loser watch

Poll: Obama Approval at 45%…in New York!

Mark Noonan6 Comments

The hits just keep on coming – from the New York Post:

President Obama might need to start taking a few more campaign trips to New York — and not just to raise cash.

A stunning new survey gives the president a negative approval rating in the Empire State for the first time, with just 45 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval among voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

That’s a sharp turnaround from June, when Obama’s New York popularity was a healthy 57-38.

In the 2008 presidential election, Obama carried New York with 63 percent of the vote…

Yes, I know Obama will win New York in 2008.  Even if it turns out to be a Reagan-Carter blow out of Obama next year, Obama is almost certain to win New York…but the fact that he’s blow 50% in a State as deep blue as New York shows that he’s going to have to work to defend his electoral base…that he can’t take any State for granted.  He’s going to have to spend time and money in places that he should have locked up before he even starts…and for the GOP comes the opportunity to spend just a little time and money in the blue States and force Obama to spend even more time and money there.

Obama can only win if he holds on to places like North Carolina, Florida and Colorado in 2012…if he’s battling it out for places like New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan, then he’s likely to be defeated next year.  The only question here is whether or not Obama increasing political weakness will impel Democrats to abandon him…not in the sense of nominating someone else (though his weakness invites a primary challenger), but in the sense of writing him off and working, instead, to prevent the GOP from winning 60 Senate seats?

Naturally, things can change – it is a long way to election day.  The trouble is, all indicators are that things will just get worse for America between now and then – and this is thanks to Obama.  Caught in a vise of his own making…

Democrats Refuse to Admit Defeat…

Mark Noonan11 Comments

…or go within a country mile of sanity.  They’re at it again, now working on a recall effort against Governor Walker.  From Hot Air:

You’ve got to chase your dreams. Ahab had Moby Dick, Javert had Valjean, and these tools have a guy whose collective bargaining bill is a fiscal success even according to Milwaukee’s favorite newspaper.

Can we get them to flush a bunch of money down the toilet next year that might otherwise go towards reelecting Barack Obama in a crucial swing state? Yes, we can.

“‘If we can do all of this against entrenched Republicans on their own turf, imagine our success … when all of Wisconsin can have its voice heard on Gov. Walker’s extreme, divisive agenda,’ Wisconsin state party chairman Mike Tate wrote in a memo to reporters Wednesday…'”

W. C. Fields once said that if at first you don’t succeed; try, try again.  And then quit.  No sense being a damn fool about it.  Our Democrats seem determined on being the fool.

They just spent $30 million to win two State legislative seats, one of which was held by a man who got himself mired in a sex scandal.  What’s next?  $60 million to try and bounce Walker from the governorship?  Goodness, even if they did it, if the GOP controls the legislature then a Democrat governor still wouldn’t be able to undo Walker’s reforms.  Furthermore, as Walker’s reforms are starting to take hold, all of the news is good (late breaking good news for Walker probably saved one or two of the GOP seats on Tuesday) – for Wisconsin’s budget, for Wisconsin’s taxpayers, for Wisconsin’s schools…for all aspects of Wisconsin life, except for corrupt union bosses and their bought Democrat politicians.  By the time the Democrats could get a recall off the ground against Walker (I understand that under Wisconsin law they couldn’t try until some time in 2012) things might be going so well that Walker is politically bullet proof.

I do appreciate the appeal to the voters aspect of this – something all too often absent from the left.  But the purpose of recall is not just to undo every election you don’t like, but to remove from office those politicians who prove egregiously corrupt or entirely out of tune with what they ran on.  Democrats are just throwing a temper tantrum here…

But, by all means, have at it…each cent spent on a quixotic attack against Walker is one cent less Barry and the Boys will have to stave off disaster in 2012.

