HUBRIS:
Followed by…
NEMESIS:
Mort Zuckerman one year later: Obama has done everything wrong
Mort Zuckerman, head of US News and World Report and the New York Daily News, endorsed, supported, and voted for President Obama.
That was then. This is now.
I’ve read a number of pieces by former Obama supporters, but I’ve never read one that shows such a complete disillusionment with the man. Zuckerman doesn’t understand why Obama has acted this way (in this he’s hardly alone). He sees Obama’s failures as incompetence; he doesn’t get that he was a con artist, lying about his ideological agenda as well as his ethics. But Zuckerman certainly comprehends that an Obama failure has occurred, and that it’s not limited to just a few issues.
What’s more, Zuckerman does not mince words. His essay is very simply and bluntly—even awkwardly—written. It’s as though he’s talking to friends in private. His bewilderment and mounting anguish and anger are almost palpable:
In the campaign, [Obama] said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting…
He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.
I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster…I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.
I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?
He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi…It’s very sad. It’s really sad.
He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”
The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.
Zuckerman is looking at what happened in Massachusetts, and as a Democrat he gets the message. Is the President looking and listening? And when he looks and listens, what does he see and hear? Have the voters—and someone like Mort Zuckerman—become mere obstacles to him now, something to get around rather than to serve?
And was it always that way?
Let’s revive an old slogan
[NOTE: for those who weren’t around back then, the slogan on the T-shirt refers to the following: in the 1972 election, Massachusetts was the only state (along with DC) that didn’t vote for Nixon, but went instead for McGovern. During and after Watergate, you saw a lot of bumper stickers in Massachusetts that read, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts!”]
[ADDENDUM: I just listened to Brown’s speech; it showed what a natural he is. He exudes strength, sincerity, intelligence, humor, and is also at the same time very much a regular guy (except with model good looks).
Can’t believe the Republican Party got so lucky. Note, though, that in his speech he was careful to mention neither party by name. That’s quite a trick in an acceptance speech.
Smart man, with good political instincts.]
Brown-Coakley election night thread
Well, the polls are closed. Now we wait. Here’s a thread where you can talk about it.
Election day jitters
It’s election day and there’s light snow in New England, but certainly not enough to keep the hardy and the motivated citizens of Massachusetts away from the polls.
Just three short weeks ago I didn’t think Scott Brown had a chance to win this thing. Then I started thinking he might, or that he at least might do well enough to put the scare into the Democrats who are pushing the execrable health care reform bill.
Then the polls started to tighten, and I thought it had become—not just a possibility, but a good possibility that he’d be competitive. Maybe, if there wasn’t a lot of cheating, if the protest voter turnout was good, if the stars aligned just right, he could even (gulp) win.
Now most of the polls have shown Brown as ahead, some by a little and some by a lot. But no one really knows who will turn out today; we’re in uncharted waters. And no one really knows how many votes the Democrats could manufacture, and how willing and able they are to do so.
And so I’m nervous. In some paradoxical way, the recent encouraging polls have made me more nervous, not less. Have they been manipulated to help the Coakley turnout and give Brown voters a false sense of confidence? I think Brown voters are tremendously motivated and Coakley voters much less so, but who knows how this all will go down.
All I know is that by tonight we’ll probably know who won, unless it’s really close.
And then, if the winner just happens to be Brown, the real fun would begin. What do I mean by “fun?” Every piece I’ve read indicates that the Democratic leaders have absolutely no intention of pulling back and heeding the message that the public is trying to send them.
No, apparently it will be full speed ahead with the health care bill; the only question is which one of the many convoluted machinations being considered will be the strategy de jour.
This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”
I’m not sure what form that hard fight will take ((see this for a list of possibilities). But the Brown campaign has made me think that there are an awful lot of foot soldiers on our side (which I like to think of as the people’s side—it’s Obama, Pelosi, & Reid v. The People). This is the sort of thing many of us are worried about:
If Obama were a liberal he would be advancing his agenda in terms of “the possible.” He would give and take with the opposition so as to get the maximum of what he wants while still building national consensus. But he is not a liberal at all. He does not recognize the opposition as “the honorable opposition.”
