#109: They’re Stuck With Him

October 4, 2012

They’re Stuck With Him

Pundits need political “mysteries,” they need serious questions which seem beyond the reach of ordinary citizens to fathom. After all, it’s about making a living. No recalcitrant puzzles, no income. So we should not be surprised to see many scribbling conservatives repeatedly ask the question:  How is it possible that Obama should retain almost rock-steady approval close to 50% in the polls? Given his total lack of appropriate experience, his secrecy about his education, his unsavory radical connections, his contempt for half the country, his laziness, his rejection of traditional American allies, his demonstrated incompetence in international affairs, in fiscal management, etc. etc. etc., how can people still cleave to this cartoon-president?

Well, yes, all those complaints about BHO are legitimate, but the tacit conclusion drawn by the questioners is not. They conclude that all other things being equal, he should be way down in the polls. I suspect that they actually know that this is a naïve inference, but that they want to keep the question alive.  I say that this is naïve because the answer to the question is both simple and obvious.

The Left in 2008 saw in Obama the opportunity they had been looking for since the end of the second World War, the opportunity for a vast expansion of  government and the creation of a European style “Third Way” Socialism. They thought they could do this with Obama simply because the country was ripe for the takeover as a result of war-fatigue and looming financial collapse. When the narrative of a half-black “savior” was added to the mix, every sentimental idiot raised on re-heated second-hand university socialism began to hyper-ventilate.  Chris Matthews famously had “a thrill run up his leg” on hearing Obama speak.

Once in office, BHO and the Left did a full-court press to bring in the take-over of the American health industry, which they accomplished by brute force, threat, and bribe, and even then only managed to do it by a single vote. For a short while, they thought that they had done it. They were like the peasants celebrating within the ruins of the Winter Palace in 1917.  But 2010 soon suggested that their drunken revelries were premature.

In 2010, Obama and the Democrats were handed a very severe drubbing in the House of Representatives. It was, as they say, a “wake-up moment.” The country, apparently, had not been “taken over.” In fact, the Democrats had managed to awaken conservatism in the U.S. to a degree that could not have been accomplished by any pro-conservative movement on its own. I think it is arguably Obama’s only accomplishment while in office, and it is no  small feat, that he has managed to get half the country to learn about its history and to re-engage with America’s founding constitutional values. Had Obama not existed, conservatives would have had to invent him.

Granted, this was strong medicine for the country, perhaps it will turn out to have been too strong. But desperate times demand desperate measures. And, of course, BHO may still win, which would be a disaster.

In any case, returning to the theme of this post, how has BHO’s “popularity” managed to remain as high as it is?

The answer is that the Democrat Party and the progressives are fighting for their political lives and are stuck with him at this point. They made their bed with BHO and now they have to sleep with him.

The belief within those circles is that the BHO adventure was their single shot at their main objective, namely taking over control of the country. They firmly believe that their next chance will be very far in the future if BHO loses his race, and this is because the past fractious four years have created an activist conservative movement which did not exist before.

Socialist take-over was proceeding steadily, not just since 1945, but since the election of Woodrow Wilson (arguably, it was already showing itself under Teddy Roosevelt), but it was proceeding in stealth mode, boring silently from within. But the election of BHO took the assault into the open, right out of the Trojan Horse. But, following the metaphor, unlike the Achaeans, Obama found that the Trojans (the U.S. citizenry) were able to rally and begin a counter-attack which may in the end force him and his forces out of Troy (the White House). For the first time in about one hundred years, the American electorate saw the Socialist revolutionary campaign for what it was, it could no longer proceed in stealth mode.

This means that the progressives can no longer fight under cover, they have been seen and identified, as have their objectives. This further means that it’s “do or die” for them at this point. Yes, they are disenchanted with BHO, they no longer believe in his mystical powers, he is no longer a super-alloy forged of black and white, stronger, lighter, more flexible, and more resilient than any substance ever found or made on earth. They now see him as what he really has been all along: an under-educated, not terribly bright, lazy, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, resentful poseur with half-digested left-wing rages guiding his impulsive lurches from bad decisions to worse.

But they’re stuck with him, win, lose, or die: they’re stuck with him.