Americans hate Congress but love their congressmen.
They loathe big government and support budget cuts but can’t part with any of the specific programs that contribute most to the national debt.
via Business Insider
Polls show a neck-and-neck race when respondents have the option of choosing a generic Republican to go up against President Obama in the 2012 general election, but when forced to pick between the incumbent and one of the eight candidates in the Republican primary race, polls give Obama a much wider margin of victory.
The president’s American Jobs Act received a “lukewarm” reception when it was announced, with 45 percent of Americans supporting it, but the specifics of the bill polled much better:
• 56 percent support payroll tax cuts
• 52 percent support state aid to prevent public-sector layoffs
• 80 percent support infrastructure investments
• 81 percent support small business tax cuts
What all of these trends and statistics have in common is that they all show the power of faceless enemies.
My prediction is that when the primary ends and the Republican Party officially announces its presidential nominee, Obama’s national popularity, his re-election odds and his unimpressive 44 percent job approval rating will all rise.
Barack Obama’s biggest problem isn’t the economy or the Tea Party. It’s not even that he’s too nice, too accommodating, too pragmatic or too open to compromise.
The economy is the biggest concern for Americans right now. But the economy has no face. It has no name, no agenda, no talking points to be critiqued by the media, no gaffes that go viral on the web, no shady campaign donors or fanatical religious beliefs to cast doubt on its leadership abilities. It can’t hurt Obama’s re-election odds that a majority of Americans still blame George W. Bush for the current state of the economy, but Obama doesn’t have the option of campaigning against the economy or Bush. People want answers, not finger pointing.
The Tea Party may be the most obvious thorn in the administration’s side, particularly because its strictly anti-government radicalism has been embraced by today’s mainstream Republican Party and the 2012 GOP presidential candidates. But the Tea Party isn’t a person, either.
One can’t make an enemy out of a leaderless group of astroturfers, especially when the main appeal of the “movement” is that it gives anti-government fanatics permission to bark racial slurs, construct misspelled anti-Obama protest signs and show up to rallies dressed in goofy outfits – Uncle Sam suits, Native American headdresses, 18th-century Paul Revere garb (sans the “bells and whistles”) and, sometimes, for whatever reason, Captain America costumes.
When grandma makes a racially inappropriate comment, you don’t chastise her and call her a bigot. You shrug it off, ignore her and change the subject. Out of respect for grandma, that is exactly how Obama has dealt with the Tea Party. But to a fault. Neither Obama nor Democrats nor progressives have mounted a counterattack.
Tea Party members targeted Obama as Public Enemy No. 1 even before Rick Santelli coined the term “Tea Party.” Filibuster-happy and Tea Party-fearing Republicans in Congress have since adopted the anti-constitutionalist language of the far right as a justification for thwarting the president’s agenda. Not only have they tried to repeal every major initiative he’s signed, but they’ve threatened to shut down the government and force America into default when their exact demands aren’t met.
Disgruntled progressives who confused “Change We Can Believe In” for a neoliberal mandate have accused the president of being a sellout, a “progressive in name only,” a traitor and a closeted conservative.
The weight of America’s political, economic and social problems has understandably fallen on Obama’s shoulder’s alone. He is the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, and therefore the common, everyday face of the enemy not only for the 58 million Americans who preferred a McCain-Palin White House, but also for the moderate Americans who can’t escape the daily beatings Obama takes at the hands of Tea Party-favored presidential candidates,Tea Party-indebted Congress members and Tea Party-obsessed media.
He has been called a socialist, a communist, a fascist, a “dick,” a racist, a foreign-born Manchurian candidate and an anti-Christ. Artists have depicted him as The Joker, Hitler, Stalin, an ape, and a voodoo doll.
Most recently, the Republican presidential candidates have met on stage for a series of nationally televised debates with one goal in mind: ousting Obama from the White House. While much media attention has been directed at the domestic policy differences between Perry and Romney and the foreign policy battles between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, the common threat throughout each debate has been the consistency with which the individual candidates refocus their attacks away from each other and toward the incumbent. Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann’s repeated call to make Obama a “One! Term! President!” pretty well sums up the sentiments of the entire GOP field.
It is eight against one, and while the one has been stuck in unpopular battles with Congress over budget cuts and deficit negotiations, the eight have been traversing the country telling community after community, TV audience after TV audience, newspaper after newspaper and radio host after radio host just how dismal this country has become because of President Obama.
That’s all going to change.
Less than a year from now, Republicans voters across the country will have cast their ballots and decided the party’s next presidential nominee, and he (or, possibly but very unlikely, she) will quickly bear the burden of representing all that the Teapublican Party stands for. He (or…Bachmann) will be tasked with the seemingly impossible goal of turning a fringe movement into a majority movement.
By then, Obama will be in permanent campaign mode, a terrifying prospect for any Republican challenger given the expectations that the incumbent – who was called a “campaign genius,” a “behemoth,” and a “grassroots machine” in 2008 – will raise at least $1 billion in the 2012 election cycle. He will not share the stage with eight candidates, but with a single challenger who will have to explain his past legislative records and offer solutions to the current economic mess.
Obama will finally have an “Other,” a challenger with a face, a record and a vision for America that will have to resonate far beyond the Tea Party demographic.
The staunch idealists of the far left who believe Obama is a “progressives in name only” may be loathe to “abandon their principles” and choose the lesser of two evils, but soon they will be awakened to just how vast the gap is between their bipartisan, pragmatic incumbent and the partisan ideologue chosen as the GOP’s presidential nominee.