For him there appears to be no middle. And as I often am reminded, Freud said, “Every exaggeration carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.” But is the Scott Brown election going to be the start of a counter movement or is it the last stand of the opposition that is only going to be crushed by the full force of an Obama offensive.
Sadly, I no longer see any limit on the use of every means Obama and his allies are willing to engage in. SEIU thugs, limitless quasi-bribes to Senators, outright voter fraud, court rulings that ignore fairness and the law for the sake of partisan advancement. I suspect that Congress will ignore its precedents or make ad hoc changes in procedural rules to force passage of their agenda. And I have no faith in the Supreme Court to rule in other than partisan ways.
As I said, I will be nervous today, and fervently hoping that Brown will emerge victorious. A great deal is riding on this; perhaps more than has ridden on any other state election in history.
But whatever the outcome, the groundswell for Brown in a place like Massachusetts has shown how powerful this movement could become. Remember, whatever today’s outcome, this is just the beginning of our fight.
[NOTE: I moved this post to keep it at the top of the page.]
Health care reform: union made
Here’s what the unions stand to get—their money’s worth, if seems—if Obama and the Congressional Democrats have their way with the health care “reform” bill. Never was a piece of legislation given such an Orwellian descriptor.
Obama promised to change the way government does business. And he has, he has—he’s made it even more corrupt, and more obviously so.
[NOTE: The title of this post is a pun on the following song:
Comparisons
Brown is the male Sarah Palin—with a law degree.
Coakley is the female John Kerry—without the charm.
Memo to Barney Frank
House member from Massachusetts Barney Frank says that if Brown is elected, “it’ll kill the health bill.”
Memo to Frank: that’s a feature, not a bug.
Why does Massachusetts have so many independents?
All around the blogosphere I’ve seen variations on the following theme: if Massachusetts is such a deep blue state, why so many independents (close to half of the registered voters) there?
I believe the answer may lie in the rules about voting in the primaries:
In our modified closed primary, Massachusetts has chosen to only allow those who meet the following criteria to vote:
1. You must be registered to vote.
2. You must be enrolled as a Democrat or Republican; OR
3. Are listed as Unenrolled (formerly known as ”˜Independent’)That’s it. If you meet the above criteria, you are eligible to vote in the primary.
Caveat: If you are registered Republican or Democrat, you MUST vote in your party’s primary ”“ only those listed as ”˜Unenrolled’ can choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot. This is how Massachusetts is still referred to as a ”˜closed’ primary. There is no inter-party voting because only unenrolled voters can choose which ballot they want.
People like to be free to cross party lines to influence the primaries, and only by being “unenrolled” can they do this in Massachusetts. Those many “independents” we’re hearing about—51% of the voters—are actually “unenrolled.”
Reflections on the Brown phenomenon: we the people against hypocrisy
The Brown phenomenon continues to surprise.
For example, yesterday I went to Firedoglake, a lberal/lefty blog, and saw a post entitled, “Progressives, please help to defeat Coakley.” Once I recovered from my astonishment, and had finished reading the piece and many of the comments there, I think I understood better what’s going on with this group. They feel betrayed.
They are really really really angry at Obama and the Democrats of the 2008 Congress—every bit as angry as most of the commenters on this blog are. And although the reasons for their anger are almost entirely different, they are not completely different.
These people had believed Obama to be a true “progressive,” and he’s disappointed them. Not only that, but the entire Democratic leadership has angered them by being so tight with lobbyists, Wall Street, pharmacy companies, and other entities the commenters thought the Democrats should be fighting against. They think that if Martha Coakley became a senator she would just become part of the gang they would like to disown. And they believe that, if they help to defeat the Democratic Party as they know it (and have come to hate it), the party is likely to implode. Afterward, a new party will rise from the ashes, purged of double-crossers and run by true progressives.
It’s not a goal I share. But do I agree with their outraged perception of the base hypocrisy of those who are in charge right now. That’s one idea on which left and right can unite.
