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Jewish World Review August 5, 2010 / 25 Menachem-Av, 5770 A movement of Democratic ‘birthers’? By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Democrats may have more to fear this fall from disappointed liberals than from the tea party, thinks Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration.
"A friend whom I'll call David raised a ton of money for Democrats in 2008 and now tells me they can go to Hell," Mr. Reich wrote Monday (8/2) on his blog at the liberal American Prospect, which he co-founded.
He quoted David as saying of Democrats: "They're all lily-livered wimps, and Obama has the backbone of a worm."
MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz said he won't vote in the midterm elections if Democrats don't extend unemployment benefits beyond 99 weeks.
"I'm checking out of the Democrats because they are proving to me that they don't know how to handle these big babies over on the right that say no," Mr. Schultz said on his radio show July 30.
Liberal disaffection is one reason why President Obama is plumbing polling depths comparable to those to which President Bush sunk in 2006-2008. In the Gallup-USA Today poll released Tuesday, Mr. Obama's job approval rating fell to 41 percent, the lowest ever in that poll.
Liberals have some reason to be disappointed on issues. President Obama hasn't closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay, or repealed the Patriot Act, or withdrawn U.S. troops from Iraq, and he's escalated the war in Afghanistan. (According to the Gallup-USA Today poll, only 36 percent of Americans approve of the way Mr. Obama is conducting the war, down from 48 percent in February.)
Mr. Reich's friend David cites other reasons, too: "He's furious about the no-strings bailout of Wall Street, the absence of a public option in health reform, financial reform that doesn't cap the size of banks or reinstate the Glass-Steagall wall between investment and commercial banking, and a stimulus that was too small to do much good but big enough to give Republicans a campaign issue," Mr. Reich wrote.
Liberal grousing about Mr. Obama smacks of ingratitude fueled by unrealistic expectations. He is by far the most left wing person ever to be elected president. The most sweeping parts of his agenda have been enacted into law. That more of it hasn't been is due in part to his personal shortcomings. But it's mostly because what he's done and what he's trying to do are so wildly unpopular.
Consider Obamacare. It barely passed, despite huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Had the bill contained the even more unpopular public option, it likely would have failed, despite all the arm twisting and bribery. I'd have been delighted with that outcome, but I doubt David would have been.
The president didn't crack down on big investment banks because they have been a major source of campaign funds for Democrats, as David well knows.
The stimulus failed less because of its size than because it was designed more to reward Democratic political consituencies than to spur economic growth.
Liberals grouse about Mr. Obama because they can't imagine liberal policies would be unpopular. So if voters regard Obamacare and Finreg and the stimulus as donkey dung, the fault must lie with the way the message is framed, or with the messenger.
In liberal whining there are clues to Mr. Obama's political future should Democrats get the thumping in the midterms many psephologists expect.
Democrats -- especially the more liberal ones -- cannot tolerate failure. Consider Al Gore. ManBearPig (as he was satirized on South Park in 2006) is today a tragicomic figure, viewed more as a corpulent "crazed sex poodle" than as the savior of the planet.
It was not always thus. In 2000, before his inner moonbat emerged, Al Gore won more popular votes than George W. Bush. He won more votes than any other Democrat before him. And his narrow defeat could be attributed more to Bill Clinton's peccadilloes than to any sins of his own.
But the former vice president and U.S. Senator wasn't even considered by Democrats for their presidential nomination in 2004. Because they viewed Mr. Gore as a loser.
I'm agnostic about the controversy surrounding President Obama's place of birth, except to note he's mighty secretive about it. But if there is evidence he was born outside the United States, I suspect it will be Democrats who produce it, if, after November, they view him as a loser.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
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