Mark Halperin crafts the Obamalot death notice:
With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.
On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, “Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time.” But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term. Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama’s decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration’s legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.
And that sentiment is spreading. Many members of the general public appear deeply skeptical of Obama’s capacity to turn things around, especially, but not exclusively, those inclined to dislike him — Tea Partyers and John McCain voters, but also tens of millions of middle-class Americans, including quite a few who turned out for Obama in 2008.
[…]
[…] Obama has exacerbated his political problems not just by failing to enact policies that would have actually turned the economy around, but also by authorizing a series of tactical moves intended to demonize Republicans and distract from the problems at hand. He has wasted time lambasting his foes when he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.
Throughout the year, we have been treated to Obama-led attacks on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Joe Barton (for his odd apology to BP), John Boehner (for seeking the speakership — or was it something about an ant?) and Fox News (for everything). Suitable Democratic targets in some cases, perhaps, but not worth the time of a busy Commander in Chief. In the past few days, we have witnessed the spectacle of the President himself and his top advisers wading into allegations that Republicans are attempting to buy the election using foreign money laundered through the Chamber of Commerce, combining with Karl Rove and his wealthy backers to fund a flood of negative television commercials. Not only is this issue convoluted and far-fetched, but it also distracts from the issues voters care about, frustrating political insiders and alienating struggling citizens (not that many are following such an offbeat story line). Feinting and gibing can’t obscure those job numbers.
Campaigning — and negative campaigning, at that — is really all Obama knows.
So is it really so surprising that, when backed into a corner, Obama tries to campaign his way out of trouble, rather than doing the more difficult work of trying to find workable solutions to the economic problems his faulty policy prescriptions has helped exacerbate?
No wonder many people believe the President is actively working to destroy the US as we’ve known it and replace it with a soft-socialist state run by a cabal of liberal fascists and their bureaucratic patrons. Because even were all of this destruction accidental, you’d think by now at least Obama would have changed course, rather than resorting to proposing yet another $50-80 billion in spending, using money we don’t have to camouflage the collapse of an economy his progressive policies have all but killed.
(h/t JHo)
Guess we won’t be seein’ him on MSNBC anymore…
“Feinting and gibing can’t obscure those job numbers.”
But the MFM can…
“he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.
But not to worry, the MFM will make sure this narrative gets ballyhooed over the next 3 weeks, even if Obama doesn’t personally do so.
He’s good at delegating that way; and has some important golfing to do.
Unable to recognize change, and react accordingly. It’s almost as if Obama is an idiot.
And so, another bubble bursts. America really needs to quit buying into these damned things.
“It’s almost as if Obama is an idiot.”
Yeah al,
But he still burbles quotes from Niebuhr, and has really well creased pants; so he’ll always have David Brooks…
Mr Halperin isn’t going to go off MSNBC I think. He’s still the Man (or his daddy is) so far as the Washington Cave dwellers are concerned. Indeed, his little piece here lights the way deeper into the bowels of the joint, putting the blame squarely where it belongs — heh — on the fall guy/stooge, parsing the Halperins and Scarboroughs to the side out of the way of the mess to come.
sdferr,
You mean Obama as stooge, right? Instead of the flawed ideas being the problem that is?
si
Can’t seem to help myself from silently formulating the sentence “When you’ve gained Time Magazine have you got something you want?” in my head though. I’ve only to think back to Hugh Sidey to curdle any pending appetite I may have had.
Obama’s not an idiot. An idiot would get something right now and again.
“Our infrastructure is woefully inefficient and it is outdated,” Obama said Monday in the Rose Garden.
so why didn’t bumblefuck take care of this with his trillion dollar ass-raping of our treasury? I will tell you why it’s cause he’s a dirty socialist treasury ass-raper with no redeeming qualities.
Not entirely. He does like spicy mustard.
And he smokes.
That’s just so outlaw.
moneymen, I have the odd feeling there’s a real thought in there someplace, but a lot of the intermediate steps are missing. Unpack?
Regards,
Ric
It’s been grounded, and cannot come out to play now. If ever.
If experience is any teacher in these matters, that is.
Hush, meya. Yer an idiot too.
Yeah, the leftists at Time Magazine. I suppose next we’ll hear about how Fred Hiatt’s editorial page is an ACORN front.