Obama Goes on Vacation

Mark Noonan16 Comments

From Zero Hedge:

We bring you this special announcement courtesy of the White House which has informed that American plebs that following a fantastic job well done, in which the market is now back to pre-QE2 levels, unemployment is near record highs, delays for presidential press meetings compare with Newark airplane take offs, pessimism is at record highs, America’s credit rating has just been downgraded, the country was nearly bankrupted, and sales of end of the world provisions are through the roof (not to mention ammunition), president Obama is taking a well-deserved vacation at Martha’s Vineyard at the end of the month…

This man Obama has a tin ear – he just can’t see what is going on.  Or maybe he really doesn’t care.  Memo to Obama’s handlers – now is not the time for the President to go playing with the rich and powerful.  The White House is pretty swank…and Camp David is just a short helicopter ride away…going to Martha’s Vineyard is way of saying “so long, suckers” to the American people.

We will remember in November 2012.

Poll: Majority Against Obama’s Re-election

Mark Noonan27 Comments

From USA Today/Gallup:

…a majority of Americans, 51%, say President Obama doesn’t deserve re-election; 47% say he does…

Not a good sign for a man seeking re-election.  And do click on the above link for a State-by-State breakdown of Obama’s approval rating.  Here’s the important bits:

Obama’s approval is at 53% in California; 52% in Minnesota; 54% in Vermont…and only 54% in Illinois!

If the election were held today, Obama would be crushed…now, is it likely to get better, or worse, for him by November of next year?

The Obama Downgrade

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Instapundit has a small round up of disappointment among liberals about Obama, and has this to say:

It’s as if, in some sort of national spasm of carelessness and self-deceit, we elected a guy entirely unqualified by experience or personal characteristics to the single most important office in the land, to serve during a period of unusual troubles that he was not equipped to address.

And now liberals are starting to realize that things aren’t getting better and that Obama will be their standard-bearer in 2012.  They’ve already lost the House, lost massively at the State level and will probably lose the Senate next year…and Obama is the guy who will symbolize the whole party.  This is not looking good for our liberals.

To be fair to Obama, a President McCain may have made a lot of mistakes, too.  McCain might also have bought the siren song of government spending and money printing.  But there is this difference we can see – McCain is a man of long experience in practical affairs and would have seen by the end of 2010 that it wasn’t working…that something different needed to be tried, and having a fund of conservative and libertarian beliefs, he would have opened his mind to those who proposed a different course.  Obama can’t do that – he lacks the knowledge to see an alternative to the liberal worldview he imparted in college.  It may well be that Obama has never read a single, conservative book; that he’s never listened to a conservative thinker; his whole idea of us might really be summed up in his “bitter clingers” remark…and you don’t go to “bitter clingers” in search for ideas.  But where do you go, then, when your liberal ideas have failed?

This triumph of hope over experience we had in 2008 is now on auto-pilot.  Incapable of changing course for lack of intellectual ability to see a different course, it is only concerned with the mechanics of re-election…give a speech, have a fund-raiser; lather, rinse, repeat.  There will be no change until after the election – rumor has it that Bernanke might print up a bag of money to sustain the market (that is why it is up to much so early)…and so complete collapse might hold off for a while, perhaps even until after the election.  So, this may be it – Obama is downgraded – from “Hope and Change” to “Prolonged Situation” and we get to keep our fingers crossed that nothing bad happens for 15 months, because we’ve got a President who is incapable of dealing with it.

 

Understanding the President

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal talks things over with House Majority Leader Cantor, and comes out with this:

Like Mr. Cantor, President Obama is also a man of deep and strong convictions, and perhaps that’s why they seem to dislike each other so much. Call it, to adapt Freud, the narcissism of big differences. Mr. Cantor cautions that he isn’t a “psychoanalyst”—before politics, he was a real-estate lawyer and small businessman—but he says, “It’s almost as if someone cannot have another opinion that is different from his. He becomes visibly agitated. . . . He does not like to be challenged on policy grounds.”

In a meeting with the Journal’s editorial board Wednesday, Mr. Cantor, 48, gives his side of one of his more infamous altercations with the president. In a mid-July Cabinet Room meeting, Mr. Cantor made a suggestion that Mr. Obama and other Democrats took as impertinent. “How dare I,” Mr. Cantor recalls of the liberal sentiment in the room. He was sitting between Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, “and they were in absolute agreement that [the president] was such a saint for having endured all this.”