One made universal health care law; the other (no matter which Republican wins) has vowed to repeal it. One fought for equal pay legislation for women, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the DREAM Act, the Zadroga 9/11 first responders health care bill and a generation’s worth of other progressive initiatives; the other wants to cut taxes on millionaires and corporations, and supports privatizing Social Security and voucherizing Medicare. One wants to invest in the nation’s future – infrastructure, education, green technology and innovation – and make America competitive on the international level; the other believes a broke and helpless government is the best government, and that federal assistance creates dependency rather than opportunity.
Woodrow Wilson once said, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” Obama is trying. The problem to date has been the vast number of enemies he’s created by trying to do exactly what he was elected to do in 2008: change Washington. By September of 2012, the American people will have a face, an agenda and a vision for America to compare and contrast with Obama’s, and the progressives who thought change wasn’t coming fast enough will be given a clear choice: Progress that is slow, or a return to the status quo.
– originally published at MuddyPolitics.com
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Brian Carter
The Flylooper
norman kelley
Frank Apisa
Farleftside
Ryan Ebersole
Salon.com
Comments
rated with love and humor
D
…EXCEPT the part that suggests Obama will be victorious in 2012.
Obama will lose—and he will lose big. The Republicans will increase their numbers in the House and will gain in the Senate, with control of the Senate not beyond the realm of possibility.
The next several vacancies in the Supreme Court will be of liberal leaning justices…and a Republican president who will have been vetted and approved by the tea party will replace them.
I thank you for your comments here...and I love the way you said them. But the part that has Obama as a winner in 2012 is way off base.
You watch, MP…you'll see.
Me? I'd laugh if he called Rush Limbaugh a blowhole addicted to hillbilly heroin.
Well, you may be correct. All he needs is an enemy. . . . . a focus . . . . a well-defined target . . . . .
However, doesn't this work as well for the opposing nominee(s)? Once they rise above debating their own, don't they get the privilege of exclusively focusing in on our President . . . and his record . . . . . and his promise of "Hope and Change" . . . . . and . . . . whatever?
Are you thinking that Obama will gain some advantage when he knows whom he will meet at high noon; and his opponent(s) can aim at him alone?
Or, perhaps you weren't . . . . errrrrrrrrr, ahhhhhhhhhhh, never mind . . . .
He's "invest in the nation’s future" with green jobs? Why did he invest in Solyndra when he was told by more than one adviser that it was a bad investment -- could he have hit the green industry harder?! How about the tar sands pipeline he's going to let come through?
" . . . made Universal health care a law"-- its too bad that's completely false. Instead, Obama through single-payer from the start and went spineless on the public option.
The DREAM Act hasn't passed yet.
What *has* he done? Extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, kept Guantanamo Bay open, escalated and expanded war, and continued the Patriot Act by wiretapping Americans.
Sure, there was a minor victory with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, but we've paid far too high a price in the lives of our soldiers and the future of our country.
I said essentially that when I wrote this: "Less than a year from now, Republicans voters across the country will have cast their ballots and decided the party’s next presidential nominee, and he (or, possibly but very unlikely, she) will quickly bear the burden of representing all that the Teapublican Party stands for. He (or…Bachmann) will be tasked with the seemingly impossible goal of turning a fringe movement into a majority movement."
As much as Democrat shills like you might try to scare readers and lie about the audacious, sunshine disinfectant we were sold in 2008, we know better: Obama says what he needs to say in order to appear progressive when it suits him.
His policies are only different from his predecessor in that they are *further* to the right, so don't give me this "Republicans-are-worse crap," because it just ain't so.
except that its still just a sophisticated version of TweedleDum vs TweedleDee. dude, you're highly educated, maybe you could write a post on your views of a 3rd party. any party. that stands for whatever! just please, a 3rd party.
I guess americans can just *barely* keep two opposite thoughts in their head at the same time.
I think you wrote a wonderful and hopeful post. But, alas, I agree with most of the comments. Obama will lose the election.
Most of the things you mention he didn't pass yet and the health care bill is pretty bad. When he left single payer in the oval office he lost a lot of people. His compromising with himself for weeks before meeting with Republicans and then compromising even more on every bill he wanted, he left me with no one to vote for too.
I would like to ask you to look at my post, The only good medicine is Free medicine. I could hvae added that the only good health care plan is a free health care plan.
I do want O to win, but...
One year from now, with Repros refusing to pass this Jobs Legislation, or pay for it- all done to topple O for a one term presidency.
I do not want to see that, but MSNBC is not as catchy or catty as Foxy and we lose because media saturation for getting rid of President O. (He had three years...or so the whine goes.)
I want you to be right. I want 1 billion to cream O's competition, but I see the economy like Carter's hostages (whats better is due to the president, but noone cares if he leaves).
I do. I do. Lordy, I do!
Rated.
This is a country that re-elected a President (probably fraudulently) who took them to war underfalse pretenses--and KNEW IT AT THE TIME THEY RE-ELECTED HIM.
Thus, you cannot under any circumstances, polls, hunches, bets and entreaties to a just God underestimate what they are capable of. Republicans are loyal, Democrats and faux liberals eat their young. If you can draw any conclusion from the last fifty years about the electorate in this country--that's it.
The dumb bastards haven't got a clue what's in their best interests until the revolution breaks out and then they won't be able to figure out what side they're on either.
Irrespective of the disagreement or your overall accuracy, I thought that point alone was well worth adding to my collective repertoire of analysis when it comes to political outcomes.
-r-