For those that read this blog regularly, it is known I am not an Obama supporter in any way, shape or form. I despise his policies, I disagree with his agenda, I consider him nothing more than a socialist that has encouraged the attempts to socialize this great country.
With that said, I read a piece this morning from an Obama supporter, part of the fallout from the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts, from Paul Krugman, who was lamenting on an interview Barack Obama had with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, where Obama said "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of, to this bill. Now I think there’s some things in there that people don’t like and legitimately don’t like."
Krugman's response?
In short, “Run away, run away”!
Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.
Emphasis mine.
The part I put in bold kept running around in my head while I was writing another piece.
Obama die hard supporters are for Obamacare in all it's former glory, which included government run healthcare, paying for illegals to be treated with American's tax dollars, allowing federal fund to be used for abortions...etc....
Well, great to say you voted for a man you believed would fight for what you believe in, but to blame Obama for not fighting hard enough when the plurality of Americans are opposed to what you believe in, is simply unrealistic.
To expect Obama to change the way Washington works with politicians such as Pelosi and Reid breaking every promise made on their end and Obama's, and then to blame Obama for things they did.... is living in a fantasy world.
Now, with that said, Obama did screw up and badly. He pushed Obamacare, he kept setting arbitrary time lines to get it passed before the people of American even had time to read through it, hell even some of the politicians who voted for it didn't have time to read the whole monstrosity of the bills being pushed. Obama used his bully pulpit to push for it, made countless speeches about how it needed to be done NOW.
Obama shares the blame no doubt, but not for the reason Krugman and his other supporters seem to want to cast that blame.
Another example of a severely disappointed Obama supporter is Mort Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News, who wrote a very emotional piece titled "He's Done Everything Wrong."
I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.
He talks about Obama misjudging the character of the country. He points out that with Obamacare, people were worried about costs, not expansion of coverage and he specific points out the corruption in Washington and how it has gotten worse, not better since Obama took office.
In the campaign, he 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 speaks of how Obama is seen on foreign policy, he is liked but not respected.
.......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.
He concludes:
I can’t predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won’t be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic.
Which brings me another piece I read this morning (not from an Obama supporter but the facts laid out shows the big picture here), explaining buyer's remorse.
Written by Frank Lutz, who points out a few political facts:
Polling done over the past 30 days paints a very clear picture of a president who has fallen short of expectations:
• Only 39 percent of the country would vote to re-elect Obama, according to a National Journal poll, while 50 percent would "definitely" or "probably" vote for someone else. This is significant. George W. Bush is the only candidate in modern times to win re-election with less than half of the country expressing a desire to re-elect him.
• According to Gallup, Obama has suffered the greatest fall in approval of any elected president since the company started ongoing tracking during the Eisenhower administration. Obama came into office with the approval of two out of every three voters (67 percent) but ended his first year with just half the electorate (50 percent) offering a positive evaluation of his performance. Only the unelected Gerald Ford fared worse in the court of public opinion.
• It's not just the Obama agenda that is under attack. It is his philosophy that has America balking. For example, Americans are increasingly returning to the conservative ideology they held before the perceived failures of the Bush administration crushed conservative self-identification levels. According to Gallup, fully 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative, compared with just 21 percent who call themselves liberal.
• And finally, while the Republican brand has barely moved since its electoral disasters of 2006 and 2008 and remains unpopular, Democratic popularity has collapsed as well. Most surveys now have the GOP even or even slightly ahead in the generic congressional ballot, and Americans now see the Republicans to be as good if not better in handling the economy.
Concluding with:
But after all the polling and focus groups have concluded and all the conflicting opinions recorded, in the end it is the American people who rightfully have the last word. In no less than three states that voted for Obama just one year ago (New Jersey, Virginia and yesterday in Massachusetts), voters replaced their Democratic representatives with Republicans.
That says more than any pollster ever could.
While Obama has earned his share of the blame, the November elections will show that it isn't all his fault, the Democratic politicians such as Pelosi and Reid, have done their fair share to turn the goodwill of 2008 for them, totally against them all.
Obama is not up for reelection until 2012, there is nothing we can do about him right now, but many House and Senate democrats are up for reelection in 2010, those are where the public's focus should be. Kicking the bums out, changing the dynamic in the House and the Senate. Stopping the Democrat's ability in the House to simply jam through everything on Obama's agenda with no bipartisan support.
In 2012... then we go after Obama and kick him out of the White House. By then, his own supporters, such as Krugman and Zuckerman, may just help us do it.
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