Today we will allow ourselves to be distracted by the dreary health scam distraction. Regular readers will recall we believe Obama Dimocrats are in a lose/lose [...]]]> We borrowed the title “Arrogance, Incompetence, Corruption” from tomorrow’s thrill packed article here on Big Pink. You will be reading that phrase a lot during 2010 election season.

Today we will allow ourselves to be distracted by the dreary health scam distraction. Regular readers will recall we believe Obama Dimocrats are in a lose/lose situation on the health scam. If the health scam becomes law, the American people will revolt and throw Dimocrats into the trash heap for arrogance and corruption. If the health scam does not become law, the American people will throw Dimocrats into the trash heap for incompetence and arrogance and corruption. [More on all this tomorrow.]

Regular readers will also recall we believe real health care reform died in Denver in August 2008. Regular readers are aware that we believe Obama continues to pursue his health scam at the cost of a “focus on the economy” because:

“Barack Obama does not know what to do to strengthen the American economy. Barack Obama does not know what to do to help the private sector create jobs. That’s why Obama distracts with schemes which will reward his friends and donors with massive transfers of wealth from the American taxpayer pocket.”

The Dimocratic lose/lose is a Republican win/win. If the massive Dimocratic majorities in the House and Senate produce nothing but the “stimulus” flood of money to the guilty, rank and file true blue Democrats will realize the Obama Dimocrats are too incompetent to govern and will therefore stay home and not vote. Republicans will run on a repeal or de-fund the Obama health scam if something passes.

It’s an Obama disaster. Barack Obama is Poison.

* * * * * *

Barack Obama finally realizes that he has to do something other than publicity stunts. Obama wants to have something anything pass the congress that he can tout as an unprecedented historic transformative earthshaking celestial choirs singing Obamagasm. To that Obamagasm end, Obama is flim-flaming once again – this time it’s House Dimocrats as targets.

Obama pretends that if the House Dimocrats pass the Senate Obamination health scam, which transfers money and people to Big Insurance companies and protects the deal Obama worked with Big PhaRma to protect Big PhaRma, he will work for an additional bill passed via “reconciliation” to “fix” the Senate bill. As if! Obama doesn’t work for anything which does not benefit him personally. House Dimocrats if they are fools can pass the Senate bill and then Obama will have an Obamagasm publicity stunt and forget about the additional “reconciliation” bill. It will be a flim-flam-flip-flop-bamboozlepaloooza-Obamagasm.

Howard Dean appears to agree with us on the lose potential for Dimocrats:

“The plan, as it comes from the Senate, hangs out every Democrat who’s running for office to dry — including the president, in 2012, because it makes him defend a plan that isn’t in effect essentially yet,” Dean said during an appearance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show.

Dean, who has clashed publicly with the White House over the healthcare proposals favored by the administration, said that by passing the bills under consideration, Democrats would essentially be conceding defeat to Republicans.

“It’s easy to campaign on repealing something if no one knows what the something is,” Dean said. “And fundamentally people don’t understand what the president’s healthcare plan is.”

“And if it passes next week and get’s signed into law the week after, we’re not going to be able to explain it to people over the din of Fox News and the Republicans,” the former Democratic party chairman added.

Oh, dear. We are in trouble when Howard Dean’s peepers are opening and he begins to agree with Big Pink. But Obama corruption and the Obamagasm goes on.

In order to get that corruption Obamagasm, Barack Obama and his thugs will, according to thug Robert Gibbs, do “Whatever it takes to get health care done.” That “whatever” includes corrupt the courts. It’s the Chicago way.

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Federal judgeships for a vote is not unheard of in Chicago.

Are Republicans sitting back and watching and not doing anything about the corruption and the scams? Yesterday we got part of the answer:

National Repubicans are planning to unleash a huge wave of robocalls tomorrow targeting dozens of House Dems and warning their constituents that Obama and Nancy Pelosi are plotting to “ram” their “dangerous” health reform plans through Congress.

The robocalls — the first paid media by the NRCC’s new “code red” program, which targets Dems on health care — comes after Obama told Congress to pass reform via reconciliation.

The calls are meant to spook House Dems right at the moment when the White House and Dem leaders are about to undertake a grueling effort to round up support for what’s expected to be a hair-raisingly close vote. It warns constituents that the targeted House Dem risks supporting this “dangerous” move.

“Even though a majority of the country wants them to scrap it, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama are planning to ram their dangerous, out-of-control health care spending bill through Congress anyway,” the call says, according to a script provided by a GOP official.

The version targeting Dem Rep Frank Kratovil of Maryland continues:

What’s worse, Congressman Frank Kratovil might vote for it. Frank Kratovil votes with Nancy Pelosi 84% of the time and may follow her orders on this bill too. Frank Kratovil might vote for a bill that will kill jobs, raise the costs of health care, and increase taxes. Frank Kratovil should be focusing on creating jobs, yet he might be the deciding vote that causes this massive new spending bill to pass.

The calls are targeting 25 House Dimocrats who voted for Obama’s health scam the first time, along with 11 who voted “no” and four others from open seats. There are already results:

Okay, a bit more bad news for the prospects of passing the Senate bill out of the House.

Rep Frank Kratovil of Maryland, a previous No vote who was now said to be undecided, will vote No on the Senate health reform proposal, his spokesman confirms.

“He would vote against it,” the spokesman, Kevin Lawlor, says. Crucially, Kratovil would vote against the Senate bill even if there’s some kind of verbal guarantee that it would be fixed via reconciliation later, Lawlor says.

The only way Kratovil — one of the targets of a barrage of NRCC robocalls hammering the reform proposals as “dangerous” — could support the Senate bill is if it’s fixed first via reconciliation, before the House votes on it. But no one expects this to happen.

More:

Separately, Dem Rep Kurt Schrader, a freshman in Oregon who voted Yes last time, is now unwilling to commit to supporting the Senate bill, reports The Oregonian. Schrader, too, is getting bludgeoned by the NRCC robocalls.

