Scarborough interrupted Noonan to reveal that just two days ago his co-host ultra-liberal Mika Brzezinski had heard from many Democrats about how disappointed they were in Obama. “Forty or fifty of the most powerful Democrats on the Hill” thought that “the president has been invisible,” and that “he is not a leader,” said Scarborough. They also felt he was abandoning the Congressional Democrats the same way he abandoned them during the Obamacare debate:
(if you cannot sea video below click here)
As for Noonan, she really lit into the POTUS in her column this morning saying he still has the support of the Democrats, but that support has become more tepid.
.....I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It's something I've never seen in national politics.Basically even his supporters don't really trust the man.
It is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.I couldn't have said it better. And what is becoming clearer by the day, his own party is beginning to believe him a loser.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.
Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
