Posted on 08/21/2008 10:42:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Democrats are having their flop-sweat moment. Barack Obama should be way out in front. The Republicans are in terrible shape. There hasn't been a more battered brand name since Bart Simpson swallowed a jagged metal "O" from his box of Krusty-O's cereal. The GOP has nominated an old white-haired dude, in Paris Hilton's words, who makes Dick Cheney look like a lambada champion. He'll be the kind of president who will yell from the Oval Office window, "You kids get off my lawn!" The economy isn't roadkill quite yet; it's sort of like wounded roadkill, flopping around, unable to get going but unwilling to lay down and die.
And yet, John McCain is pulling ahead of Obama. The latest Reuters poll has Grandpa Munster up five percentage points over our secular messiah. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has Obama and McCain in a virtual tie. And, according to RCP, if the race were held today and McCain took the toss-up states where he's currently ahead, he'd be the next president.
Yes, it's early. McCain has had a good couple weeks. But these were McCain's first good couple weeks since he secured the nomination. Meanwhile, with the exception of the Jeremiah Wright unpleasantness, Obama has had a good couple years.
The winds at the Democrats' backs are hurricane-force gales, and yet there's Obama holding steady, like a young Dan Rather in his schoolgirl rain slicker, immobile and unmovable.
Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you'll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: "People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I'm Here To Help."
Perhaps therein lies the answer to this supposed mystery. Indeed, perhaps there's no mystery at all, and Obama's problems are the same problems Democrats always have at the presidential level: He's an elitist.
Oh, I know. Upon reading that, some liberal spluttered herbal chai tea from her nose at the injustice of this whole elitist canard, and the earnest Ivy League interns at some liberal magazine have burst into laughter, offering the appropriate bons mots from Balzac at the preposterousness of such a suggestion, saying: "Don't you conservatives understand? Democrats care about the little guy. They're on the side of the proletariat - I mean workers - and as Obama has so eloquently put it, if the workers would only stop clinging to their silly sky god and guns, they'd understand that."
Liberalism is often a problem at the presidential level. Cultural liberalism is a burden. Haughty cultural liberalism is a disaster in the making. For good or ill, the presidency is a cultural institution as much as it is a political institution. And it's fundamentally a culturally conservative one. Fair or not, many perceive Obama as a cultural outsider. This week, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said of Obama's friendship with former left-wing domestic terrorist Bill Ayers: "They're friends. So what?"
Psephologist and columnist Michael Barone noticed during the primaries that, with the exception of the black vote, Obama's support within the Democratic Party is comprised almost entirely of cultural liberals. He dubbed this intra-Democratic split a divide between "academics and Jacksonians." The Jacksonians are working-class, culturally conservative whites. The academics are the same people who formed the base for Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, George McGovern and other successful presidents in the anti-matter universe where Spock has a goatee.
In this universe, however, you need Jacksonians more than you need academics to win a general election, which is one reason why no non-Southern Democrat has won the presidency in nearly a half-century. It's not that voters love Southerners, either. Rather, Southern Democrats simply seem more Jacksonian (even so, only Jimmy Carter won with a majority of the popular vote).
Obama may still win, of course, proving that America is not only ready for a black president, but a cultural liberal as well. If he loses, though, you can be sure Democrats will claim he lost not because he is a black and more charming Michael Dukakis, but simply because he is black. Because liberals are never wrong.
Well, I was making two points. First, you are correct to be sad about the damage the lefties do. As you said they advocate "more government by self-anointed superiors than is healthy for a society of free people". If you take away a people's freedom, you also take away their capacity for happiness. That is a story of broken lives and broken hearts.
My other point is that lefties have broken heads or as you put it "nuts and/or irrational". And when they insist that they are very sane and very rational, that is when they usually speak the greatest nonsense. That is the part that is always funny about lefties. In other words, rather than always looking at the damage lefties do, sometimes it helps to look at the lefties themselves. They talk nonsense because they have broken heads. I hope you haven't lost your sense of humor.
I like the term. Although I think it's the other guy who has venerabilities.
Yep the Rope a Dope tactic worked like a charm, ‘Obama took the bait and will be subjected to vicious body blows over his “real estate” dealings with convicted Chicago crook Tony Rezko’. This, along with the Annenberg Gate coverup of Ayers, which has legs, my friend McCain has gotten inside the loop on the BO. After the Convention McCain should be able to put the kill on the Mess of a dRat Candidate!
I'm not sure I'd credit McCain with being as savvy and slippery as you do in the rest of your comment, but the part that is undeniably true, and which will drive him to the Presidency (and maybe even make him a great President, who knows), is his toughness. Obama has no clue what that even means. He's failed one of Sun Tzu's main theses: Know your enemy as well as you know yourself.
You ripped the thoughts right of my pea-brain. Well said and so true.
I am so damned tired of racist accusations I’m ready to explode. What calms me is knowing each incidence costs ‘em a bunch of votes. Ssshh...don’t tell anyone
Many of your”Obamabots” are lefty media types. I take delicious delight that they are/will be responsible for O’s crash and burn
First with improper vetting for over a year (ayers,baby-killing,etc) Secondly the racist slings that insult us.
Lefty media is/will be exposed for such complete fools.
Obama is just Al Sharpton with a college degree.
SWIFT vets for Truth... "I was before the war before I was against it"... Dukakis in the tank... Perot...
This time around, we may see that some of the pivotal moments were Rev. Wright, the "paygrade" response re:abortion (no one saw the event, but heard about it later), McCain's assertiveness about Russia's aggression and (my pick) Obama's complete inability to man up when confronted by featherweight "attack" ads.
I have to admit, Obama has been responding as I feared he might not. I wondered "Wow, is he really this charismatic guy who doesn't let negative ads bug him?" and so on. But he's been such a total wuss since he doesn't have a female opponent to fight.
The Wimp Factor may be the unforseen Achille's heel of this election.
And don't forget...clean and articulate according to racist Joe Biden.
Barack Hussein Obama is a man desperately trying to remain a blank screen, mouthing empty platitudes, denying his core beliefs, just long enough to skate into the White House.
That's what he believes his strength is. he's desperate to keep that screen up but McCain is making fun of that feature of his campaign so he's trapped.
The “Born Alive” bill is another rip in that screen showing the man behind it. Click HERE for more
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension”
Maybe that is why he’s your late Basset Hound. Grapes are poisonous to dogs.
The rest of the article is spot on...
O doesn't stand up well to things that are beneath him, and he thinks everything is beneath him. I half expect him to concede the job to Hillary next week. I think he's seen what life could be like for the next 4 years, and doesn't want it.
I hope you’re right about John McCain thinking strategically and being steps ahead of the opponent...when he talked about his military experience...warning Reagan about Lebanon and now the Surge...we need a smart ass-kicker in the White House to outfox Russia not the limp wristed metrosexual Obama who can’t think his way out of a paper bag in real time.
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