‘The Evanescence of Majorities’
In his latest Best of the Web column, James Taranto writes:
Here’s a note of caution for President Obama and the Democrats: “Begin with the facts: A 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate.” Surprisingly enough, the source of this warning is E.J. Dionne, the Washington Post’s perennial liberal triumphalist.
It gets less surprising when you realize he wrote that in 2004: “Two nearly equal sides are engaged today, as they were on Tuesday, in a long-term struggle to make inroads into the other’s patch. . . . On Wednesday [George W.] Bush told those who voted against him: ‘I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.’ Mr. President, I truly hope you realize how much work you have to do.”
You won’t be surprised to learn that Dionne is taking the opposite tack today: “Now Obama will have the strongest argument a politician can offer. Repeatedly, he asked the voters to settle Washington’s squabbles in his favor. On Tuesday, they did. And so a president who took office four years ago on a wave of emotion may now have behind him something more valuable and durable: a majority that thought hard about his stewardship and decided to let him finish the job he had begun.”
But of course. Any time a Democrat wins the White House, he has a “mandate” from the MSM — even if he’s won over less than a majority of the voters.
EJ Dionne was fond of saying in article and on talk shows in 2008 about President elect Obama, He can go small and not risk being clobbered in 2010 & 2012,..or he can be bold and go big and risk being a one term President. He said he is going to cautiously encourage Obama to go big, which meant bulldoze the opposition and do Obamacare & Keynsianism and hope it works. His policies did not work and Dionne has essentially admitted this recently, but what is left is the Bulldozer. In essence what Dionne said yesterday was, its not important whether Obama’s policies worked, its important that there is an appearance that they do, or that people believe that they do,…what is important is the bulldozer of raw power. This is the post modern simulcra of a “dictablanda”,… a tyrant with no rational purpose to the governed.
Dionne is from Chicago and knew Obama well before he was a Senator and he once said of Obama and his rent-a-brain handler David Axelrod, Obama is not like Clinton’s third way or middle of the road, he occupies both sides of all issues and lets the talkers work out the meaning of his position. This was a conscious strategy of lying constructed by Axelrod that he believed could be shielded from harm by the media and Obama’s “Unique narrative”, meaning race. This explains why in the second debate, Obama feigned outrage at a Benghazi accusation that Romney never even made. This was a 911 call for help to the media to save him. This explains why Obama so often appeared to be shaming the media for not running to save him. Its a shield of his forked tongue strategy.
Boy does that explain what we just experienced. Negative campaigning has one purpose, suppress the vote of the opposition. Demoralize the other guys. Obama lost 18% of his voters and Romney lost 4% of McCain’s, but that 4%, the 3 million that stayed home and said WTF was the result of the Stephanie Cutters and the “Talkers” that openly lied and sometimes even appeared to admit they were lying and made certain Americans eventually throw up their hands and say, “I am so sick of this, so I’m staying home”. The Media cheering on Chris Christie was meant to demoralize as well.
So the Bulldozer is revving up. Do the House young Turks have the courage that Henry Hyde and Rep Jim Rogan had in 1998, when they risked their political lives to withstand the Political Superstorm that came their way.
We will see.
E.J. Dionne is a tool, but I find him less annoying than David Brooks only because he is not confused which side he is on.