They’re not impressed (via Gatewaypundit).
Democrats have made a living out of vowing to hold everyone else accountable for our troubles; from Wall Street ‘fat cats’, to black-hearted and greedy Insurance companies, to Automakers in bed with money-grubbing big oil tycoons, to Wal Mart, to Al Qaeda… and even George Bush (who has been out of office for an entire year)… Democrats have long-enjoyed that liberating feeling of pointing the finger at everyone around them for all that has gone wrong in this country…even SINCE Barack Obama came in to power. In fact, the only folks you don’t hear the Democrats actually holding accountable for any of the evils in America are Democrats themselves.
Apparently, the party that insisted they were the answer to our problems…has, in point of fact, actually become the problem. That Kennedy’s seat is even in play in Massachusetts in the dawn of our Liberal enlightenment speaks volumes about the state the Democrats find themselves in and the wounds they’re having to lick clean just now…many of them self-inflicted, including a few dogs that were never even in the hunt.
Unemployment is up, troop deployments for two unpopular wars are up, the budget deficit is up, retail prices are up, fuel prices are up, the national debt is up, trade deficits are up, foreclosures are up…everything bad is up in America even while everything good continues to go down. Not what the Democrats had in mind, I’m sure, when they begged us to give them a majority in the hallowed halls of Congress so they could do the “People’s work.”
News that the bottom has fallen out of Coakley’s campaign in Massachusetts or that Brown might actually WIN this thing outright, as the Democrats scramble to find a suitable explanation that (they hope) protects Obama from taking any of the blame for it, suggests that the Democrats are (as is the President himself) in a ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ situation one year shy of the midterm elections. And, if you’re a Republican politician right now, the temptation to tie a Republican victory in Massachusetts to a larger referendum on Obama’s health care fiasco has become too great to resist. I suggest here, however, that McConnell (and all the others out there using Coakley as a one-issue whipping-post) couldn’t have it more wrong.
A Coakley loss (heck, even a razor thin win) will be a referendum on the Liberal agenda and its leadership (lack thereof, really) by the Democrats themselves. Virginia and New Jersey should serve as two cases in point. In suggesting, recently, that “Democratic Policies Hinge on Massachusetts”, Obama has offered us a look into the future…one that ties his own fate to those same policies facing an ever-increasing rejection by a disgruntled and dissatisfied constituency.
The news coverage in Massachusetts is leaving out the laundry list of offenses committed by the Democrats to get themselves where they are today. However much Americans might like or dislike this bill or that bill, most of us (the reasonable among us at least) are turning against the way in which Democrats have chosen to govern. From 2,000 page monstrosities that no one is allowed to read, to invoking super majority rules to create artificial victories, to parliamentary rules changes designed to block the minority from engaging in reasoned debate and amendment, to single-party closed-door reconciliation negotiations, to shifting bills to a different status to lower the bar for gaining passage, to quitting while they’re ahead and abandoning any further action at all, choosing instead to go headlong right to the President’s desk for signature, Democrats have shown they are sincere about winning regardless the pain and suffering they might inflict on those of us who will be destroyed at the hands of their “governance by desperation” approach to running the country.
This disconnect between what we need and what Democrats and Obama want for themselves is fairly well described in a Noonan op-ed at the WSJ and worth highlighting here:
You want a competent chief executive with a deep and shrewd sense of the people. Americans want him to be on the same page as they are. But he’s on a different page, and he may in fact be reading a different book.No Ms. Noonan, he has not. Nor have the Democrats on Capitol Hill. Interestingly, again looking to Coakley-Brown, Massachusetts voters have noticed and we’ll hear from them soon enough on how they wish to proceed. Beyond that, 2010 mid-terms loom, and it’s safe to say American voters are going to hold their Legislators accountable in ever-increasing numbers for where they find themselves now, 12 months in to the Hope and Change they were promised. Writen by Haystack
[snip]
The real story is that his rhetorical and iconic detachment are harped on because they reflect a deeper disconnect, the truly problematic one, and that is over policy. It doesn’t really matter how he sounds. It matters, in a time of crisis, what he does. That’s where the lack of connection comes in.
The people are here, and he is there. The popularity of his health-care plan is very low, at 35% support. Someone on television the other day noted it is as low as George Bush’s popularity ratings in 2008.
Yet—and this is the key part—the president does not seem to see or hear. He does not respond. He is not supple, able to hear reservations and see opposition and change tack. He has a grim determination to bull this thing through. He negotiates each day with Congress, not with the people. But the people hate Congress! Has he not noticed?