So where does that leave us? The math is too in flux to make any pronouncements. Bottom line: Every Dem who flips from Yes to No (as Schrader may do) must be made up for by flipping a No to Yes (as Kratovil almost certainly won’t do). Long road ahead.

Right winger Hugh Hewitt has another idea besides robocalls:

Given that the proposed use of reconciliation is an illegitimate use of the procedure, the Senate GOP ought to be preparing to counter the jam down with a flood of amendments, each one of which requires an up or down vote. The prospect of thousand, or tens of thousands, or perhaps even a million amendments and the resulting spectacle of a Senate paralyzed by endless roll call counts should worry Democrats much more than Republicans as the American public doesn’t want Obamacare, and a last ditch stand to stop it via a blizzard of amendments will put the spotlight on the bill and its many flaws. It will also show a Republican leadership willing to fight to stop this radical rewrite of the rules of American medicine,

But where to get thousands and thousands of draft amendments? This is the joy of the internet. If the NRSC is on its toes, it will already be setting up a site where visitors can draft and submit their own amendments for use in the process. (The NRSC website is already accepting input on the topic.) Some of the draft amendments will be inspired and informed as experts weigh in. Some will be absurd. Some no doubt will be vulgar or obscene as trolls invade.

But the vast bulk of them would come from ordinary Americans with ideas on how to reform health care.

On the Democratic side, the Hillbuzz boys have a plan too:

We need to launch a massive, coast-to-coast effort to identify and pressure the Democrats’ LARGE DONORS to put a stop to this madness.

Large political donors are vulnerable because they are people the public doesn’t know. They are business men and women. Socialites. Wealthy people who fund political campaigns largely, in most cases, because it’s fun and something to do, and they like getting pictures with presidents and senators.

Donors are a smart target. We suggested the same tactic on March 15, 2008, during the primaries.

Eric Cantor is targeting Dimocratic lawmakers in 37 districts who previously voted “yes”.

And abortion is still an issue that will not be aborted:

The Senate’s healthcare bill would lose 12 Democratic votes in the House, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said Wednesday.

Stupak, the sponsor of an amendment to the House healthcare bill which barred federal subsidies for health plans covering abortion, said that 12 lawmakers who had previously supported healthcare reform legislation in the House.

“It’s accurate to say there are at least 12 of us who voted for healthcare that have indicated to the speaker and others that unless you change this language, we will vote against it,” Stupak said during an appearance on MSNBC.

In order to accommodate Stupak the Dimocrats would have to pass yet another bill:

“It would have to be a separate bill, you could sidebar it to the final bill,” he said. “One bill doesn’t pass without the other. They walk down the aisle together.”

House Dimocrats who think Obama will save them in 2010 – even those blocks of wood are beginning to run away from the Obama Easter Mess-iah schedule for passing the health scam. Senate Dimocrats are joining Obama in the flim-flam scam of House Dimocrats by trying to convince them that Americans will love the Obamination – once it passes. Republicans in the House, even the ones who were going to resign but now will wait to leave until after the health scam vote, are buying popcorn to watch the Dim on Dim violence.

As we noted yesterday, [...]]]> America is placing a 911 call to Hillary Clinton. We know it’s time to sober up. It’s time to put away the Hopium, the wine and the roses. It’s time for Americans to send Obama cartons of cigarettes – he’s fired up and ready to go – go away.

As we noted yesterday, Hillary Clinton understands the disaster of record U.S. budget deficits – which lead to bigger U.S. debt – which lead to bigger interest payments. To Hillary this deficit and debt are “a matter of national security” not just economics. To Hillary Clinton the financial irresponsibility and the increased reliance for Hopium dollars from nations like China are a danger and “The moment of reckoning cannot be put off forever.”

The Tea Party movement, once derided by Dimocrats, is now seen as a powerful force – even by delusional Dimocrats like Nancy Pelosi. What fuels the Tea Party movement, is what fueled the 1990s Ross Perot movement – fiscal irresponsibility by the U.S. government. Bill Clinton seized that moment (his last four budgets were in balance or in surplus) and made the Democratic Party the party of fiscal responsibility. Now Hillary Clinton is poised to do the exact same seize-fortune-by-the-forelock moment.

Republicans under George W. Bush were fiscal madmen. Barack Obama’s Dimocratic Party Obamination is likewise a party of crazed spenders. Hillary Clinton’s focus on the need to “turn the clock back” is the way to the future. Hillary Clinton, in last week’s critique of “this deficit and debt”, is saying “It’s The Economy, Stupid!”

In 2012 no political party will be able to run with the promise of new programs or new spending proposals. There is simply no money left. When interest rates begin to rise significantly, as they surely will having already started to slightly rise, interest payments on the debt will balloon and make that part of the budget a cancer that feeds on the nation. Dimocrats will not only be deprived of a promise based election but they will also be deprived of a “stay the course, we are competent” election run.

The fire next time will not be promises of new programs or new spending proposals but of change back to competence and experience and vision. The fire next time will be fiscal sanity, paying the bills, the American economy, and jobs, jobs, jobs.

* * * * * *

Hillary Clinton The Fighter

Barack Obama savaged Hillary Clinton as a polarizing force who could not get the celestial choirs to sing. Hillary was likened to Karl Rove. Celestial Choirs Obama promised, promised, Americans he would be a “uniter not divider” and now he is caught in a trap of his own making and whose promises must be held to account:

Hillary Clinton is fiscally responsible but that does not mean what must be done won’t be done. Hillary fights. When the health care legislation failed to pass in the 1990s, Hillary Clinton did not give up. Hillary continued to work on health care issues and legislation was passed which provided health care to children. Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama attacked Hillary. In 2008 the Chappaquiddick Chauffeur tried to drive Hillary off the bridge with lies. Here’s Fact Check:

“One of Clinton’s signature claims has come under fire from political foes, quoted by the Boston Globe, who say she doesn’t deserve credit for expanding federal health insurance for millions of children.

