Or some such. Barone:
[…] why are Democrats less enthusiastic [about voting in the mid-term elections]? And why has “the progressive donor base,” as Democratic consultant Jim Jordans reports, “stopped writing checks”?
I don’t think it’s just because the economy remains sour or that President Obama failed to jam a public option in the health care bill.
I find a more convincing explanation in an offhand phrase in a subordinate clause in a brief article by Adam Serwer of the Center for American Progress on the Washington Post’s opinion pages. “There’s no question,” Serwer writes, defying anyone to disagree, “that Obama has completely reversed on his promises to roll back Bush-era national security policies.”
For it is not economics but foreign policy that has motivated the left half of the Democratic Party over the last decade.
When Howard Dean’s supporters were declaring that they wanted to “take our country back” in 2003 and 2004, they weren’t talking about repealing the Bush tax cuts. They were talking about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and taking a more conciliatory and respectful stance to the leaders of Old Europe and revolutionary Iran.
Similarly, Obama’s refusal in 2007 and 2008 to admit that there was even a smidgen of success to George W. Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq — even today he will only hint that the surge worked — cannot be chalked up to an intellectual incapacity to assimilate the facts.
It can only be explained as an unwillingness to rile the base of the Democratic Party whose concerns, as we know from Bob Woodward’s account of the president’s conduct of deliberations over what to do in Afghanistan, are never far from his mind.
Nevertheless, he has left these Democrats disappointed.
[…]
The uncomfortable truth is that many — not most, but many — Democratic politicians and Democratic voters saw political benefit in an American defeat in Iraq. Many, including Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, then boss of Obama’s new chief of staff Pete Rouse, thronged to the Washington premiere of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” They tried to give every appearance of agreeing with the “Bush-lied-people-died” crowd and with those who charged that high-ranking officials colluded in systematic torture.
It was a lot of fun while it lasted, up to election night 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009. But then Obama had to govern. Knowing little of military affairs, he retained Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has loyally served presidents of both parties. Understanding even if not admitting the great headway Americans had made in Iraq, Obama declined to throw it all away.
Appreciating that Afghanistan was critical to protecting Americans, he made a commitment to increase troop levels there in May 2009, reconsidered it from August to November, then restated it Dec. 1, with a commitment to begin withdrawals in July 2011.
In so doing, Obama implicitly confessed that the view of the world held with quasi-religious fervor by the Democratic left was delusional all along. Bush didn’t lie, we didn’t go into Afghanistan and Iraq without allies and against their wishes, we didn’t carry out policies of torture, etc. The effort to cast Iraq as another Vietnam and America under Bush as an oppressive rogue power were perhaps emotionally satisfying but unconnected to reality.
Without saying so, Obama has found himself having to teach this lesson to the Adam Serwers of the world. They don’t like hearing it. They’re keeping their ears plugged up and their eyes defiantly shut. Their MyObama Web pages are inactive and their checkbooks are closed. They’ve tuned out of the campaign and many of them won’t even vote. The president they helped elect — and the world — have turned out not to be what they thought.
And it until somebody with the requisite charisma and staying power is able to re-invigorate — and so once again make ascendant, as a stand-in for “truth” in the progressive epistemological paradigm — the fantastical narrative by which these people fraudulently live and around which they hope to govern, many of them will simply take their balls and bats marbles and jax and storm off home.
And frankly, that’s the best thing in the world for America.
It’s sad when reality bites the reality-based community on the ass.
so what was the fucking Peace Prize for exactly?
so what was the fucking Peace Prize for exactly?
We haven’t even resolved the point of his Harvard Law Review editorship yet. He’s a participation trophy magnet.
Shorter Barone:
The lefties are like a kid that has been told by his pals that there is no Santa Claus. And Obama is the daddy that verbally reassured him that there was, but that the kid saw putting his gofts out on Christmas eve…
So even though the kids is getting what they want at home (Obamacare, Financial non-reform), the child’s worldview is irrevocably changed.
Until, as Jeff says, someone comes along to let them fool themselves again; like when the kid goes to High School and is introduced to magic mushrooms.
I hope this message is spread far and wide.
Obama and his fellow establishment Dems are too far right. They need to be sent a message.
Pass it on.
Little that I’ve seen has been made of it as yet, but Gates is on his way out the door. Christ himself only knows who replaces him.
“For it is not economics but foreign policy that has motivated the left half of the Democratic Party over the last decade.”
