In a banner headline story this week (link at bottom), Politico.com used almost 1,500 words to try to explain why Independents in Virginia and elsewhere disapprove of Obama by wide margins in various polls that range from 20 percentage point disapproval all the way up to 2-t0-1 disapproval. In the process, Politico offers up every conceivable explanation under the sun, with the leftist 20 percenter side of things basically claiming, over and over again, "It's the economy stupid." But oh contraire.It's a lot more than that, and I don't need 10 typewritten pages to explain it: Obama has been the consummate partisan leftist ideologue during his time in office -- arguably the most leftist president in American history. This is a center-right country, and Independents don't like that shit. If they did, they wouldn't be Independents.
This isn't some new phenomenon. Obama lost the Independents during his first year in office in 2009 AD, and his leftist toilings haven't won over any of the Independents since then. And the prospects of Obama recapturing any Independents between now and the 2012 AD election are grim and none, with grim presently locked up in a Mississippi shithouse with the key missing.
In short, Obama lacks the means of reconnecting with very many Independents. When Bill Clinton ran his centrist 1996 AD campaign, he had widely popular, center-right accomplishments to back it up (e.g., balanced budget, welfare reform). Three words: Obama ain't gots shit.
You see, Obama was only elected in 2008 AD because many Independents (me not among them, BTW) bought into the soaring "moderate" rhetoric that revealed not the first clue about what Obama actually intended to do if he was elected to office.
For 2012 AD, Obama can trot out all the same disingenuous bullshit rhetoric until the cows come home, and it ain't gonna resonate. Know why? Because, unlike Clinton, Obama has no accomplishments (other than leftist ones) to back any of it up.
But alas, all is not completely lost for Obama. Not by a long shot. He recently starting calling himself the "underdog" for 2012 AD, but that's pure bunk. He's still the slight favorite.
Chalk that up to: (1) The republic partisans nominating a stiff (likely Romney); (2) Obama having much more money than his gop-er challenger; (3) A complicit set of advocates in the "mainstream" media; and (4) The bully pulpit of the incumbent president and the advantages that go along with. Also, don't discount the distinct possibility of a third-party or so-called "independent" candidate (possibly the Trumper) splitting the right-winger vote and handing Obama the election.
So Obama hasn't lost in 2012 AD. Not yet, leastways. But he sure as hell has lost the Independents, and I don't see many of them coming back. And that may just be the deciding factor come next November. Not that I have a dog in the fight.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66220.html
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