Obama won a mandate—for what?
Obama is acting as though he won a mandate. And why not? His election margin of victory was approximately six points, and the post-2008 election Congress is more strongly Democratic than Congress has been since the 1970s—which means very strongly Democratic indeed.
So when Obama says “I won,” he means it. And although presidents don’t usually say such an infantile thing as “I won!” out loud, my guess is that many presidents would feel the same in Obama’s position—strong win, supportive Congress; it’s a clear mandate.
The only problem is this: although most (if not all) presidential candidates do some dissembling and spinning during their campaigns, and all make promises they are not able to keep, and most are met with circumstances that require them to be flexible about some of the matters they campaigned on, I believe that Obama is the very first president whose campaign persona was a studied lie and a con.
In his campaign, Obama presented himself as a different person—different not only than the person he has become, but different than the person he has been in the past. Perhaps there are some other presidential hopefuls who would have attempted such a trick if they could have gotten away with it, but in the past it has not been possible because they had amassed a much clearer and longer public record prior to their declaring for office. Their resumes could not be fudged or hidden. The public knew them in some basic ways.
What’s more, Obama’s predecessors could not have done what he did, even if they had wanted to, because the press wouldn’t have let them. It would have done its job in following clues and exposing the scam. Obama gambled that the press would never treat him like that, either because of his narcissistic belief in his own specialness (which they seemed to share), the fact that they’d not successfully done it to him before despite opportunity, and/or his feeling that they would be unlikely to criticize him because of fear that charges of racism would be hurled back at them. Whatever his reasons, he found out early on that he could get away with it, and so he did.
Obama presented himself as a moderate Democrat, dedicated to reaching across the aisle. He is not. In addition, he was often foggy about the details of his programs, and this was no accident. When details did come out, either about Obama’s proposals or his personal past, it was often by accident or at the tail end of the campaign, and the press chose to cooperate with Obama in deflecting them rather than to highlight them (except, of course, for the conservative press, which didn’t reach the people who needed to be reached). A few examples are the “spread the wealth” incident with Joe the Plumber, his statement that cap and trade would cause utility bills to “skyrocket,” and videos of Reverend Wright’s sermons surfacing.
So what was Obama’s mandate for? Someone who would govern more or less from the center or slightly to left of center. Someone who would forge compromises.
Someone other than Obama.
This may not matter to our current president, because now he’s got the power. But his current haste to ram bills through may be evidence of a growing apprehension on his part that he’s not only losing the American people as they get to know the real Obama (which he may not even care about, if he still gets to enact his far-Left agenda), but that he’s losing the moderate Democrats in Congress who give him some of his majorities and some of his power.
neo,
The Abe Greenwald piece on Obama’s foreign non-policy at National Review is very good. Greenwald doesn’t see a consistant philsophy. What I found most interesting was how people praise Obama when he does something right. I suppose this is a mixture of trying to influence him to do the right thing and perhaps not wanting to undercut him as he undercut Bush. What it means is that Obama receives bits of criticism that he can deflect by pointing to support on other items. People seem unwilling to confront him on the big picture. Maybe most pols don’t think in those terms.
The other mandate Obama had was to be the anti-Bush.
Certainly I don’t like the way Obama is placating, rationalizing, and even helping bad actors like the Iranian mullahs, Chavez, Zelaya et al. However, this may not be the result of a consistent ideology, but a desire to make good on his campaign promise not to meddle with the bad boy status quo and thereby make deals with them in the future and score points with his base, the Europeans, and the UN crowd. And show how bad Bush was at diplomacy.
It’s not working of course, but that’s one perspective.
Seeing as how the young came out in record numbers….
…. ∅bama’s mandate was to give those young voters AND their children debt.
How is that for a political science lesson kids?
America had a temper tantrum, and the Reagan Democrats and the cold war warriors, most of whom are starting to die off, were not enough to tip the scale back to sanity.
Most Democrats really have no idea what Marxism is, they just are led around by their vanity and their ignorance.
To undo the damage of Obama wikk not take “moderate politics”. it will take dismantling much of the federal New Deal departments, and a great deal of the welfare state at the state level too.
The press that continually tells us that Michelle O is the most stylish and beautiful woman in the world is not going to start telling us the truth about O.
I’m sure you’ve noticed how white people fawn over an ugly black baby and overcompensate. That’s what the press is doing to the Obamas.
BHO has been taking advantage of white guilt his whole life and rode it all the way to the WH. If the polls go lower his race will ride to the rescue again.