Last decade? Try since the ink was drying on the “great society” legislation. The far left in America, whether as useful idiots of willfully, has been trying to weaken this nation for years, doing their part in the “workers of the world unite!” struggle; even though the originators of that scheme fell on ruin themselves nearly 20 years ago. But they hold out the hope of a resurgent Russia, and, in a pinch there’s always China, or the Islamists, to surrender to.
“The uncomfortable truth is that many — not most, but many — Democratic politicians and Democratic voters saw political benefit in an American defeat in Iraq.”
Just like they see a political benefit in the utter financial collapse of the US government and Wall street.
NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE!
See?
The “professional Left” are a bunch of whiny pussies!
As I said before, if Dennis “The Runt” Kucinich was president, they’d find a reason to dislike him too.
Maybe if Bernie Saunders was President they’d be happy…..or Matt Damon….I don’t know.
Now I know how how Robespierre felt as his cart approached the guillotine…..
You know you’ve been following politics too closely when you read that and think, “Why would Charlie Crist know that?”
Who knew that triangulation would evolve, in a decade, into squaring the circle.
“Now I know how how Robespierre felt as his cart approached the guillotine…”
Thread winnah
*Christ himself only knows who replaces him.*
Maybe Bloomberg? If he’s good enough for treasury secretary, he’s certainly good enough for something as unimportant as defense.
Heard about this trial balloon?
Yes. Absolutely. As a concerned neo-pagan progressive internationalist, I can whole-heartedly say that there is nothing more important than sending Barak Obama and the democrat party a message. If they can’t be bothered to support our causes, we can’t be bothered to vote.
Chomsky/Nader 2012!
Nader dodders a bit too much. How about Fred Phelps instead?
If only they would run off home where they can keep their world views pristine without any of that messy reality running into those views.
Talk about epistemic closure.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/6 @ 9:41 am #
For not being George W. Bush. Giving Obama the peace prize, like giving the peace prize to Jimmy Carter a few years earlier, was a way for the European version of the American left to kick George W. Bush in the shins again.
Comment by LBascom on 10/6 @ 10:41 am #
Joe Biden as Secretary of State? Start buying Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics stock right now.
Hillary as VP isn’t. gonna. happen. period. If the top of the ticket is in so much trouble that they need to change the bottom of the ticket to try and stay afloat, they’re already sunk.
On the other hand, if you wanted to keep the Clinton’s inside of the tent and pissing out, then floating this trial balloon isn’t a bad way to try to keep her from departing the administration.
I have a dear friend who is a pacifist proggie. She is one of the sweetest, kindest, people you could know. But politically, her elevator doesn’t quite go to the top floor. She was horrified, HORRIFIED, by Bush’s wars. Why must we kill innocents, etc. She was a big Obama supporter in 2008, due to all the antiwar bullshit he promised.
Now only rarely do we discuss politics. I merely ask her “I thought Obama was gonna end the war(s)?” or “When is your messiah going to close Guantanamo, like you were promised?”
She merely glares at me and changes the subject. But, she has decided to sit out this election, so that’s a big plus!
I hope she convinces her like-minded friends to sit out the election as well.
– I look forward to the “Obama lied, babies died” posters coming to a rally near you soon.
– Someone mentioned, I think it was bh, that Bummblefuck is going to have a real problem with the anti-war gaggle in the coming year.
– What took them so long?
As I recall, Obama won the Nobel because he is, literally, not George W. Bush.
Presumably he accepted it on behalf of more than six billion fellow human beings who are also, literally, not George W. Bush.
I’m still waiting for my share of the prize money.
– On the other point concerning Hillery, her exit or not will be a clear indication she’s planning on a comeback. The only way I could see her agreeing to the VP slot is if she thought she had a strong track to the Pres post in 2016. Lot of questions would have to be answered for either move I expect. If Bummblefuck continues his slide into the abyss, and every indication is he will, she’ll probably depart and run on her own if she does anything. There’d be no reason for her to tie herself to a loser.
She’s turning 63 at the end of this month. How much more waiting does she have in her?
– Well, here it is from the horses mouth, so to speak.
– You know she’s playing the game when she refers to hair plugs as an “expert on foreign affairs”.
[…] kidder.The real problem is, as the left is slowly beginning to understand, it’s tough to know when the Obama administration is joking and when its really serious. My rule of thumb is that if there’s a camera rolling, it’s joke time.(via memeorandum) […]
The Undead have all the time in the world.