An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Mr Unpopular? Understatement!
How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular
The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. “We can choose another future,” says the newcomer with the funny name. “So I ask you to join me.”
And so many, foolishly it turns out, did just that!
Across the gym floor, Joe Donnelly, Elkhart’s pro-life, pro-gun Democratic Congressman, worked the crowd. He was part of the moderate wave that won Congress for Nancy Pelosi in ’06, and he was re-elected with 67% of the vote while campaigning for Obama in ’08. The President has since returned to the region three times, but Donnelly is nonetheless fighting for his political life. In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while Donnelly condemns “the Washington crowd.” This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don’t blame me for Obama and Pelosi. “I’m not one of them,” Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. “I’m one of us.”
If you’re curious to find out just why Donnelly is fighting for his political life, check out his voting record. I definitely take issue with that ‘moderate wave’ winning Congress FOR Pelosi! It’s not HER freakin’ Congress! It’s OUR Congress and YOU work for US! Morons. Anyone wondering why Congress has an approval rating lower than a gnat’s IQ?
White House aides explain this change as a largely inevitable reflection of the cycles of history. Midterms are almost always bad for first-term Presidents, and worse in hard times. “The public is rightly frustrated and angry with the economy,” says Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s communications director, explaining the White House line. “There is no small tactical shift we could have made at any point that would have solved that problem.” In more confiding moments, aides admit that the peak of Obama’s popularity may have been inflated, a fleeting result of elation at the prospect of change and national pride in electing the first African-American President. As one White House aide puts it, “It was sort of fake.”
No, you dipwad, we are NOT angry at the ‘economy’. What a maroon! The economy isn’t something with which a person can be angry! Try again! Think a little harder. Should I give you a hint? How about the people are ANGRY with those who are running the economy into the ground by their constant tinkering! Pushing our children and grandchildren TRILLIONS of dollars into debt. (What comes after trillion? Quadrillion!) Inflated approval numbers? Ya know, this doesn’t shock me at all. And honestly, what difference does it make what his skin tone is if he’s nothing more than an empty suit? Unfortunately, he’s not all that empty. He’s an anti-American socialist!
Rather than address these concerns as the economic crisis grew, Obama made a conscious choice to go big with government reforms of health care and energy. The bailouts of the auto companies, the rescue of Wall Street and the new regulation of banks and the financial industry only deepened the public’s skepticism, especially among independent voters. Rather than dwell on the political problems, the President pushed his team forward, believing, in the words of top adviser David Axelrod, that “ultimately the best politics was to do that which he thought was right.”
Yep. He made a conscious choice alright. He consciously decided he was so above it all, he would do what he damn well pleased, and the hell with those who continuously shouted “NO! That’s not the right thing to do!” He consciously dragged the economy down into the sewers of socialism.
For someone who so carefully read the political mood as a candidate, Obama has been unexpectedly passive at moments as President. Whereas other Democrats had hoped to spend the late summer talking about two things — jobs and the unpopularity of many Republican policies — the White House has been distracted by a string of unrelated issues, from immigration reform to a mishandled dismissal of a longtime USDA official to the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero. On Aug. 31, Obama gave a prime-time speech about the partial troop pullout from Iraq, touching on jobs only tangentially, before spending the following day in an intensive effort to restart the Middle East peace process. “It is inconceivable that a team so disciplined during the presidential campaign can’t carry a message with the bully pulpit of the White House,” says one Democratic strategist working on the midterm elections. “It’s politically irresponsible, and Americans have little patience for it.”
Psst! We’ve heard the ‘message’, loud and clear, and we do NOT like it! Oh, sure….there are some who are still in the cheer leading section for the POTUS: unions, socialists, and the like. But for the rational portion of the population, we understand that raising taxes and continuous spending is NOT conducive to economic recovery.
As his poll numbers fell, Obama responded with his perpetual cool. His appeals to the grass-roots army that he started, through online videos for Organizing for America, took on a formal, emotionless tone. He acted less like an action-oriented President than a Prime Minister overseeing some vast but balky legislative machinery. When challenged about his declining popularity, the President tended to deflect the blame — to the state of the economy, the ferocity of the news cycle and right-wing misinformation campaigns. Aides treated the problem as a communications concern more than a policy matter. They increased his travel schedule to key states and limited his prime-time addresses. They struggled to explain large, unpopular legislative packages to the American people, who opposed the measures despite supporting many of the component parts, like extending health insurance to patients with pre-existing conditions or preventing teacher layoffs. “When you package it all together, it can be too big to succeed as a public-relations matter,” says Axelrod.
What Time calls “perpetual cool”, most folks call just plain arrogance, looking down from on high at his subjects. I’ve often wondered how there can be ‘misinformation’ when said information comes straight from the source. 
Communication isn’t the problem. We get it. We don’t like it, and we are saying so!
For now, Obama’s aides hope that the controversial reforms in health care and financial rules will produce benefits felt by voters, if not by November 2010, then two years later. That would vindicate the President’s vision of government as a solution and not just a problem. Even in Indiana, the disappointment is matched by a real yearning for a leader who can make a difference. “I think he’s trying,” says Griffin, the laid-off payroll administrator who said she didn’t know what Obama had done for her. “Nobody can turn it around overnight.”
Oh, we’re feeling them already! Higher insurance premiums, in advance of the implementation of Obamacare, is just one of the many pains we are feeling out here in the real world. High unemployment, more people on food stamps, the uncertainty in the business world…..just a few more. Thanks, but no thanks. We’ve seen what all that ‘hope and change’ is about, and we don’t like it!
H/T: Fausta’s Blog
We’ve seen what all that ‘hope and change’ is about, and we don’t like it!
Yup!!!! You betcha!!!
Personally, my hope is that he’d change, into a rational human being, but that ain’t gonna happen.
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