Obama has a mandate? Great. His margin of victory in popular vote – 52/48% – is exactly the same as that by which Prop. 8 (a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage) passed in California.
So I guess that means we have a mandate too.
Obama has a mandate? Great. His margin of victory in popular vote – 52/48% – is exactly the same as that by which Prop. 8 (a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage) passed in California.
So I guess that means opponents of homosexual marriage have a mandate too.
Oops. Sorry about the double post. The first one received a “server error,” and I thought it hadn’t gone through.
I was about to reference the same info OB did.
Getting 52 out of 100 people to side with you *once* does not make a mandate.
Only 3 people out of 100 need to switch sides to completely change the balance of power, and given the numbers of people getting more and more pi$$ed off at Obama these days that may be an easy number to achieve in the 2010 election cycle.
I’ve been seeing a lot of problems with WordPress’s servers the past few days.
Well – it helps to have the media on your side – I am curious if any of the MSM will even touch upon Michelle Obama’s Chicago “Urban health Initiative” ? I doubt it.
To be fair, the Democrats also enjoy 232-202 seat advantage in the House and even more crucially 60-40 in the Senate, which makes them potentially “filibuster proof.”
Obama would pose far less of a threat to reshape America according to his leftist vision if the Democrats did not control Congress.
Unfortunately they do and the Democratic leadership is just about as radical as Obama.
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A while back i posted a forbes article, and even mentioned it again. and now mentioning it a third time.
Man in the shadows
(USSR Politburo member Oleg Shenin)
(Hidden assets of the Soviet Communist Party)
By Vladimir Kvint and Natalia Darialova
28 October 1991
Forbes Magazine
and to understand why newreek would keep putting him up, and covering, etc.
Where it has been identified, party property inside the country is being transferred to local authorities. Local governments have already taken control of more than 4,000 party publishing and printing houses, 40 of them being among the world’s biggest. Many of them will soon be used to form joint ventures with major foreign publishing conglomerates.
So what is the implication of that paragraph from 91?
can the implication above change the conclusions below?
Obama’s predecessors could not have done what he did, even if they had wanted to, because the press wouldn’t have let them. It would have done its job in following clues and exposing the scam. Obama gambled that the press would never treat him like that, either because of his narcissistic belief in his own specialness (which they seemed to share), the fact that they’d not successfully done it to him before despite opportunity, and/or his feeling that they would be unlikely to criticize him because of fear that charges of racism would be hurled back at them.
Hmm…the trackback from Amused Cynic is pretty good. Cynic quotes David Gergen on healthcare and about Obama’s address tonight, then Cynic applies a good fisking:
Now, when you cut away all of Gergen’s excess harrumphing as I have done here, it crystallizes into something amazing, something that speaks as poorly of Gergen and the rest of the SRM (”State-Run-Media”–as Rush is now calling them) as it does of Obama, and it is this: Obama is going on TV tonight to try to sell us a bill of goods. He is trying to sell us on something that can barely be called an idea, let alone a plan. He doesn’t even have a plan, he doesn’t even really know what he’s trying to sell us.
And Gergen knows this. And instead of being appalled that the president is obviously a bull-shit artist and calling him on it, Gergen simply wonders if he can pull off “one of the steepest, most important climbs of his young presidency.” Well, I am appalled, and I think that sentiment is spreading:
Whereupon Cynic quotes neo.
Worth a look.
I just checked that post above was may 2008. in that thread i also posted this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs
let me know if what he says here is something a moderate would say. i dont think so…
i think he didnt present himself as anything, and everyone painted in what they wanted to hear.
the ones more grounded in reality who are the type to not fill in blank spots without knowing whats in them, were the people who saw him more clearly.
he pretty much said what he meant, and what he meant amounted to disarming america.
but america is disarmed. you dont disarm an army by getting rid of what they have, you disarm them by getting rid of the capacity to replace what they have so they can continue fighting past the begining phase. with manufacturing and such experties, AND the infrastructure that supports it (machiners, tool and die, etc), america was disarmed by minimum wage, high capital gains, etc. then just wait as the natural open state cant protect itself and does what it does, even more so after the social acid of relativism and such sinks in.
heck, you can even put a deadline on things. its all over the place or havent you noticed that movies, papers, end of the worlders are all converging on one date?
Opposition to nationalized healthcare and cap and trade is growing in Obama’s own party. I think the strategy will be to water the bills down and to do anything he needs to do to get the watered-down bills passed.