We review the record and conclude that she deserves plenty of credit, both for the passage of the SCHIP legislation and for pushing outreach efforts to translate the law into reality. [snip]

The newspaper also said that “privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming” over Clinton’s claim but didn’t name any of them. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who cosponsored the 1997 legislation that eventually led to the creation of SCHIP, was asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role. The Globe said he wouldn’t criticize Clinton “directly” but said: “Facts are stubborn things … I think we ought to stay with the facts.”

Kennedy, of course, is now backing Clinton’s rival, Barack Obama, for the nomination. But last year, before that endorsement, he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying something quite different, which the Globe did not note in its story:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Oct. 6, 2007: The children’s health program wouldn’t be in existence today if we didn’t have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In that same story, The AP’s Beth Fouhy concluded, “While Kennedy is widely viewed as the driving force behind the program, by all accounts the former first lady’s pressure was crucial.” She quoted Nick Littlefield, who had been a senior health adviser to Kennedy, as saying, “we relied on her, worked with her and she was pivotal in encouraging the White House to do it.”

The AP’s assessment is backed up by others we consulted. [snip]

One of the co-authors of the plan, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, credited Mrs. Clinton for her “invaluable help, both in the fashioning and the shaping of the program.”

Years later, when Clinton was first running for the Senate, Kennedy’s aide Littlefield was still giving her credit. The New York Times quoted him as saying, ”She was a one-woman army inside the White House to get this done.” [snip]

Moreover, Hillary Clinton took a major role in translating the new law into action. [snip]

Our conclusion: Clinton is right on this one.”

Hillary Clinton fights to do what is necessary. This does not mean Hillary will be fiscally irresponsible. Hillary will get the job done and the job is jobs. Hillary Clinton doesn’t get the job done with wistful wishing and dreaming. Barack Obama must go, and Hillary Clinton has to answer the 911 call from the American people.

It’s The Economy (and Jobs), Stupid!

Hillary has a history of fighting to invest precious taxpayer dollars wisely. Yet, Hillary Clinton knows the job of the president must be to create jobs and to get the engine of American power, the economy, back to sanity. Her non-candidate message is, “It breaks my heart that 10 years ago we had a balanced budget, that we were on the way of paying down the debt of the United States of America.”

Fiscal sanity versus fiscal madness will be what elections for the foreseeable future will be fought over. The pompous Obama endorser Dan Gerstein gets some things right today:

The Democrats considered the $787 billion recovery package not just an essential step for saving the economy from depression, but also a first strike in White House’s “big bang” strategy. It would, by their way of thinking, build political momentum for a range of other major Obama agenda items like climate change. But for much of the public, the poorly conceived and marketed stimulus plan was the last straw in the unsettling explosion of government and debt that began with the bipartisan bailout bonanza in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Ever since that dividing line was crossed, the Democrats have seemed to be operating in a hermetically sealed political vacuum, impervious to the public’s changing post-crash priorities and diminishing tolerance for big government solutions. The complex, sector-remaking cap-and-trade bill is a perfect example. That plan may have been a tough but closeable sell in a stable economy, given the short-term sacrifices we would have to make to secure the long-term rewards. But it was a dead letter in a near-depressed economy with a mistrustful electorate prone to believe the most damning attacks about higher taxes and lost jobs. Yet the Democrats plowed ahead with a bill in the House and only stopped when Senate moderates bolted.

That was nothing, though, compared to the multi-pronged Democratic disconnect on health care. It was clear early on that the public wanted the president and Congress to focus on the economy, especially after the evidence mounted that the stimulus, whatever its disaster-preventing benefits, was not going to spur job growth any time soon. Yet the Democrats went ahead and devoted most of the last year to health care reform, which only reinforced the growing perception that Washington was still as arrogant and unresponsive as ever and that the Democrats, like their predecessors, were still out for themselves and their political aims.

It’s the economy, but Obama and his Dimocrats think it’s about Mess-iah’s diminishing cult of personality and the acolyte Dimocrats. But it’s about the economy and the voters. The damage Obama and his Dimocrats do now will last for “years to come” if not generations to come.

Most voters are impressionistic, especially independents and moderates of both parties. They look at the whole of what you have done and the how of what you have done. If Democrats ram through an unpopular trillion-dollar health care bill in this climate, with Congress’ approval rating at 15%, they may well cement their image as the worst of Washington and sever their claim on the public’s trust for years to come. Even if ObamaCare delivers over time–and if it avoids the substantial premium increases that the Massachusetts universal care system has produced–it most likely will be too little too late.

Again, consider the context. Trust in government–which has been trending substantially downward since the crash of 2008–is in tipping-point territory right now. A recent New York Times poll showed that 70% of Americans are angry or dissatisfied with how Washington is handling the people’s business; 80% said that members of Congress are more interested in pandering to special interest groups than in serving the needs of people who elected them; and 81% said members of Congress across the board deserve to be thrown out. A new CNN poll out this week goes a step further and shows that 56% of Americans now think the federal government poses a threat to their rights, with even 37% of Democrats sharing that view.

Those numbers beg the question: Would the Democrats actually be better off if their comprehensive health care bill does not pass? I tend to think so, though as I argued last week, the best course for Democrats would be to skip the all-or-nothing trap and pass a center-out bill that contains the 80% of insurance reforms on which both sides already agree. But that’s a moot point: The Democrats are going for broke (in more ways than one). The more salient question is when will the Democrats start connecting the dots–and recognize that the American people are not going to accept a government that is not willing to heed their doubts.

What happened to “jobs, jobs, jobs”? The High Church of Barack Obama, the New York Times is scratching it’s head:

By the time March arrived, President Obama was supposed to be entering his third month of the year talking about three things: jobs, jobs, jobs.