“No president has sat here like I have, in these kinds of meetings, with congressional leaders, in this detail,” Mr. Obama said in Mr. Cantor’s recollection, which Democrats dispute. Mr. Cantor says the president also invoked Ronald Reagan “to be a little patronizing of us, because he assumed that anything Reagan did we like.” Mr. Obama then told Mr. Cantor, “Eric, don’t call my bluff,” and walked out…

Maybe this is why Obama has a desire to appoint Czars…it was Czar Nicholas I who stated, at the start of his reign, “I cannot permit that someone should disagree with my views, once he knows what they are”.  Might be that my little joke about His Majesty, Barry I actually hits close to home.  President Obama might be one of those sad political specimens who are driven bonkers by contradiction.  Equally telling, if Cantor has it completely right, is the servility of Pelosi and Hoyer…The One was defied by a Republican, and that was offensive…where does that little worm get off talking like that to Dear Leader?  I wonder if Obama still has the Democrat Congressional leadership enthralled like that?  Is the mere fact that he is black something which will continue to blind them to the facts?  To put it differently, is the election of  a black man so important, to liberals, that the results will be resolutely ignored?

I guess we’ll find out as the next year unfolds.  But if Cantor has read Obama correctly – and other evidence out there indicates he’s at least in the ball park – then Obama will just rigidly adhere to his view and keep bulling ahead, regardless of what happens.  This works out bad for America, because the President should be a man with the courage to admit he has been wrong and then change course.  On the other hand, it works out great for conservatism because it means Obama will just keep driving liberalism over the cliff.

It is a pity that our final wake up from liberalism should have to come like this, but it also might have been inevitable.  So seductive is the idea that you can have it all for nothing that once you fall for liberalism, it would take a complete catastrophe to get you cured of it.  The catastrophe is coming (though the very worst won’t get here until 2015…and not then if we toss Obama in 2012)…but that means the liberation is, too.

Nader: There Will be an Obama Primary Challenger

Mark Noonan39 Comments

From The Daily Caller:

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.

“What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort,” Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.”

The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”…

While one must never forget the way Nader helped fasten upon the American people the greedy and corrupt tribe of trial lawyers, you do have to hand it to him on his convictions:  he’s a pinko right down to the ground, and Obama hasn’t been commie enough for him.  Which, once again, does make you wonder just how ultra-leftist Obama would have to be to please people like Nader.  At all events, it appears that anger over Obama’s failures on the left side are starting to bite.

While there was some lip service on the left about Afghanistan being a “good” war, the reality is that the left dislikes any use of American power…so, the fact that we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan and have also launched a war in Libya has to be causing problems.  In addition to this, Obama has kept in place almost all of the Bush anti-terrorism policies…this is simple common sense on the part of Obama, but our leftists talked themselves in to really believing that Gitmo was a horror and that the Patriot Act was undermining American liberty.  To keep the American Gulag open has to be a shock to the left…and a source of anger the longer it stays open (here’s a clue for you liberals…it will remain open at least until after election day…Obama simply will not risk releasing one of the terrorists there for fear that someone will be killed by the former inmate…in your liberal mind those men might be innocents cruelly arrested and tortured by Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler, but the realty is that they are killers who want to kill again).  Add in things like the failure to terminate the Bush tax cuts, failure to raise taxes on “the rich” some more, failure to get a single-payer health plan and it all adds up to a grand disappointment to the left.

And so a possible primary challenger…if Nader can dredge one up.  Given Nader’s statement, he’s likely to find someone…but unless he finds someone with real stature, it will just be a joke candidacy, easily crushed by the Democrat machine.  Nader will have to find someone who is both willing to ship out with the craziest denizens of the liberal nuthouse while also being someone with a credible political record.  This will not be easy to do.  But always fun to watch…stay tuned.

John Kerry, Liberal Fascist

Mark Noonan34 Comments

From Pajamas Media:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Hanoi) must be really worried about how badly the Democrats are losing the argument on government spending. He took to MSNBC to goad the media into censoring the opinions and statements of people with whom he disagrees (and who happen to have the facts on their side). The irony of his having made such an argument on an openly ideological network seems to have been lost on Sen. Kerry.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: “And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.”…

Translation – if you MSMers know what’s good for you, you’ll stop allowing any dissenting voices to appear.  We can’t have those hicks and bitter clingers out there getting their views across.  Don’t you realize that we Democrats could be crushed next year if the truth keeps coming out?

