Over at Time-Warner owned CNN, anchor Ali Velshi believes the election is already over:
VELSHI: Joining me now from Washington is, CNN’s chief national correspondent John King. John, I have a thesis I want to run by you. Mitt Romney has already lost the election because of this.
Voters in Ohio, auto workers and union members are alienated by his stance on the bailout. You know, John, because you spend a lot of time in Ohio like I have. It is GM country in large part.
They will hand that state to President Obama and without Ohio, probably Romney doesn’t get to the White House. What do you think?
In February of 2010, Velshi was the CNN anchor who presented on-air a cake to the Obama administration, to celebrate the first anniversary of the Obama “stimulus” program, saying, “Happy birthday, dear stimulus. Our producer Ben Tinker (ph) baked this cake. It is a stimulus happy birthday — first birthday cake, which is also a pie chart. It is the birthday of the stimulus.” (See photo below.) So as even as CNN may be the last news network whose PR attempts to feign objectivity, it seems safe to say we know Velshi’s already picked sides in 2012. Similarly, as Noel Sheppard writes today at Newsbusters, “CNN’s Don Lemon Compares Mitt Romney to 60s Segregationist George Wallace,” for having the same views on gay marriage that Obama publicly professed to having until this past week.
In a new post titled “Newsweek’s Cover & Why Obama Turned Gay for Pay–He Knows He’s Being Fired,” Tammy Bruce also believes the election is over; but comes to an entirely opposite conclusion than Velshi:
The following revelation come from a dinner conversation at a fancy restaurant last night (she’s a 1percenter, I’m proudly Friends with 1percenters ;) In the midst of some complaining about Obama, the conversation naturally turned to him becoming Gay for Pay, as phrase normally used for heterosexual young male hustlers who are willing to sleep with men if the price is right. Obama’s sudden support for gay marriage, and the fundraising-mania surrounding his confession, makes the phrase unfortunately apt for the Preezy of the United Steezy.
That said, we then wondered why Obama would really do it. We know he doesn’t give a damn about the issue, and oh sure, he’ll get a bit more cash from the left, but it really won’t even make a dent in what he wants to fund-raise or plans on spending. None of the swing-states at risk during the election were hanging by a thread on this issue (to say the least), and in fact this will likely hurt him in at least North Carolina and Virginia.
Then it dawned on me–Obama’s internal polls must show him losing to Romney, and handily. The latest Rasmussen certainly show the Golfer-in-Chief in trouble and behind the GOP nom. He must realize it’s over and is now simply looking to establish his “legacy,” while reinforcing leftist relationships he desperately wants to keep–like with Hollywood–after we kick his ass to the curb. For an obsessed, cynical and narcissistic president like Obama, he only makes moves that serve his agenda one way or another–and the only upside to this exists out of the White House. Liberal gays will vote for him anyway, and 1 in 6 of his top bundlers have already raised $500,000+ for him. I believe he’s frantic to not have his legacy be the truth–one of disaster brought by narcissism and incompetence, he hopes this sort of story, covers like Newsweek, will be the thing that allows him to walk away at least within his liberal/leftist base as not a complete pariah.
Even more telling–throughout this conversation in the table next to us were a couple of gay men. When I declared my realization that Obama knew he was out, it was, well, a little louder than I would have liked. The two fellows next to us looked over, and as I expected some snarky remark back, they both just looked depressed and then down at their very French appetizers. They knew, too, that they were being played by Obama and that as gays we were all now being saddled with a gigantic “gay friendly” failure of a Preezy.
Mickey Kaus reaches a somewhat similar conclusion; he ponders if Obama is “Thinking two steps ahead?”
If Barack Obama loses the 2012 election, do you think he’s going to quit elective politics, serve on a series of corporate and foundation boards, write a best-selling children’s book on being a Dad and a Lugaresque memoir describing how Fox News and Peter Orszag betrayed him? I don’t. I think he’s going to run again, Grover Cleveland style. That casts possible additional (distant) light on today’s endorsement of same-sex marriage: It may or may not help Obama in 2012. But it would much more reliably likely help him in 2016, when public opinion can be expected to have shifted further in favor of this social innovation. It would certainly help him in the Democratic primaries. ….
It certainly seems plausible (and as Kaus goes on to add, he’s not suggesting that Obama’s throwing in the towel this year, unlike Bruce’s theory). At least Bill Clinton seemed to enjoy governing — running for office is the only thing Obama seems qualified to do — but first we have to get through the campaign he’s running now. So who’s right? CNN’s cake-proffering palace guard anchor or Tammy Bruce? We’ll know in the coming weeks and months.
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