Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 11:33:33 PM
It's really not very complicated. Look at the number of Democrats deciding not to run this year, for "personal reasons". Bart Stupak is only the most recent prominent one.
Poor Bart held out like a good poker player, keeping his pro-life, blue dog coalition in the center of the poker table for weeks. He got rolled by the White House, parlaying the interesting concept that an Executive order could somehow countermand Congressional law. Yeah, that'll survive a legal challenge. Maybe he wanted to vote for the health care package all along. At any rate, when he went home to Michigan, his constituents let him have it- not so much for voting for it, but for spending his whole year on it when unemployment there is over 14%.
That's what happens when you ignore the will of the people. I think Obama realized early on that he could not turn the American supertanker left that quickly, and he seems to be settling for tying the wheel hard over and knotting it up so his successors can't turn it back.
Many moons ago, someone asked Jacob Javits why he didn't vote for the death penalty, when so many of his constituents wanted it. His reply was quite intelligent: "I am a Senator. I am not a vote comptometer". In a representative republic, he may be right. His problem was, three years later, he was no longer a Senator.
It took the media almost a year to get wind of the ungodly number of royally pi**ed off people hanging around in the center of the country at present, where the national news feeds only show sporadically. I can tell they know now, because they take pains to deride the stupid rubes with the flags in each hand, when they aren't making fun of them.
Obama has been warned that another 1994 is coming, maybe worse. He is convinced that it won't be that bad, because of his affability and charm with the swing voters.
Right. Every body has their rose colored glasses. Bob Novak's dead-on district by district prognostications went awry in 2006, when he predicted an even split between parties in both houses of Congress. You could read the hopefulness in his statements. I smelled worse that summer, and it was frustrating not to be able to do anything about it.
So the White House will put on a hopeful face, raise money and make speeches in the vulnerable districts. And come November, they will get their butts caned in a way that will stupify the uninitiated.
That's what happens when you govern like that, and spend our money the way you are. There will be hell to pay, and our used car salesman President can't stop it. Maybe nobody can.