That was the plan of the White House — and the plea from many Democrats — as the unemployment rate remained frozen near 10 percent and the economy showed only hints of brightening. The administration created a “White House to Main Street” tour, giving Mr. Obama a forum to see and feel America’s pain, and offer his plan for relief.

So whatever happened to that shift from health care to the economy?

Have a cigarette, Barack. Eat some greasy food, Barack.

Democrats on midterm election ballots feel a growing sense of worry that the year is quickly ticking away. If the next chapter of the health care debate consumes the month of March, will there be time to pursue other legislation before campaigning begins in earnest?

The trip was Mr. Obama’s first to Georgia since campaigning against Hillary Rodham Clinton nearly two years ago in the presidential race. He was greeted by an editorial in The Savannah Morning News, with a headline declaring: “Welcome Mr. President: It’s about jobs.”

With Barack Obama it’s always words, words, words and now the words are “jobs, jobs, jobs”. But Obama’s words do not match Obama’s actions.

“When it comes to domestic policy, I have no more important job as president than seeing to it that every American who wants to work, and is able to work, can find a job, and a job that pays a living wage,” Mr. Obama said. “That was my focus last year, and that is my focus this year.”

If we take Obama’s word that “jobs’ was last year’s “focus” and this years “focus”, the conclusion must be that a focused Obama is still not getting the “job” done. Where are the jobs? Today Obama will try again to force through the massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to a system that is acknowledged by most to be broken. Obama says he is focused on “jobs” but in reality is focus is on bringing more people into a system that is broken and forcing taxpayers to pay for the punishment.

He intended to move forward whether they joined him or not, aides said, so the White House could return to its originally scheduled message of jobs, jobs, jobs.

Where are the jobs?

* * * * * *

Where’s the economy?

Judd Gregg, the Republican Barack Obama wanted for Commerce Secretary, was interviewed recently by Ed Luce (the reporter who recently rocked Washington with a “blame the staff” article on Barack Obama’s collapsing White House) believes the U.S. is near a “financial meltdown”:

“The US is heading for a debt-driven “financial meltdown” within five to seven years, according to Judd Gregg, the outgoing Republican senator for New Hampshire. [snip]

“We have had China say that they are looking for other places to put their reserves and that is probably a smart decision on their part,” said Mr Gregg, who will not seek re-election in November. “So the warning signs are pretty clear and the path is unsustainable and, at this point, unless we take different actions, unavoidable.”

But the senator, who was the most high-profile Repub­lican invited by Barack Obama, the president, to join his administration last year, an offer Mr Gregg accepted and then turned down, said he doubted that the two parties would get together to tackle it.”

Thus far, Gregg is right that the two parties are unable or unwilling to tackle the problems the American economy faces. The American economy has 8 million manufacturing jobs and an economy with 150 million workers. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Americans strongly believe the country is on the wrong track and Obama’s approval is tracking down, down, down. It’s going to get worse. In a major article, the Atlantic magazine explores “How A New Jobless Era Will Transform America“.

“The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

In 2012, the Republicans will blame Barack Obama and his self-alleged “focus on jobs” failed policies for continued joblessness. At best Barack Obama will be able to respond “I am a boob” in his own defense. The defense will be valid, but the situation will be dire.

According to the liberal Atlantic magazine, even by 2014 unemployment will only decline “a little”; average duration of unemployment last year surpassed six months; the jobless and those that have given up looking for work reached 17.4% in October; teenager unemployment reached 27%; unemployment “may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades.”

Whatever alleged benefits of the Obama stimulus scam, they have come and gone (according to Obama’s economic adviser chair Christina Romer, the Federal Reserve, and Goldman Sachs). “The economy now sits in a hole more than 10 million jobs deep—that’s the number required to get back to 5 percent unemployment, the rate we had before the recession started, and one that’s been more or less typical for a generation.” Due to population growth the economy must produce about 1.5 million new jobs a year “just to keep from sinking deeper.”

“Even if the economy were to immediately begin producing 600,000 jobs a month—more than double the pace of the mid-to-late 1990s, when job growth was strong—it would take roughly two years to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in. [snip]

The construction and finance industries, bloated by a decade-long housing bubble, are unlikely to regain their former share of the economy, and as a result many out-of-work finance professionals and construction workers won’t be able to simply pick up where they left off when growth returns—they’ll need to retrain and find new careers. (For different reasons, the same might be said of many media professionals and auto workers.)”

The bad news is long and ugly. For the Barack Obama addled young, a large chunk of that demographic, the bad news is “fun”. Stories of “funemployment” abound among the Hopium guzzler Obama young.

Many of today’s young adults seem temperamentally unprepared for the circumstances in which they now find themselves. Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has carefully compared the attitudes of today’s young adults to those of previous generations when they were the same age. Using national survey data, she’s found that to an unprecedented degree, people who graduated from high school in the 2000s dislike the idea of work for work’s sake, and expect jobs and career to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle. Yet they also have much higher material expectations than previous generations, and believe financial success is extremely important. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want,’” Twenge told me. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’”

Barack youth will have a rude wake up call. Many African-Americans will have a tough time too. The Atlantic relates these facts:

“In June 1999, the journalist Ellis Cose wrote in Newsweek that it was then “the best time ever” to be black in America. He ticked through the reasons: employment was up, murders and out-of-wedlock births down; educational attainment was rising, and poverty less common than at any time since 1967. Middle-class black couples were slowly returning to gentrifying inner-city neighborhoods. “Even for some of the most persistently unfortunate—uneducated black men between 16 and 24—jobs are opening up,” Cose wrote.”

