President John Hussein Kerry

Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review takes the pulse of disappointed Obama-voting Democrats in flyover country and writes:

President Obama blames everyone but himself, shaking a finger at Republicans and tea partyers for stirring up the anger. Last week, he and Vice President Biden started blaming their own supporters, insisting they need to “buck up” and vote.

“Why should we?” wonders Canton, Ohio, native Cheryl Guy as she and husband Rudy visit Fort Necessity in Western Pennsylvania. A Democrat and registered nurse who is very disappointed with Obama, she has no intention of supporting Democrats in the coming midterm election; neither does her husband.

Americans voted for change in 2008 in record numbers. Voters of every age, color, shape and size, in red states and blue ones, registered as Republicans, Democrats or independents, then voted for something different. They bought into the dream that Obama was not elite; he was for the middle class and would champion reform.

What they got was no different from the guy they voted against in 2004: John Kerry.

Obama is no less out of touch than the Kerry whom America watched windsurf before the 2004 election — the same man who said last week that one reason Democrats will lose this year is that “we have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”

Here’s where Kerry and Obama are both wrong: The electorate that was influenced by a simple slogan — “Yes, we can” — in 2008 actually is very well-informed.

This time, that electorate isn’t voting for a dream, but for its pocketbook.

And if Republicans are lucky enough to win, they’d best remember that those voters will hold them accountable.

But why would anybody be surprised that Obama is governing like Kerry would have if the latter man had won in 2004? Both are elite, effete liberals, both have a rather nuanced and flexible relationship with what, in less enlightened days was called The Truth. And both counted on the lapdog MSM to hide their myriad flaws.

Kerry bargained on his service in Vietnam to mask his radical chic anti-war activities after returning to America in the early 1970s. And more importantly, he bargained that the MSM would keep quiet about his Winter Solder days — and the supine Palace Guard media were more than willing to go along with the charade until the Swift Vets arrived. (It’s no wonder so many liberal journalists continue to bitterly cling to the phrase “Swiftboating” as a pejorative to this day.)

As the Anchoress perceptively noted, 2004 was in many ways the MSM’s template for “reporting” on the 2008 election — only this time around they had a much charismatic candidate to build their campaign around. When Obama had his own Winter Soldier moment — the moment that the Rev. Wright videos hit YouTube — the self-described “non-official campaign” staffers working in the media and coordinating via the JournoList were prepared to both bottle up the conservation, and to smear conservatives as racists — “[T]ake one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country?” as Spencer Ackerman infamously banged into his keyboard  — and use Obama’s race to deflect criticism. (As with Kerry’s Winter Soldier phase, Obama would have his own radical chic connection, thanks to his friendship with Bill Ayers. And note how badly even  a stalwart Ruling Class Democrat like George Stephanopoulos was briefly demonized by the far left for even broaching the issue.)

A couple of weeks ago, Shikha Dalmia, who like Dinesh D’Souza, writes for Forbes, strongly, and negatively, critiqued D’Souza’s highly controversial article there. As with anything that’s anti-Obama, it caused Robert Gibbs to have yet another Team Obama Vercotti moment, so it’s definitely got that going for it. But my impression, reading between the lines of Dalmia’s strongly worded critique, is that it boils down to this: Pace D’Souza, Obama’s anger towards the nation he chose to govern isn’t primarily some exotic strain of  Kenyan anti-colonialism, but boilerplate American left punitive liberalism. In that sense, he really is, in many respects the second coming of John Kerry, icy hauteur included.