Instapundit comments on a link to an article:
EVEN TO HIS SUPPORTERS: Weeks Before the Election, Obama Remains an Enigma.
I think that is very true. I don’t see a lot of Obama supporters who know much about his voting record or can address any of the questions raised about his radical and corrupt associations.
I’ve come to the conclusion they simply do not care one way or the other. Obama could be a drug lord or a stuffed duck and they would still support him.
I think that politics on the Left has become a social process, i.e., a means of group identification and self-validation. Leftists care less about the triumph of ideas and far more about the triumph of a group of people with which they ego-identify. They need their ego-identity candidate to win so that they can feel good about themselves. The character and policies of the actual candidate does not matter.
Obama serves merely as a symbol of a group aspirational identity. Only the symbol matters, not the actual individual human being. Because of this, leftists do not care if Obama the man has been through a vigorous vetting and testing that will expose any weaknesses before those weaknesses do damage to the leftist cause or the nation as a whole.
I predict an Obama presidency will be a repeat of the first two years of the Clinton presidency. Clinton too rode into office on a wave of uncritical press support, only to see his credibility implode when his corruption and farther-left-than-advertised agenda became clear. If Obama wins office many who supported him will be shocked to find out that he advocates policies from the leftmost 10% of the American spectrum. His radical friends and appointments, as well as his amateurism will become an ongoing source of embarrassment.
The leftist “brand” in America will suffer greatly and leftists will (just as they did with Clinton) wonder how they let such a mistake into office. They will not learn that uncritical, emotion-driven fantasies do not help people make wise political choices.
Yes, but they still talk about “Clinton years of prosperity”. I’ve read an opinion that like Clinton came to power when the economy started to get on the rise, same will happen with Democratic candidate this time: we’ll survive the bottom of the market just in time for the elections, and then while the economy picks up itself the Left will take the credit
There is a problem with conventional standards for political discussion. Somehow, “we” decided that the past was old stuff. We don’t need the past, we need new ideas for the future. The past didn’t work, or we would be happy now.
This allows Obama and most other politicians to say that their history doesn’t mean anything. They are here to replace history with new stuff. They are visionary thinkers of the future.
The truth is that the past is almost all that really matters. Cocktail napkin plans for reforming “society” have never worked, and have created misery. The current financial crisis is based in discarding the “white banker” standards of past lending, in exchange for “social justice lending” of the future.
The past shows what has worked and failed, in reality rather than on paper. New policies for the future must respect what has been learned. New politicians tell us what they have done that improved life (not just their dreams), if we want a good chance for success.
See also http://easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/10/tell-me-about-past.html
> I predict an Obama presidency will be a repeat of the first two years of the Clinton presidency.
Wrong “c” presidency. “Carter”, not “Clinton”. And it’ll match or “better”(worsen) all four gruelling years.
Obama is not the man to rebuild the economy.
He remains committed to idiotic expenditures on things the markets won’t support — like wind, solar, and biofuels. He has openly called to reduce US energy generation by 15%. He believes strongly in socialist economic theories.
Does that SOUND like someone who is going to do ANYTHING but tank an already soft economy?
I predict that an Obama election will guarantee a further substantial reduction in the market, which presumably (hopefully) will have stabilized at that point.
This proposition seems a lock, the market does not do well after Dem wins. The only thing which might save a tanking is a vote-ALL-the-bastards out Congressional result that probably favors the GOP.
Another Carter wouldn’t be so bad — he was widely perceived as a failure and swept away after a single term. I fear that we have a perfect storm for another FDR — a stealth leftist coming into office in an economic crisis under a Democratic congress with a perceived mandate for sweeping change. That kind of damage can take generations to undo.
I completely agree that group identity plays a larger role than reflective ideology in contemporary politics. What should be a diffuse envelope of positions in a huge multi-dimensional state space has been compacted into two mutually antagonistic tribes on a single left-right axis. The right is guilty in this too, but the left has really taken it to extremes in this cycle.
> What should be a diffuse envelope of positions in a huge multi-dimensional state space has been compacted into two mutually antagonistic tribes on a single left-right axis. The right is guilty in this too, but the left has really taken it to extremes in this cycle.
I fully concur. One of the reasons I beg the question of whether the differences can be resolved short of (at least temporary) dissolution of the nation.
One reason the Left is so accommodating to Islam is that they are quickly morphing into the same sort of absolutist all-or-nothing kind of diktat that Islam is. Bush may well say you are with us or your are against us — but the way he means it is far, far more benign than the way the Left approaches differences with the Right. When Bush, or the Right, says something like that, it’s with a much more sorrow-than-anger attitude. With the left, it’s all anger — How DARE you doubt me? How DARE you disagree with me! I’ll kill you!
That’s not an attitude with which you can compromise. Not in Islam, and not in the Left.
And if the Left and Right cannot find a compromise with one another, what then?
Politics is all about accommodating. It’s all about words instead of fighting, of finding a solution between your differences which may not satisfy either side, but which both can live with. And if one side absolutely will not work towards such a mutually dissatisfactory goal?
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
– R. Buckminster Fuller –
Fletcher Platt, in his Short History of the Civil War, quotes Sec. of War Stanton’s comment on the appointment of Gen. Rosecrans, and it might be appropriate here also: “Well, you have made your choice of idiots. Now you may expect the news of a terrible disaster.”
Pratt, not Platt. Sorry.