“The best time ever to be black in America” was when “racist” Bill Clinton was in the White House. Another tough wake up call. In the age of Mess-iah Obama the White House is a bleak house:

“But many of those gains are now imperiled. Late last year, unemployment among black teens ages 16 to 19 was nearly 50 percent, and the unemployment rate for black men age 20 or older was almost 17 percent. With so few jobs available, Wilson told me, “many black males will give up and drop out of the labor market, and turn more to the underground economy. And it will be very difficult for these people”—especially those who acquire criminal records—“to reenter the labor market in any significant way.” Glen Elder, the sociologist at the University of North Carolina, who’s done field work in Baltimore, said, “At a lower level of skill, if you lose a job and don’t have fathers or brothers with jobs—if you don’t have a good social network—you get drawn back into the street. There’s a sense in the kids I’ve studied that they lost everything they had, and can’t get it back.

In New York City, 18 percent of low-income blacks and 26 percent of low-income Hispanics reported having lost their job as a result of the recession in a July survey by the Community Service Society. More still had had their hours or wages reduced. About one in seven low-income New Yorkers often skipped meals in 2009 to save money, and one in five had had the gas, electricity, or telephone turned off. Wilson argues that once neighborhoods become socially dysfunctional, it takes a long period of unbroken good times to undo the damage—and they can backslide very quickly and steeply. “One problem that has plagued the black community over the years is resignation,” Wilson said—a self-defeating “set of beliefs about what to expect from life and how to respond,” passed from parent to child. “And I think there was sort of a feeling that norms of resignation would weaken somewhat with the Obama election. But these hard economic times could reinforce some of these norms.”

A year ago, in “Who Obama Hurts Most” we wrote Obama would most hurt those who voted for him – his own deluded supporters. Those deluded supporters are the one now most in need of – Hillary Clinton.

We never worshiped Hillary Clinton. We don’t drink Hopium, even if it is Pink. It was never about Hillary. It is about us, the American people.

The American people in 2012 will dial 911. Hillary Clinton must answer. She’s our only hope.

After George W. and Barack Obama, experience might finally come back in vogue on the presidential candidate resumé. Experience could be the Hillary Clinton 2012 campaign theme yet again. But there is a deadly Barack Obama caused problem, [...]]]> Elect a boob, expect boobery. This time, “Try Experience – For A Real Change.”

After George W. and Barack Obama, experience might finally come back in vogue on the presidential candidate resumé. Experience could be the Hillary Clinton 2012 campaign theme yet again. But there is a deadly Barack Obama caused problem, and opportunity.

* * * * * *

When President Bill Clinton left office, with approval ratings in the mid-60s, the economy was purring and the deficit lion tamed. The debt carnivore too was in retreat. Then… we’ll let Hillary Clinton explain:

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said “outrageous” advice from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped create record U.S. budget deficits that put national security at risk.

Appearing before congressional panels to defend the State Department’s $52.8 billion budget request for 2011, Clinton said the massive U.S. foreign debt had sapped U.S. strength around the world.

“It breaks my heart that 10 years ago we had a balanced budget, that we were on the way of paying down the debt of the United States of America,” Clinton said.

“I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn’t really need to pay down the debt — outrageous in my view,” she said.”

George W. Bush signed into law “a massive tax cut while spending billions on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and sponsoring a major expansion of the Medicare health program for seniors.” Experienced Hillary “urged lawmakers to tackle the federal budget deficit, which reached a record $1.4 trillion for the fiscal year that ended last September.”

“We have to address this deficit and the debt of the United States as a matter of national security not only as a matter of economics,” Clinton said. “I do not like to be in a position where the United States is a debtor nation to the extent that we are.”

Having to rely on foreign creditors hit “our ability to protect our security, to manage difficult problems and to show the leadership that we deserve,” she said.

“The moment of reckoning cannot be put off forever,” she said. “I really honestly wish I could turn the clock back.”

Wistfulness over the past will not produce the needed change. Hillary Clinton is going to have to produce that change. And don’t think Hillary did not understand the meaning of her words. (Go to the head of the class “Antifish” for your comment on PumaPAC “Does anyone else see possible “campaign talk” in this testimony, or am I just wishfully thinking?“)

Unease and outright distrust of the Federal government by a furious public due to runaway debt and deficits are the Barack Obama caused problem and opportunity. For the foreseeable future candidates for president are not going to be able to run on campaign promises which require the expenditure of vast sums of money. Barack Obama drained what little was left in the Treasury. This campaign limitation will not particularly hurt Republicans. But for anyone running with a “D” after their name the problem will be insurmountable – but not for Hillary.

* * * * * *

This morning (8:45 a.m. EST) Lynn Forester de Rothschild will appear on Fox And Friends. The discussion will center on her latest published article which ends with the following:

“Our central problem is that the combination of his grandiloquence and the September 2008 financial crisis led to his election. Now, the only way to stop him in the next three years is through voter pressure on Congress. One course is to follow Massachusetts and just elect any Republican. But both parties lack courageous leaders who will fight for the values and policies of the middle. We need a movement of the militant middle; millions of voters who support the sensible policies from both parties. This would give Democrats political cover to stand up to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid and Republicans the backbone to acknowledge that the country must progress in order to be strong. Most Americans see a false choice between a smaller government and a progressive country. We must have both. It is our only hope.”

We at Big Pink believe that in November 2010 Dimocrats must suffer devastating defeat and doom – it is the only way to wake them up to the massive Mistake In ‘08 and the need to return to the FDR/Hillary Clinton Coalition. We agree with Lynn Forester that in 2012, once Obama is out of the picture, a reassertion of responsibility and fiscal common sense must be returned to the national government on a bipartisan basis.

American power, prestige, influence and our way of life are predicated on a strong economy. For a strong economy we need jobs for Americans in America. Barack Obama does not know what to do to strengthen the American economy. Barack Obama does not know what to do to help the private sector create jobs. That’s why Obama distracts with schemes which will reward his friends and donors with massive transfers of wealth from the American taxpayer pocket.

In 2012 the issue will be the economy. Other than President Bill Clinton himself, no one better understands “It’s the economy, stupid!” than Hillary Clinton.