If Obama can get ANY versions of these 2 bills passed he has won. No matter how innocuous the bills may seem at passage they can always be added to or modified later. You boil a live frog degree by slow degree if you can’t boil him fast.
So far Obama’s foreign policy has followed the standard Progressive blueprint. I see no reason to ascribe any other motive other than that an uber-Progressive is playing out Progressive foreign policy memes — probably getting satisfaction in fancying himself, as Huxley puts it, “the anti-Bush.”
We must always keep in mind that in their minds the Way of Carter is the good way: Appease all opposition, abase yourself and your nation, accede to any demand, support regimes that hate America and snub those who are or could be our allies and hope that bad things don’t happen. Why? Because America is evil and the cause of evilness all over the world.
Mandate or not, Obama’s in the Whitehouse and it looks as though he intends to go as far with the power grab as he can. Those who are hoping that a worsening economy will turn the voters against Obama need to break out their history books and read about the last major economic disaster. FDR won 4 terms during the Great Depression and he didn’t have the MSM in his pocket like Obama does. The stakes are even higher today than in Roosevelt’s day. Soon those who hate us and who have vowed to destroy us will have it in their power to bring our destruction about.
Neo, these last four or five posts have been terrific. And so many great comments, too! Everyone give yourself a pat on the back.
I really can’t think of anything to add at the moment.
how about the brouha ha bout sex education for kids in kindergarten?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pO1dIKgfPw
you have to catch what he says after he makes everyone laugh… “but its the right thing to do”.
to those who were used as seeing the world as it is, in its empirical absolute, he was saying what he meant. to those who ALSO knew what all these modern liberals and others have talked about for the past 75 years and more, you would know that he was saying what they wanted.
everyone else raised on fill in your own story, high self esteem, etc… they all filled in the blanks with what they wanted. they used their reduced capacity for comprehension to not see what was in front of them.
one thing interesting about knowing lots of history from lots of places. you see people and what they do differently. maybe in liberals that translates to superiority, that part i dont know. but the same effect can be had by teaching a false thing and then changing the social make up. in this case the majority feel superior for being similarly ignorant.
but one thing that is a constant. VERY few people will say they dont know, or will qualify what they are saying. so if you know the stuff from the guys who defected and transcripts and such, you will see everyone discuss what they see and hear in the news completely as if that doesnt exist.
they will look at the honduras, and they will come up with explanations, but they will NOT mention the obvious that while all this stuff is going on in the front, the state has been infiltrated across its borders and things are going on as different states are playing games. the whole conversation is devoid of this constant truth.
you can also see them divide themselves up into clicks where the average stupidity of the group is what is really driving the relationships, and any one that knows more spoils all the fun and feelings as if that groups conversations over certain things are actually going somewhere.
and its not just people. ive picked up textbooks in which you know they are following the feminist stuff, and they start referring to mythological people as actually being real and dont know it!!!
I was reading an article by christina hoff sommers. she was digging in on the gender texts of the left in schools and such.
the text comes from a LAW SCHOOL textbook on domestic violence “Domestic Violence Law”. edited by prof nancy kd lemon.
The history of women’s abuse began over 2,700 years ago in the year 753 BC. It was during the reign of Romulus of Rome that wife abuse was accepted and condoned under the Laws of Chastisement. . . . The laws permitted a man to beat his wife with a rod or switch so long as its circumference was no greater than the girth of the base of the man’s right thumb. The law became commonly know as ‘The Rule of Thumb.’ These laws established a tradition which was perpetuated in English Common Law in most of Europe.
she basically says where to begin? romulus of rome never existed? and rule of thumb did not come from wife beating (nor has anyone ever located such a law).
but she points out that “evidenced based criticism is regarded as a personal attack”… so if your not as dumb as the collective the collective attacks you.
those interested in the sommers article can go here:
http://www.aei.org/article/100695
i dont want to go on a tangent into feminism, its just easier to use an example from there than say BNS.
the point is that its was like a surfactant was added to the population, so only those who can pretend to be similar can gather. they no longer have a desire to know the real facts, they only want their facts to all resonate the same, even if they are wrong, can kill them, etc.
and its THIS that helps this effect of filling in the blanks. the more you have self esteem in people who really arent aquiring the abilities, information and such, you get people that feel that smarter honest people are the enemy, while manipulative people feeding their condition are angels.
in politics people tend to clique off and here is the point of all this…
those little clicks create the myths to fill in the blanks that work for that clique.
you can see some of it here, but since other knowlegeable people will pipe up and correct things, it doesnt solidify.
but in these younger clicks and gender clicks, and race clicks, each are self reinforcing their own little myths that spackle the gaps in their ignorance. once done, they will not want to be ejected from their click by learning something the click doesnt know, so they wont learn.
they certainly cant handle the discourse, as if they have been made squeamous about anything that would reveal their actuality.
