Posted by
Bill Crawford on Friday, July 01, 2011 7:07:46 PM
There wasn’t anything new here. It ostensibly was about the debt ceiling negotiations.
But it degraded pretty quickly, and showed where the President is starting to realize where he is. That is to say, between the
economy and a very hard place.
Unemployment is persisting at 9%. The argument between the media economists bounces between the economy stayng where it is or going into a “double dip”- another couple of quarters of zero or negative growth.
The Fed has run out of bullets with interest rate manipulation. The latest round of bond purchases (Quantitative Easing) ended at Noon today. QE2 did a good job weakening the dollar and putting a boost into the stock market, but it was a blunt instrument, and it also fed the commodities markets, which added at least twenty five cents a gallon to your gas purchases. If you are a union household with a full pension in the offing, you made out better. If you are not, and trying to eke out your own retirement, you didn’t.
Obama’s fallback on all this is to get on the pulpit and talk about all he has done, and all the unappreciating masses will get in line and party like it’s 2008.
This is a man who is still convinced that his open mouth heals all wounds. He is the one who remarked that 2010 would not be another Clintonian Republican rout, because this time, “the Democrats have me”.
So there he was, after his vacations, golf weekends and fundraisers, lecturing the Republicans on leadership. Then he took after the evil hordes lurking about- “millionaires and billionaires”. “Hedge fund managers”. “Oil company executives”. “Corporate jet owners”. That is the union base talking: the money to solve the government crisis is out there, we just need to get up the gumtion to get together and take it!’’
And the pool of people out there listening to this drivel is shrinking, as evidenced by his polls taking roost in the mid to low 40’s. Look what happened to Busgh in 2006- his numbers, driven by immigration, federal spending ans war issues slipped into the 30’s and cleared a path for Speaker Pelosi.
What you are starting to see is panic mode. He set some hefty expectations for himself with his mouth a few years ago, and his base is starting to see his limitations.
They will still vote for him next year, as if they would suddenly see a kinship with the likes of Romney, Perry or Bachmann. But if he wants to take the borderline states that carried him over the top in 2008, he will need that extra 10% to do the grunt work and carry the independent vote into victory. There are six or seven states that he barely carried then, including North Carolina- where they are holding their convention.
And when the commentators on MSNBC miss an open mike and get caught out there likening you to the subject of a Viagra commercial, you have some serious problems.