The Republicans know the economy will be the issue in 2012. Mitch Daniels who won a big Indiana victory in 2008 when Democrats won big just about everywhere, is the latest favorite flavor of the day for Republicans. Mitch Daniels will run on the economy:

“If the country has soured on a charismatic orator who brought glamour but little executive experience to the presidency, the thinking goes, then Daniels could provide the antidote.

“Do we want a president that’s pretty, or do we want one who can get the job done?” is how Anne Hathaway, a former Republican National Committee chief of staff who is now back in her native Indiana, puts it.

At 60, Daniels’s résumé is exhaustive: He’s a Princeton-educated former Senate chief of staff-turned political operative-turned think tank chief-turned Fortune 500 executive-turned White House budget director-turned two-term governor. [snip]

He has cut spending, cut taxes, leased the state’s toll road to a private company for billions and expanded health insurance and prescription drug access in a market-friendly way. The result is an approval rating of 70 percent, according to one recent survey, placing him among the country’s most popular governors. [snip]

Top party strategists say that characteristic would enable Daniels to fill at least three spaces in the Republican primary.

First, there’s the obvious: He’s the charismatically challenged opposite of Obama. And recent presidential history reveals an electorate that tends to elect presidents with the traits contrary to the outgoing chief executive.

But because of his record and background, he would offer more substantive contrasts, too.

“He’s a budget deficit hawk, but he’s also the interesting reformer,” said one of the Republican Party’s most influential officials, who insisted on anonymity to avoid being seen as taking sides.

Supporters think Daniels can appeal to voters who are fed up with what they see as excessive government spending as well as those who want a candidate who has actually delivered policy results that extend beyond reducing red ink.”

Whether it is Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, or Mike Huckabee, in 2012 there is only one real and true Democrat who can win – Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama is poison already and after November Obama will be poison unbottled. Barack Obama must be driven out of the race so competence and experience can make a return and so that Democrats realize we must return to the winning FDR/Hillary Clinton coalition.

* * * * * *

March is National Women’s History Month. “The overarching theme for March 2010 is Writing Women Back into History.” Barack Obama and the Democratic “leadership” along with a colluding Big Media tried to write Hillary Clinton out of history. Instead, Hillary Clinton supporters will write Obama, the Democratic “leadership”, and Big Media a ticket to oblivion.

[Part II tomorrow.]

Hillary Clinton supporters know real health care died in Denver in August 2008. Hillary Clinton supporters also [...]]]> Unlike Obama, his health scam is not for sale – at any price. Americans do not want this clunker. This clunker is like an Edsel. Americans do not want to pay cash for this clunker.

Hillary Clinton supporters know real health care died in Denver in August 2008. Hillary Clinton supporters also know that, unlike his health scam, Obama is for sale to the highest bidder (read The Obama Health Plan Obama Supporters Do Not Want To Discuss).

Obama supporters desperate for a rationale to continue the Hopium guzzling note that some items in the Obama health scam are popular and therefore the Obama health scam should be made the law of the land. Today we will instruct these Hopium guzzlers on the Edsel.

The Edsel was a car Ford Motor Company did a great deal of polling on, asking consumers “What would you like in a car?” before designing it. The Edsel was a dream car full of items consumers wanted, but “the word “Edsel” has become synonymous with failure.” Wikipedia has some of the Edsel history:

“The Edsel was introduced amidst considerable publicity on “E Day”—September 4, 1957. It was promoted by a top-rated television special, The Edsel Show, on October 13, but it was not enough to counter the adverse public reaction to the car’s styling and conventional build. For months, Ford had been circulating rumours that led people to expect an entirely new kind of car, when in reality, the Edsel shared its bodywork with other Ford models.”

Obama himself is an Edsel – he is not who he said in his books, he is. The Obama health scam is an Edsel too:

There is no single reason why the Edsel failed, and failed so spectacularly. Popular culture often faults the car’s styling. Consumer Reports cited poor workmanship. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of corporate America’s failure to understand American people. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was “the wrong car at the wrong time.“

Do we need to draw clearer similarities between the Edsel and Obama’s health scam? A spectacular failure, bad styling, poor workmanship, “failure to understand American people, weak internal support, the wrong car health plan at the wrong time. More similarities:

The prerelease advertising campaign touted the car as having “more YOU ideas“, and the teaser advertisements in magazines only revealed glimpses of the car through a highly blurred lens or wrapped in paper or under tarps. Edsels were shipped to the dealerships undercover and remained wrapped on the dealer lots.

But the public also had a hard time understanding what the Edsel was, mostly because Ford made the mistake of pricing the Edsel within Mercury’s market price segment. [snip]

Not only was the Edsel competing against its own sister divisions, but model for model, people did not understand what the car was supposed to be—a step up or a step below the Mercury.

After its introduction to the public, the Edsel did not live up to its overblown hype, even though it did have many new features, such as self-adjusting rear brakes and automatic lubrication. While consumer focus groups had said these and other features would make the “E” car attractive to them as car buyers, the cost of the cars outstripped what the public was willing to pay. When many potential buyers saw the base price tag, they simply left the dealership, and others were frightened by the price for a fully loaded top-of-the-line model.

We’ve made many comparisons of Obama as “New Coke”. As Dimocrats face disaster in November 2010 many begin to see we were right about the “New Coke” analogy. Edsel Obama and the Edsel which is the Obama health scam have not lived “up to its overblown hype.” The Edsel Obama Edsel plan also “outstripped what the public was willing to pay.” And there is this:

One of the external forces working against the Edsel was the onset of the recession in late 1957.

Reconciliation is Obama’s “An Edsel in every garage” demand. American consumers and voters do not want Edsel Obama or his Edsel scam.

