Obama’s Mojo is No Mo
By Larry Johnson on November 4, 2012 at 1:35 PM in Current Affairs
My, what a difference 4 years of incompetence can make when it comes to judging a President. In 2008, Barack Obama was the new Messiah. An aura of Hope and Change shrouded his visage. People loved his ass. Didn’t matter that he had no record. Didn’t matter that he had no accomplishments in managing or running anything of substance. He was the black Moses, come to lead us to da promise land.
Four years later, we got coyote ugly. In our inebriated stage we took a beauty/hunk home and woke up with a troll with bad breath (note, coyote ugly can apply to male or female). The really amazing change are the surprising newspaper endorsements of Mitt Romney.
Wisconsin commie anyone? Check out the Wisconsin State Journal:
Not enough hope and too little change.
That is President Barack Obama’s record on the economy, debt and Washington gridlock after four years in the White House.
The State Journal editorial board endorses Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s presidential election.
Romney showed as the Republican governor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts that he can find agreement across the partisan divide. And his vice presidential pick — Wisconsin’s U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville — suggests Romney is serious about tackling America’s fiscal mess.Romney has an impressive record of success in the private and public sectors. He’s a numbers guy who focuses more on results than ideology. That’s why so many of his fellow Republicans during the GOP primary criticized him for not being conservative enough.
Romney has been a strong leader in business and civic life. This includes turning around many troubled companies and the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Romney better understands how and why entrepreneurs and employers decide to expand and add jobs. He’s more likely to get the private-sector going strong again.
Romney displayed reasonableness and smarts during the debates. And his view on the most pressing foreign policy question — Iran — is similar to his opponent’s.
Yes, Romney did his share of flip-flopping and pandering during the GOP primary to get past stubborn party stalwarts. Yes, Romney’s talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act and boosting military spending are unrealistic. We disagree with Romney on a host of social issues, from marriage equality to abortion rights.
For those of you who do not know Wisconsin, this is akin to the New York Times endorsing Romney. But the hits don’t stop there. How about the New York Daily News?
Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.
The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.
Achingly slow job creation has left the U.S. with 4.3 million fewer positions than provided incomes to Americans in 2007. Half the new jobs have been part-time, lower-wage slots, a trend that has ruinously sped a hollowing of the middle class.
The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9%, marking only the second month below 8% after 43 months above that level. Worse, add people who are working part-time because they have no better choice and the rate leaps to almost 15%. Still worse, add 8 million people who have given up looking for employment and the number who are out of jobs or who are cobbling together hours to scrape by hits some 23 million people.
Only America’s social safety net, record deficits and the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented low-interest policies have kept the label Great Depression II on the shelf.New Yorkers have fared no better. The state is alone among the 50 in suffering significantly rising unemployment over the last 12 months, with the rate now at 8.9%. The city’s pain index is 8.8%, and the five boroughs have been trading down in salaries.
Something big is underway and the Dems are missing the big picture. Salena Zito has her fingers on the pulse of the body politic:
The homemade sign for Mitt Romney in the yard of a well-manicured but modest home in Leadville, Colo., forlornly signals the fracture of another onetime supporter of Barack Obama.
If Romney wins the presidency on Tuesday, the national media, the Washington establishment and the bulk of academia will have missed something huge that happened in “flyover” America under their watch.
It is a story that few have told.
It reminds one of the famous quip by New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael following Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 victory: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”
Two years after suffering a historic shellacking in the 2010 midterm election, Democrats astonishingly have ignored Main Street Americans’ unhappiness.
That 2010 ejection from the U.S. House, and from state legislatures and governors’ offices across the country, didn’t happen inside the Washington Beltway world.
It didn’t reflect the Democrats’ or the media’s conventional wisdom or voter-turnout models. So it just wasn’t part of their reality.
In Democrats’ minds, it was never a question of “How did we lose Main Street?” Instead, it was the fault of the “tea party” or of crazy right-wing Republicans.
Yet in interview after interview — in Colorado, along Nebraska’s plains, in small Iowa towns or Wisconsin shops, outside closed Ohio steel plants and elsewhere — many Democrats have told me they are furious with the president. Not in a frothing-at-the-mouth or racist way, as many elites suggest. They just have legitimate concerns affecting their lives.
Be sure to read the rest of her excellent reporting. Obama ain’t walking on water this time.
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