What kind of strategy is it when the leader of your political party ridicules and complains about voter support instead of asking for their votes? The President and Vice President are making headlines for their strange tactics on the campaign trail as they try to gin up some level of enthusiasm from pessimistic Democrats as we head into the November mid-term elections. Democratic voters know the odds of a Republican sweep in House elections and that their majority is soon to come to an end. The heady days of total control with ample majorities in both houses of Congress and in the White House are about to end.
Instead of stump speeches bucking up the base voters of the party, as is the normal method of asking for voters to turn out at the polls on election day, instead of cheer leading them into some sort of motivation to get out and cast a vote, President Obama and Vice President Biden has chosen to ridicule and scold what few supporters they have left.
John Podhoretz nails it: Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them -- even if their employees have it right.
The advertising and public relations wing of Team Obama have scheduled Obama for a series of backyard chats with "ordinary" Americans. The hosts are hand selected stalwart Democratic supporters and the guests in attendance are screened in advance. There is nothing spontaneous or "ordinary" about this kind of photo op. At best the backyard settings are hokey. At worst, they are cynically keeping the President in the daily news cycle.
A big focus is being placed on the younger voting population and college campuses are a favorite for the President as he tries to appear on televised broadcast news on a daily basis. These appearances are being scaled back, though, as he no longer fills an auditorium.
Here's an example: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/president-obama-fires-up-voter-base-11753668 of President Obama trying to lit a fire under the younger electorate.
The advertising and public relations wing of Team Obama have scheduled Obama for a series of backyard chats with "ordinary" Americans. The hosts are hand selected stalwart Democratic supporters and the guests in attendance are screened in advance. There is nothing spontaneous or "ordinary" about this kind of photo op. At best the backyard settings are hokey. At worst, they are cynically keeping the President in the daily news cycle. We read that these dog and pony shows are to combat the image that Obama is out of touch, living in a bubble, and does not relate to the ordinary American though his personal popularity numbers are good. We are told it is only his policies that Americans are rebelling against. So far this approach isn't working. It is only a matter of time before his falling poll numbers spread into this personal numbers. He would do himself some good if he was seen as moderating his strident actions after the mid-term elections in November but most analysts do not think that will happen. He is not as Bill Clinton was in 1994 after the Republican Revolution. Obama truly believes he has done nothing wrong. He truly finds nothing wrong in ramming through legislation with only down the line party votes, even if he ran as the post-partisan candidate. No hope of that anywhere in sight.
This is proving to be normal behavior from the president. Instead of learning and listening to the voters, to his base support, he blames them for defeats in mid-term elections that haven't even occurred yet. He reads the opinion polls - despite denying that he pays much attention to them, his administration has used them more extensively than any other previous administration - and he reads of very low enthusiasm levels inside the Democratic party. Republican voters are greatly enthusiastic this election cycle and ready to vote.
The Democrats have an odd way of motivating voters. From The Wall Street Journal: Mr. Obama added that "if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." Making the case for left-wing voters to show up in November, Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that he is presiding over "the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward."
Obama does fancy himself as an intellectual, despite the fact that he consistently gets very basic facts wrong, whether it is the 57 states debacle or misstating lines of the Constitution (strange since he is suppose to be a constitutional scholar), or our nation's history in general. His is a world view different than most Americans, whether he chooses to accept that reality or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment