Too late for Obama to turn it around?

[BlueStateSaint]

Mods, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the Politics forum.  If yuou feel the need to move it, please do . . .

Camille Paglia tends to just let fly and PC be damned.  I respect that.

Too late for Obama to turn it around?

Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs -- but the GOP is led by losers

By Camille Paglia


Sept. 9, 2009 | What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Pretty good--especially the last sentence of the third paragraph.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/

[JohnnyReb]

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

Because democrats are used to dealing with MOONBATS.....they bitch and whine all the time and it means nothing.....democrat politicians pay them no mind.

[Chris_]

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

Because democrats are used to dealing with MOONBATS.....they bitch and whine all the time and it means nothing.....democrat politicians pay them no mind.

More importantly, democRat politicians are old hands at staging public opinion, using bought and paid for kooks and conspirators.  It is such a mainstay, bread-and-butter tactic for them, that it is inconceivable in their corrupt little minds that their opposition isn't doing the same thing.

[DixieBelle]

Good! Wonder how long before they throw her under the bus...

money quote - And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

[Chris_]

Damn....from a committed leftist.....that is going to leave a mark.......

doc

[Hawkgirl]

Finally....the sheeple lost a sheep..

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

Maybe they did know and simply resented the fact the proles were getting unruly and not minding their betters.


BTW - I posted this in the Poli forum this AM.

[AllosaursRus]

Finally....the sheeple lost a sheep..

Oh, I think they lost a whole FLOCK!

I'd venture to say most independants have lost faith in the Messiah due to the fact the moron makes a speech telling Ohioans the stimulus is working. After all we're only losing 600,000 jobs a month instead of 700,000. What a RELIEF! Not only that, he is taking credit for the fact that he has brought us back from the brink, the stimulus was passed without the usual PORK (he signed the damned thing! Didn't he even understand there were close to 1,000 pieces of pork in it?), and if he had not moved when he did we would be in a depression! Hey moron, you're printing money faster than you can ****ing SPEND IT! Even China is telling you to back off because you're likely to ruin the global economy at the rate you're going!

What kind of a moron is this guy? He can't seriously believe the shit he is spouting, can he?

I knew he had no business in the Oval Office but DAMN!!!!!!!!!! This is getting to the point, he might really be the ANTI-CHRIST!