Its not like Kerry has been a tribune of truth, you know?  He is the guy, after all, who did say our brave men and women in Vietnam were acting like Genghis Khan…so, slanders have fallen easily from his lips.  And, at any event, shouldn’t it be up to the people to listen to all voices and decide for themselves who is right?

Not to our liberals, it would seem…because if the people hear differing opinions, then they are sure to reject the liberal view.

Obama Just Isn’t Liberal, Enough

Mark Noonan21 Comments

From The New Yorker:

…Of course, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment has always been a long shot, a last refuge. But Obama’s seeming refusal to hold it in reserve (“like the fire axe on the wall,” in Garrett Epps’s words) is emblematic of his all too civilized, all too accommodating negotiating strategy—indeed, of his whole approach to the nation’s larger economic dilemma, the most disappointing aspect of his Presidency. His stimulus package asked for too little and got less. He has allowed deficits and debt to supersede mass unemployment as the emergency of the moment. He has too readily accepted Republican terms of debate, such as likening the country to a household that must “live within its means.” (For even the most prudent householders, living within one’s means can include going into debt, as in taking out a car loan so that one can get to one’s job.) He has done too little to educate the public to the wisdom of post-Herbert Hoover economics: fiscal balance is achieved over time, not in a single year; in flush times a government should run a surplus, but when the economy falters deficits are part of the remedy; when the immediate problem is what it is now—a lack of demand, not a shortage of capital—higher spending is generally more efficacious than lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich…

And now the Carterization of Obama is complete…well, except that he hasn’t had his Killer Rabbit attack.  You see, I remember this – back in 1980 when I was gleefully reading over the liberal angst about Carter’s defeat, there were liberal opinions that Carter’s failure was that he wasn’t liberal enough.  Had he spent more, taxed more, cut defense more, negotiated with our enemies more…had he just gone full blown in to the most extreme liberalism possible, it all would have worked out.  There is a bizarre disconnect from reality in our “reality-based community”…the unwillingness to ever admit that liberalism can get it wrong, or even be unpopular.

One does have to wonder – that was written by Hendrik Hertzberg.  He’s a well-educated man:  at least, his credentials say so.  But does he really believe that there was in what FDR did a stark contrast to what Hoover did?  Does he further believe that what FDR did worked?  Hoover spent bags of money trying to fix the economy (little remembered is how in 1932 FDR ran on a balanced budget platform).  FDR just spent bags and bags and bags.  Hoover didn’t fix the depression, neither did FDR.  Yet here we are in 2011 and here is Mr. Hertzberg, certain that the lesson of the past is that you have to go flat out in spending…don’t do what Hoover did!  And Obama, in Hertzberg’s view, is being too Hooverish and not channeling his inner-FDR.  But Hoover did what FDR did and both FDR and Hoover failed utterly.  How do you get that ignorant about history and yet graduate from the Ivy League and become a commentator for The New Yorker?

Furthermore, a little blogger like me is supposed to stand in awe of all this…that I don’t have an Ivy League diploma and don’t have an editor to carefully review what I’ve written, and so I should accept as from on high such pronouncements.  But that is absurd – I can see what is plain as a pikestaff, Hertzberg, by the evidence in his article, would have difficulty finding the balls on a bull.  There is making a mistake – I’ve done that; I’ll do it again and again, too…but there is a huge difference between “mistake” and “obtuse”.

Never mind.  As long as liberals really think that it is a lack of liberalism which makes for liberal failure, it works out mostly to our advantage.  True, it came back to bite us in 2008 – never imagined someone as leftist as Obama could even get nominated, let alone elected…but everything, I guess, really is possible.  It is highly likely that we will correct 2008’s error in 2012…and Hertzberg and other liberals will then proclaim not a shift to the right to regain America’s trust, but a further shift to the left because those darn morons, the voters, just don’t know what’s good for them.  We should be able to keep the Democrats out of the White House for 20 years on that.

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