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Before today’s publicity stunt the narrative was, “It’s a trap!” Turns out it is a Republican trap on a desperate, bumbling, Obama. The Republicans brought their “A” team to the summit publicity stunt and Obama brought his boobery. On premiums Obama proved a boob with his claim that premiums under his scam would not go up (we wrote about this last year in Who Do You Trust?). The Congressional Budget Office cannot even analyze the Obama Edsel plan. The old “cost control” argument was also jettisoned by credit card Obama in his eleven page “plan”. Harry Reid lied about “No one’s talking about reconciliation”.

The Barack Obama publicity stunt today is meant to somehow counter the correct view of most Americans that Obama lied to us when he promised transparency and that negotiations on health care reform would “be on C-SPAN”. Barack Obama worked out his deals with the pharmaceutical lobbyists in private in January/February 2009 and now he wants to play dress up before the cameras, but it is too late.

Republicans were ready and Obama fell into the trap. Yesterday, before the publicity stunt, this video was released by Republican allies:

Republicans pretended to be afraid of Obama’s vaunted, but not deserved, masterful Mess-iah style abilities. But it was a trap. Why are Republicans wisely participating in these Obama scams? Because every day that Obama annoys the American public with this more than dead health scam is another day there is no focus (another recently broken Obama promise) on jobs and the economy. “Let’s keep on talking about something that is not going to happen and waste more time, Barack” say the Republicans. Dimocrats, ever willing to be bamboozled, continue to play Obama’s game. Dimocrats will pay in November.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama has a “Plan B”. That “Plan B” will fail too. The used car salesman tried to sell an Edsel and now he wants to try to sell another clunker – the consumer will walk out of the dealership.

The Obama health scam is dead. The Edsel ran out of gas.

Barack Obama will continue his publicity stunts to distract Americans from the fact that he has done nothing and will continue to do nothing – other than big Wednesday night lavish spending on parties, sleeve removers for Michelle, and vacations.

Barack Obama will continue to spend on lavish, overly produced publicity stunts which feature himself spewing a cascade of words and more words. Today is but the beginning of the even bigger, faster publicity stunt presidency.

Six hours of Obama. How much more must the nation be punished?

Iran did not blow up the world yesterday. so today we will catch up on some of the news items we have not yet commented on and some [...]]]> Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s failed attempts to devour the Hillary Clinton “machine”, Black Russian cigarettes, hate of Sarah Palin, economic collapse, everything is on the menu today.

Iran did not blow up the world yesterday. so today we will catch up on some of the news items we have not yet commented on and some fun missed quotes that will launch many articles on other websites.

* * * * * *

Hillary supporters laugh (or is it cackle still?) because of an insidery observation few have noted. The observation comes from the comment section of a Hopium factory. The Hopium factory workers are full of outrage that anyone thinks Obama or his thugs are anything but perfect. Steve Clemons, the target of the ire at the Hopium factory, wrote one of the “blame the staff, protect Barack” articles we have discussed then replied to the assaults on his reputation (he prides himself on his insideryness). Here is the insidery quote which brings knowing smiles from Hillary supporters:

I respect that we see Tom Daschle differently, and I get how angry many are about the lobbying/advocacy work he does/did on health care. I know the Tom Daschle of the 1990s in the Senate and the Tom Daschle who walked right through a huge crowd on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Denver to give me a very public hug after hearing from a mutual friend that my partner and I had just been married on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall. I do get the issues that others have about Daschle….but the fact remains that Obama’s political genius is being one of the best M&A guys in politics – morphing major pieces of the Daley machine into the Daschle machine into the Kennedy machine and into the Edwards machine. They are still trying to meld the Clinton franchise in, but that’s been difficult.

By “M&A” insidery Clemons means “mergers and acquisitions”. Daschle is no hero to us. Daschle is one of the establishment who imposed his will on the Democratic rank and file and selected Barack Obama to be gifted the Democratic nomination. Daschle has already suffered Clinton Karma, but we expect more Clinton Karma of the Patrick Kennedy variation. “No merger, no acquisition” with Hillary supporters – death, destruction, doom to the Obama “political genius” machine. The Daley/Daschle/Kennedy/Edwards machine gifted Obama the nomination. Edwards is destroyed, Daschle’s Dakota is going red; Kennedy is destroyed and Massachusetts is going red; the Daley machine is next. It’s Clinton Karma.

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We were attacked in 2007 when we first wrote “Stinky B.O.” Left Talkers who sold their souls to Big Media and endorsed “media darling” Barack Obama, Left Talkers who hallucinated Obama was a potential FDR – now two years after it became evident Left Talkers say B.O. Stinks:

“I have to admit it now. Obama just stinks.”

A little late to say what was obvious to a working political nose. B.O. stinks – always has, always will.

* * * * * *

Calling Obama a “professor” is now “racist”. During the campaign pointing out that Obama was not a tenured professor was “racist”, now you can be a “racist” for saying “professor”.

Ogletree, founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, says he sees the “professor” label as a thinly veiled attack on Obama’s race. Calling Obama “the professor” walks dangerously close to labeling him “uppity,” a term with racial overtones that has surfaced in the political arena before, Ogletree said.

As Obama sinks, the race card rises. The Confluence has more.

* * * * * *

More people smell the stink, than the perfume:

A new national survey from Quinnipiac (2/2-2/8) shows President Obama’s job approval rating at 45%, with 46% disapproving.

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Politico’s leader got into a fight with Bill O’Reilly the other day over the Sarah Palin hate of Big Media. Big Media hates, hates, hates, Sarah Palin but today Politico’s leader pretends Big Media actually “loves” Sarah Palin. It is obvious Big Media hates Palin so we won’t beat that dead horse. We did find this gem in the article however – it’s a confession of sorts – something we knew but the Hopium guzzlers still deny:

Could Palin raise money outside of the traditional fashion of leaning on deep-pocketed donors to bundle checks from their friends and clients? Absolutely. But even Obama’s fundraising juggernaut — in the mythology of the ’08 election a machine built on small-dollar contributions – was a product of wealthy donors and industry.

