintelligible or incoherent. (Can you guess?)
The paucity of common sense actually scares me some.
The paucity of common sense is the reason they hold the positions they do, frontman.
As you get older Frontman common sense makes it increasingly obvious there is no such thing as common sense.
Don’t I know it fellers.
Common sense is the sense that dares not say its name.
PC – from wherever – is the enemy. Mrs. Grundy.
“They thieve and plot and toil and plod and go to church on Sunday. It’s true enough that some fear God but they all fear Mrs Grundy.”
Mrs. Grundy = PC.
(I read that in a John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson novel – but I do not remember which one.)
“social justice”
If you have to put a descriptive in front of the word justice, then it is no longer justice, but self-serving try to pass under a nice cover.