Posted by
Bill Crawford on Friday, August 07, 2009 1:44:44 PM
Last September, after Sarah Palin come on the scene and before Lehman Brothers went bust, the McCain ticket had taken a lead and was holding it. Not only that, the Obama ticket was still slowly bleeding independents.
It was the only time during the campaign that Obama and his money advantage were challenged. His reaction was illustrative: he started telling his supporters to "get in their faces". It was the Chicago street politico going back to his roots.
Now the White House is facing a slew of Congressmen and Senators going back to hostile town hall meetings. What is their playbook? Axelrod to Senators leaving for home: "If they punch, we will punch back twice as hard".
They are convinced this is all a staged rebellion, a la Florida recount in 2000. It can't be that seniors are actually sticking it to the AARP, and workers can't possibly be this unhappy. It must be the Republicans busing people in.
So what is their answer? Get the unions together and bus some more in. And if it turns into the '68 Democratic convention, like the town hall meeting in Tampa last weekend, so be it.
This is how Obama trained the ACORN workers to act. This is the Chicago street thug in action. You don't like our plan? Go ahead and protest, but we own the street. If we can't find enough Teamsters to shut you up, we'll drag out the public service unions. Or the teachers.
This is how they behave in Chicago. Is this what we want?