RECLUSIVE LEFTIST: “There is no schadenfreude in the Smoking Lounge. Every single thing I wrote and predicted about Barack Obama in 2008 was true, true, true, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching the nightmare unfold. After all, the reason I cared so much in 2008 was because I was so desperate to stave off the disaster. Now that I’m living through the disaster, I’m not exactly enjoying it.” I wonder just how many Democrats feel this way, but aren’t ready to say so yet? Well, read this:
You know what else is funny? Nobody has ever apologized to me. Not that it would make a difference, but still. Not one of those people who accused me of being a racist and secret wingnut has ever said, “You were right about Obama. I’m sorry I called you those names.”
What they do instead is claim that no one could have known how Obama would turn out. He seemed like cream of Jesus on toast, so how could they know? Nobody could know! And as for the uncomfortable fact that a bunch of people, including me, seemed to know exactly how Obama would turn out and were saying so loudly in 2008—well, that was just coincidence. I’m still, according to this logic, a racist unfeminist wingnut on the Republican payroll whose 2008 rantings just happened, by sheer coincidence, to accord precisely with unfolding reality.
Yeah, when the right-thinking folks get it wrong, it’s never their fault.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
The posting from Reclusive Leftist reminded me of a conversation I hadwith a friend of the family who is fairly highly placed in Illinois governor Pat Quinn’s re-election campaign. Last spring, before the Illinois primary (which Governor Quinn barely won), we were discussing the upcoming election when, out of the blue, my friend asked, “How did we elect this guy?” – meaning President Obama. My friend, a hard-boiled Chicago machine Democrat, seemed truly astonished that this could happened – like a woman who wakes up to find herself in bed with a stranger. My guess is that now, quite a few hard-boiled professional Democrats are asking themselves that very same question: “How did we elect this guy?”
Indeed.