I disagree, Slart, but then I always did.
meya/moneymen has always struck me as somebody who was proceeding from a set of assumptions that she(?) slides by without thinking about them, and is perfectly rational based on those — which does not say the assumptions are correct, of course. If your definition of “number” starts out with 1 + 1 = 3 you will have some strange notions about arithmetic that are reached by perfectly rational methods from a wrong starting point.
I’d kind of like to know what some of those assumptions are. A lot of people seem to be reaching similar conclusions.
Regards,
Ric
Not content to let meya be an idiot all by her lonesome, AJB quickly jumps in to join her. Teh One must be proud.
AJB isn’t an idiot. AJB is a recording/playback device. The question of “intelligence” doesn’t apply to tape recorders or hard disks.
Regards,
Ric
This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.”—–
So by like, everybody but Barry.
– As much as {I’d like to take glee in seeing the demise of Bumbblefuck and the Left, I’m looking around and thinking about the future this grand ‘experiment’ has already cost all of us, and which may well be irreversable in some important ways.
– So once again the statists have proven Socialism is a stupid defunct ideology that has never, and will never work in any reasonable society. So what. Now we’re left will the hard, miserable, hurtful job of cleaning up the mess, and it ain’t gonna be easy.
– I read the other day that if we stay at something like twice the present growth it will be March of 2022 before we could possibly be back to pre-2005 levels of economic stability and efficiencies.
– Seeing that somehow dampens ones spirit of revelry in the enemies loss. There’s no joy in Mudville tonight…..
And he smokes.
That’s just so outlaw.
If he tossed tobacco seeds in M’shelle’s garden … that would be totally outlaw. Now he’s just another version of “rules are for everyone else”.
Look on the bright side: it won’t have to be proven again for at least five or six years!
Geeze, what’re you, some kinda HATER? Don’t you know that the MEssiah is amongst us even now? He’s takin’ names, pal, and deciding who will benefit and who will be destroyed when the REVOLUTION comes!
Don’t be a don’t bee!
Sadly true, in 8-10 years, they will say, well Obama wasn’t that bad all told, as they did about Carter
then Clinton
Said before, I want Obama and his agenda to fail spectacularly, and the results ensure the proggs, socialists, (insert your favorite here) wander the political wastelands for decades.
November 2nd should be the onset, but it’s only the beginning. I see another 2 election cycles, each with a Republican majority to rid us of the worst of the damage.
Yeah, what a raw deal. Why even bother?
“Yeah, what a raw deal. Why even bother?”
– We always ‘bother’, that’s one reason they’ll never win against the American spirit, and why our enemies keep under-estimating our will and resolve.
This song has taken on a whole new meaning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK_6TU1T7V8….OUTLAW
Oh SHIT, meya.
Sharron Angle is from the unelectable end of Nevada. I know (of) Sharron Angle, meya, and Sharron Angle is no Ronald Reagan.
Oh SHIT, meya.
Give an entire nation of normal, freedom-minded, property-lovin peeps something truly destructive to oppose and stand back, eh trolls?
– If the Boomers, and the X’ers, and the Y’ers all decide their financial future depends on switching sides in a panic, Obama might as well stay on vacation permanently, and the Ayers of the world will need to start looking for a job. The bloom isn’t just off the Socialism rose, the flower is going to the weeds.
But Jeff, he is just a skinny guy, with big ears, and a funny last name.
Why do you mock him?
HE IS A GOOD MAN!!11!1!!!
Jeff – Thanks for getting me to watch an episode of “Outlaw”. I’ll give them credit – it’s one of the worst shows ever produced.
I think next week he tries to pull the car out of the ditch. He’s maxed out his credit cards, but the stupid people along the road won’t help him. NASCAR fans with teeth missing.
Honest – Another trillion dollars and the economy is saved.
God willing, Obama may be the last dull scion of the Wilsonian Presidential tradition. Keynesian gimcrackery and soft-fascist Management Boards are finally being called out for the offal they are.
Or, this one’s teeth are going to be pulled, and we won’t have to worry about the next Man from Hope for another 14 years.
Maybe now the media will stop their search for the next John Kennedy. They have tried to make every Democrat president since then the second coming of Camelot and it has never succeeded. They’ve been in a search for him for almost 50 years, and it is rather silly and getting rather tiresome to go through this obsession of theirs every four years or so. Especially since the John Kennedy they are looking for never actually existed.
I hope that the failure of the Obama administration will change that pattern of behavior.