Barack Obama is on a roll right now with wins in state after state, Tuesday after Tuesday. He's enjoying the largesse of a media horde that cannot find it in themselves to hit the man hard on substantive issues where he has been vague at best. He's even been called the "Liberal Ronald Reagan" because of his message of hope and eloquent delivery.
Is he the inevitable candidate and if so, is the inevitable next President? In the minds of many in the GOP, that answer is yes.
Take a few seconds to review the data: the Dems are pulling in disparate groups of people such as disaffected "Reagan Democrats," left-leaning former Clinton partisans and the hard left as embodied by the Daily Kos crowd. The guy is an icon, a product that appeals to white men, liberal women of all colors and the hardest to convince constituency, the black vote as a whole who now see a real chance for one of their own to sit in the Oval Office.
Not only is Obama capturing various groups, he's bringing in huge amounts of voters. He's tapped into the young, "vote or die" crowd who couldn't have bothered to vote for a stiff like Kerry despite the constant bombardment to do so by Sean "Puffy Combs and others on MTV. Don't just look at the percentages, look at the total amount of voters and what you'll see will be shocking when juxtaposed with the GOP. Click the link and see that Dems outnumber the GOP nearly 2 to 1. The Dems are energized as they haven't been since 1992.
Mona Charen offers some insight:
It says a great deal about a liberal Democrat that he does not outrage conservative Republicans. To mention the Clintons, Howard Dean, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry to this crowd is to inflict hypertension. But I, for one, can sit through an entire speech by Barack Obama without flinching. I can admire his poise, his fluid delivery, and his self-confident, dignified presence.I agree with her to an extent, the GOP and Conservatives look at this guy in stunned amazement. We were gearing up for the devil Hillary and we got the Messiah instead. We were thrown a six-to-twelve curveball that drops off the edge of the table while our collective knees buckle. Believe me, Hillary knows just how hard that breaking ball is to hit as she's constantly whiffing.
Part of the reason Obama doesn't send his political adversaries up the wall is that he employs the language of unity and patriotism. He is clearly the most gifted speaker to grace American politics since Ronald Reagan. And as with Reagan, there is a basic decency to Obama that blunts dislike.
Again I ask the question: is the GOP accepting the inevitable? Are we preparing ourselves for four years of an Obama presidency? I sense that indeed we are. Granted, the gloves haven't come off as yet but we are stuck with a candidate none of us really wanted or can get fired up about. They have a guy riding a tsunami of good will and the promise of change and hope. In the late 70's we had malaise and in walked Reagan, this year we have an unpopular war and the onset of a recession and now Obama stands before us and people not only like him but will convince others to like him as well. They'll drive in a snowstorm to see him speak and be part of something that only happens every few decades.
Inevitable? Maybe not but we are seeing something that no amount of debate or punditry can stop. We are seeing history play out with John McCain looking like a hapless Walter Mondale or Jimmy Carter.
Update: Hot Air and Glenn Reynolds linked. Happy Friday and thanks to both.
Posts
6 comments:
I think the reason for Obama's popularity is simply that a critical mass of people are exhausted by the last 16 years of hyper-partisanship, exhausted hearing people scream at each other or throw meaningless talking points at each other on television instead of honestly debating differences. People are exhausted by a political system they increasingly feel is dominated by institutional money and influence and rigged against the individual citizen as much as Wall Street is increasingly rigged against the individual investor.
And yes, most of these people know in the back of their mind the odds of Obama ultimately being corrupted by the same machine are pretty high. But enough Americans remain optimists who look at the choices and say "I know for sure Clinton and McCain are lying through their teeth to get power. Obama may or may not be, and I'
m willing to take a chance he's not".
Obama is all style, absolutely no substance save a SHORT voting record of unabashed liberalism and statism.
At least Reagan was a governor and had decades of relevant political experience for the job. He has substance to back up the inspiring rhetoric. Obama? Not so much.
He's also managed in a short period of time to render the word "change" meaningless by using if to fill in every obvious hole in his actual record. He's depending on his ability to WOW the audience without actually telling them anything.
Hopefully, the GOP will make sure voters know they're getting what amounts to little more than your run-of-the-mill socialist with their vote for Obama.
If they don't, they're out of power for another generation, and the Democrats will make sure to redraw districting lines to make sure the GOP never gets into power again.
Way to go, GOP!
a critical mass of people are exhausted by the last 16 years of hyper-partisanship, exhausted hearing people scream at each other or throw meaningless talking points at each other on television instead of honestly debating differences.
Uh, yeah, and the answer to hyperpartisanship must be to elect a non-partisan uniter, like the guy who is the most liberal Senator. That's the ticket!
Thus far the Obama campaign has been the exact opposite of "honest debate". It has been truly meaningless - nothing but gassy feelgood nonsense about Hope and Change.
But yeah, that aside, we probably are going to be stuck with the guy.
It's possible that the differences in the voter total numbers may have more to do with the competitiveness of the different races. For instance, I live in Illinois and decided to vote in the Democratic primary instead of the Republican primary on Super Tuesday, because I was convinced that John McCain had the nomination locked up and so I voted in the Democratic Primary, but I doubt I'd actually vote for the candidate I voted for in the Democratic primary. As the primaries drone on the Republican totals should drop some more, because McCain is becoming more and more assured of the nomination. Would you have braved an ice storm in Virginia or Maryland to vote for the candidate that's going to win anyways?
There are 300 million people in the country. A few thousand college kids cheering at an Obama rally means nothing.
The Republicans will crush the Obama campaign. They will do it with facts and with fear. Obama the Messiah will become Hugo Chavez the peacenik drug dealer who divides his time between the black power church and the mosque. He will be seen as slightly to the right of Lenin.
Trust me, Barack Hussein Obama is not inevitable. In fact, McCain is likely to win in a blowout. Clinton would be a 50/50 hard-fought election. Not Obama.
No, we're just rejecting McCain.
Hillary is evil, and has the support staff to really screw up the country. So if she's the Dem nominee, I will (very reluctantly) vote for McCain.
Obama is a lightweight unreconstructed leftie. A blathering buffoon who babbles about "change", because if he told people what he actually wanted to do, they wouldn't vote for him.
Which means that if he's elected, he will have no mandate, no ability to force his nutcase ideas on the country. Because he won't have run on anything.
IOW, he will show up the fundamental fraud of the Democrat Party, w/o actually being able to ruin it. A perfect candidate, given that his apparent GOP opponent is an ass who is also a desperate MSM suck-up, and therefore likely to do a lot of damage to both the country and the Republican Party.
P.S. It sure would be nice if the Google/Blogger login actually let you log in with a Blogger ID.
Post a Comment