So tonight Obama goes to the primetime bully pulpit to push for a healthcare bill which has yet to be clearly specified, which remake American healthcare for decades, and Obama demands that it be passed within ten days.
It sounds like a reprise of the stimulus and cap’n’trade where Congress votes on immense, expensive bills that no one had read or even could read completely before voting on them.
Even if one thinks universal healthcare is a good idea, this can’t be a good way to go about it.
It’s good that the Althouse can finally admit that Obama lost her. But I don’t see how any self-respecting, intellectually honest person can continue backing Obama. It’s just waving a flag saying you support The Leader because you trust him no matter what.
huxley, thanks for the link..
i cant watch him cause he keeps using the other people or some people lines.
and if i didnt read your link i wouldnt have read her refer to him as ratchet head, and realize that he is what was called in the 50s a one hit wonder (as far as oratory).
Potus cant live on soundbites like other politicians who cant get air time and such… or like hack authors keep recutting their help books ideas and best paragraphs into new work…
you CAN go across the country and have these stumps and keep using the same kinds of lines.
again, cargo cult (which i am starting to think that socialists are that big time), image no substance.
they can create a short artificial image without substance, but when it comes to writing more than one hit song, well, they are dead in the water. they cant make lightning strike again (cause they dont know what they did to make it hit the first time).
their rule book doesnt have three envelopes.
http://www.notboring.com/jokes/work/3.htm
and potus gets seen by most, so unless he can say more than a magical minimum, his whole sham falls apart more and more over time.
there are just so many times you can start a speech with, there are those who say, or some people say, or people tell me. (or take another song title if ya want. people tell me im lucky)…
[by the way, this also works in the american school system where you dont generally appear before the same professor more than once]
huxley, you may recall a similar “gymnastics judging” that came from the press when Bill Clinton was lying and spinning weekly. How does he do it? Isn’t it amazing how he gets out of these jams? The Republicans are so frustrated. He really has a gift for slipping the trap.
Obama’s speeches are mostly his knave side.
I still take issue with the claim that Obama possesses extraordinary intelligence, but he is smart enough to know exactly how deceptive his rhetoric is.
huxley,
It begs the question. Would somebody supposedly as smart as ∅bama show his frustration like has lately….
Sometimes I see that in other smart people. They get frustrated that others don’t get it.
The problem is… ∅bama lacks a certain amount of social intelligence because he isn’t aware of how he comes across, how his strawmen arguments represent nobody’s argument and WE SEE THAT, and that many all around the country ARE catching on.
Baklava: I was speaking of his verbal arguments and logic, not his nonverbal presentation.
However, I would say that if one is favorably disposed to Obama and doesn’t bother with a close reading of Obama’s speeches, that dripping sincerity and self-righteous frustration with those dead-enders obstructing Obama’s vision of America as it should be probably works pretty well.
oh
Wonderful post again Neo-Neocon. I truly enjoy your blog and I congratulate all on the civility and intelligence of the ensuing discourse.
I decided today to adopt a page from the Left’s strategy book. It is a modification of their mantra of the last 7 years “I support the troops but I am against the war” as follows – “I support the President but I am against all his policies”. I think it is a million+ selling bumper sticker.
For all you do, Sirius, this one’s for you!
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/driveby/i_support_the_president_b.php
Based on the sparkling inspirational speech he gave in ’04, I voted for Obama for Illinois senate. By the time he ran for President, it was crystal clear that his actions were at considerable variance with his words.
Obama voted hard Left on every single vote.Even if the press weren’t guilty of malpractice and treason–and they are–if you couldn’t realize the sham by 2008, you deserve everything you’re getting.
It was possible to fairly debate Bush’s policies, and we did, and the press reported on those debates, making sure everyone knew about it if 100 people showed up in DC to protest the war.
Obama’s policies are just as fairly debateable but the debate is not allowed and the press only covers dissenting opinion in order to sneer at it.
Which is why America will not survive this guy’s presidency.
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