The Foolish Fantasies of the Left, and why The W. Virginia Results Should Worry Barack Obama
So here is Mr. Dionne’s solution to the problem:
This week, progressives will highlight a new effort to pursue the road not taken at a conference convened by the Campaign for America’s Future that opens Monday. It is a cooperative venture with a large number of other organizations, notably the American Dream Movement led by Van Jones, a former Obama administration official who wants to show the country what a truly progressive agenda around jobs, health care and equality would look like. Jones freely acknowledges that “we can learn many important lessons from the recent achievements of the libertarian, populist right,” and says of the progressive left: “This is our ‘tea party’ moment — in a positive sense.”
Once again, the highly touted left-wing Tea Party run by the avowed Marxist-Leninist Van Jones. Jones seems to have succeeded in getting away with his strategy of giving up open avowal of his revolutionary beliefs to achieve the same goals by using the old Leninist strategy of “boring from within,” favored by the sectarian Left in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
If they succeed, Dionne writes, it will have the following effect:
What’s been missing in the Obama presidency is the productive interaction with outside groups that Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed with the labor movement and Lyndon B. Johnson with the civil rights movement. Both pushed FDR and LBJ in more progressive directions while also lending them support against their conservative adversaries.
This is the old dream of a “people’s movement” of the far Left that can exert the kind of pressure Obama cannot resist. After all, if he does not follow their lead, their cadre will not come out the weeks before the election, going door to door in swing states or contested regions — as they did in Virginia in 2008 — leaving the independents and the old Reagan Democrats to continue to move toward a decision to vote Republican.
The problem is that if Barack Obama takes the bait, it will only increase the decision of these swing voters, independents and working-class whites to move even faster towards the Republican candidate. In West Virginia, the results have just come in. The Democratic candidate Earl Ray Tomblin managed to squeak by with a very slim margin of victory of just 3 per cent, in a state in which the Democrats have always won the Gubernatorial spot by large margins.
The New York Times reported:
It was a slim victory in a hard-fought race that was seen as a test for Democrats. Mr. Maloney, a businessman, was initially viewed as a long-shot in this heavily Democratic state, but he surged ahead in the polls in recent weeks with the help of negative advertisements associating Mr. Tomblin with Mr. Obama, who is deeply unpopular here. Mr. Tomblin’s campaign also ran negative ads.
This was the case even though Tomblin is considered a conservative Democrat, who was endorsed by the NRA, favors coal mining, and is continuing the state’s lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet, so unpopular is Obama, that Tomblin almost lost!
You can be certain that Barack Obama will look closely at these results, and therefore, think hard and fast before making the shift to the left to please Van Jones and company. As the Times put it, “Mr. Obama was another liability, and Mr. Tomblin worked hard to distance himself. “
Hence President Obama’s quandary: Shift Left and get the base out, but lose the swing states, independents and working-class Democrats. Or shift Right and lose the organizing activity, endorsement and support of the left-wing activists.
Either course spells one outcome that will be good for the country: Barack Obama will be a one-term President.
Good article.
Minor comment: you wrote wrecked when you seem to have meant wreaked.
Cheers
The odds are against Barack Obama’s reelection. There are still three things in his favor:
1.) White guilt. Many people are still overly impressed with “the historical significance of his election.”
2.) The majority of Americans fail to realize that Obama is poorly educated. The foolishly believe his Harvard credentials should be taken seriously. They have no idea that the less than brilliant Sarah Palin is still far better more knowledgeable than the president.
3.) Obama is still “personally liked.” This man is one of nastiest men who ever resided in the White House. He is the equal of Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson in pure viciousness. And yet, countless Americans prefer to perceive him as well meaning and sincere. “I disagree with Obama on many issues, but he is a good human being” is something one hears on a regular basis.
Well put, Mr. Radosh. Except I have one caveat; As Obama himself said (paraphrasing) if things don’t change by his third year that he would be a one-term president. Given the recent ravings of Elizabeth Warren, Peter Orszag and Bev Perdue, does the phrase a “one-term president” really mean president for life?
The Occupy Wall Street wing of the Democrat party know that as of now not only Obama and a huge number of Dem candidates will go down in flames next November, but that the election is going to be a referendum on liberalism itself. They will be marginalized like never before.
The Gunwalker scandal is percolating even in the legacy media. Could it be that if it comes to a boil that they would use it to call for the impeachment of their own president (or at least go along with a Republican call for same), since asking him to step down would completely alienate black voters?
Something is going to happen in the next few months, and I do not think it is going to be pretty. The leftists will not go quietly into that good night – not when they have been so close to capturing this country as they have been the past few years. They never have and never will,
Some leftists believe they can only win by pressuring Barack Obama. He may or may not capitulate to their demands—but their screaming and yelling will convince many naive American voters the current occupant of the White House is a political moderate. Obama angers both the “conservative extremists” and the “left-wingers.” This supposedly shows that he could even be a center-rightest!
Thank God that no one, yet, is trying to implement card check in governmental elections. Private voting booths are the only place that most libs/ dems are able to admit their mistakes.
First, has E. J. Dionne ever been right, in any conceivable way? I have been listening to his drivel for lo’ these many years, and his predictions and analysis have not even the most tenuous hold on reality. Why does noone just simply dismiss him as a boob and a hack?
Second, Unions ain’t what they was. Because of cronyism (“my uncle is in the union, so I’m an ironworker”), laziness, drunkeness, et al, only the government can afford unions. They have been so diminished in the real world, who is going to help these scummy Democrats steal elections? ACORN patrons are, by definition, not capable human beings. They don’t hold real jobs because they are indolent, lazy, poor, ignorant miscreants. They will not be as efficient at laundering tax money to fund the Democrats as their union buddies, who are more accustomed to successfully running criminal enterprises.
The funny thing about these latest scandals is that they answer a question everyone is asking: where does all the money go? The answer is obviously to run guns to Mexico, and give payback to Obama supporters, who hide behind Green Jobs. When the economy is tooling along at high speed, noone really cares, but when everyone sees Obama’s idiotic policies making you pay more for gas, electricity, food, and almost everything else, while running your pay into the ground, people are certainly watching this stuff like hawks. Starving hawks. If the Republicans can’t get traction on these issues now, they’re too stupid to be in politics.
It’s amusing in a grim sort of way that the leftists are dissatisfied with Obama. He’s about as left as they’re ever going to get. On the other hand, people who think they represent 99 percent of the American people probably harbor the leftist fantasy that the people would support them if only the people truly understood their interests, as the left defines it for them because of course the people cannot be trusted to define their own interest.