Read the comments to get a flavor of what I’m talking about. Over and over, there are remarks to the effect that the Democratic Party has abandoned its core values, principles, and constituents, and that it desperately needs to be sent a message. These people feel used, and they were. Many of them had an idealistic belief in what the Party intended to do. They had felt ecstatic just one short year ago, when they were on top of the world. Now they’ve come to earth with a crashing thud, and they don’t like it one little bit.
Something is stirring in the land. A goodly part of the motivation on both sides is outrage at the hypocrisy of our elected officials, and the ignoring of the people’s voice and the people’s wishes. Almost no one, whether on left or right, voted for their candidates in order for them to design a bill as bad as the current health care reform legislation now appears to be. It offends both left and right, while satisfying neither.
Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have managed to profoundly betray the majority of the American people in one short year. It’s quite a feat.
How to defy the aging process
How? Be Sophia Loren.
The lady is 75 years old, and she’d be looking good even for fifty. Actually, she’d be looking good even for forty. There’s no super-taut, fake, worked-on look, either.
Here Loren was at last night’s Golden Globe Awards:
And here are a whole bunch more images, including closeups of her face. Take special note of her upraised arm; no flabby saggy triceps, even at 75? The mind boggles. Her skin must be made of different stuff than the normal human’s.
Of course, Loren began with a head start. In her youth, she looked like this:
And the rest of us didn’t.
[NOTE: Here’s a previous post featuring Loren. And here I take note of the facial resemblance between Sarah Palin and Sophia.]
WaPo writer E.J. Dionne…
…is taught a few lessons by his commenters, nearly all of whom have a great deal more sense than he does.
Dionne still thinks it’s all about “the narrative.” His commenters think it’s actually about the poor decisions made by President Obama and this Congress.
Here’s a good one, and quite typical (by “Letscheck,” at 2:11 AM on January 18):
Smoke and mirrors have been blown away. What is going on in Obama World has been apparent to many for years. Every single day, more people wake up to the reality of who Obama is and what he is doing to this country.
Lies piled upon lies just won’t do it any more. No one believes them.
Blaming others night and day won’t cover up the people who are actually responsible for this terrible turn in our country and the fact that it is being driven forward by this Obama Administration and this Congress.
Attacking business, organizations, people, and news stations to get the focus off of what goes on in Washington is no longer effective. The bag of tricks is out in the open and we don’t like it at all…
Democrats are running from their own party. I suspect most Obama voters are as embarrassed by the result of their vote as I was when I believed Jon Cozine’s lies, and voted for him for NJ Governor. That was over four years ago and I still smart from the revelations of the true Corzine a month into his Governorship.
Corzine was the Obama canary test. He flew so they threw in Obama. Too bad they didn’t pick up on how NJ felt about Cozine after he was voted in. If the Dems had, then they would have foreseen that Obama would end up in the same place.
Government leaders need to be adults.
For all of the blame the childish Dems place on Bush, it would seem that he was the adult and they are the spoiled kids who wanted to take over the house because they thought they knew better.
Give this guy Dionne’s job!
And here’s “radical centrist,” at 2:30 AM on January 18:
Dionne is not just drinking the Kool Aid. He’s passing it out. Keep it up and the Democratic Party will have committed suicide. It will lose 10 more Senate seats in November, not just four or five.
We all know the financial crisis and recession began on Bush’s watch. But we also know that Obama has done next to nothing to stimulate renewed growth and prosperity. We know the “stimulus package” was a Christmas tree of gifts to favored Democratic constituencies and not a carefully targeted jobs-generating program — at a cost of nearly $800 billion. We know that GM bailout was a gift to the UAW and Michigan pols. And we know that more than half of Obama’s time has been consumed by the obsession to pass a monstrosity of a health care bill that will gut Medicare and raise premiums and taxes while handing out more gifts to everyone from Big Pharma to hold-out Senators — at a cost of trillions (and we’re not so stupid as to believe the phony 10-year accounting gimmicks).
So don’t condescend to us out here, Dionne. We’re not punishing Obama for Bush’s sins. We’re punishing him for his phony unkept campaign promises, non-stop bull @#$%& and horrendous health care “reform.”
You’d better “get it” well before next November or there are going to be a lot more “unexpected” losses.
You can feel the heat rising from the computer. These people get it; Dionne does not.