Read it and weep Hopium guzzlers: Obama was a product of wealthy donors and industry – and he was selected by the establishment. “Hope and change” was an advertising slogan to fool Left Talkers and Hopium guzzlers.

* * * * * *

The worst is yet to come. The economic horror awaits. Niall Ferguson outlines the corpse in chalk:

What we in the western world are about to learn is that there is no such thing as a Keynesian free lunch. Deficits did not “save” us half so much as monetary policy – zero interest rates plus quantitative easing – did. First, the impact of government spending (the hallowed “multiplier”) has been much less than the proponents of stimulus hoped. Second, there is a good deal of “leakage” from open economies in a globalised world. Last, crucially, explosions of public debt incur bills that fall due much sooner than we expect

A Tea Party is needed in Europe.

* * * * * *

Publicity stunts: The rubbish “jobs bill” which throws more money out the window:

It’s a bipartisan jobs bill that would hand President Barack Obama a badly needed political victory and placate Republicans with tax cuts at the same time. But it has a problem: It won’t create many jobs.

Even the Obama administration acknowledges the legislation’s centerpiece — a tax cut for businesses that hire unemployed workers — would work only on the margins.

As for the bill’s effectiveness, tax experts and business leaders said companies are unlikely to hire workers just to receive a tax break. Before businesses start hiring, they need increased demand for their products, more work for their employees and more revenue to pay those workers.

The bill is dead, but it was always a publicity stunt. Another Obama publicity stunt with a big price tag. Americans want jobs and Obama only offers flowery words. Flowery words, garnished with Hopium, are Obama’s “chicken in every pot”.

Paul Krugman too, between fluffing Obama, knows Obama is “clueless” and “we’re doomed”.

I’m with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless? [snip]

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.” [snip]

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses. [snip]

If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

Obama always was the stooge of corrupt establishment forces Paul. Welcome to reality. We’re doomed.

* * * * * *

E.J. Dionne, is clueless too. Dionne, tries to explain the Obama mess but his real agenda is to play the race card:

The most popular theory on the left is that Obama’s race is a big part of the story, and that we are seeing a reaction among some whites against the multiracial, multicultural political coalition he has brought together. The phrase “losing our country” is often on the lips of his enemies, which raises the question of who they mean by the word our.

The racism smear is the only lifeboat left on the Obama Titanic, or is it the Hindenburg?

It’s not racism – it’s all the talk with no results:

Judging by Obama’s long-on-ideas, short-on-accomplishment record, he’s certainly found that to be true. [snip]

In his 2007 announcement speech, he said, “What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.”

Distractions like trips to Copenhagen for Chicago Olympics and Norway for undeserved plaudits and Prizes. It’s all talk from the professor, um, lecturer:

And yet progress is scant on all the largest fronts he laid out three years ago:

_Washington is just as divided now as then, if not more so. Most every piece of legislation Obama has signed has been passed by Congress largely along partisan lines, and political gamesmanship is in full swing. Obama is a polarizing figure himself; a recent Gallup Poll found a 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats and Republicans on their approval of Obama, the largest for any president in his first year in office.

_America is still at war in Iraq. U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out by this August by the latest presidential deadline — later than candidate Obama had planned.

_The economy is on the mend and Obama has made investments in education. But his efforts to curb climate change and overhaul the nation’s immigration system are stalled.

_His health care overhaul, after nearly reaching conclusion and then grinding to a halt with Republicans’ upset win of a Senate seat from Massachusetts, now hangs by a thread after a year of work.

_Obama banned torture but the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects — a U.S. eyesore to American allies_ remains open despite a pledge to close it. And while Obama stepped up efforts to root out terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, America was nearly hit again by a terrorist on Christmas.

It’s almost as if, standing in Illinois, Obama foretold the future, saying: “Too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.”

Just three years later, Obama finds himself tackling a big agenda, with little to show as he steps up his bipartisanship preaching and tries to lead a country once again decidedly angry.

Lobbyists? What Lobbyists?

* * * * * *

Barack Obama is poison. Remember the Big PhaRma deal with Billy Tauzin, the guy Obama attacked during the election campaigns?

Now Billy Tauzin has been poisoned by the Obama embrace.

Two sources familiar with the situation said that some of PhRMA’s board members were worried about salvaging the $80 billion deal the industry struck with the White House last summer to help pay for reform. They worried that liberal House members, who have always thought the deal let the industry off too easy, were going to try to undo it and that it wasn’t clear that Tauzin could convince the White House to stand behind it.

Some board members also felt Tauzin, who was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1980 before switching parties in 1995, had made too many concessions to Democrats, including agreeing to spend up to $100 million on pro-reform advertising. The sources said Tauzin wasn’t fired, but saw the growing board displeasure with his tenure and decided to step aside voluntarily.

Hopium guzzlers will no doubt declare that Obama played a brilliant game and got rid of Billy Tauzin. The bottom line is – Obama is poison – embrace him and die. As Billy Tauzin and Patrick Kennedy have found out.

* * * * * *

As we noted yesterday, Patrick Kennedy resigned. Clinton Karma strikes again. Teddy Kennedy, the Chappaquiddick Chauffeur we used to defend, endorsed Obama. Teddy bought along the Kennedy clan. Now iconic Caroline is a joke, and son Patrick can sit in bars and cars and drink his life away. Three Kennedys shattered in one year – Obama is poison.

The people, reflected in polls, turned from Teddy’s son, the one who endorsed Obama over Hillary. Next up, Chuck Schumer then John Kerry.

* * * * * *

The economy is what matters in 2010 and 2012 elections. Obama thinks his rotted organization will save him. But the economy won’t save Obama:

By some measures, each recession since the 1980s has retreated more slowly than the one before it. In one sense, we never fully recovered from the last one, in 2001: the share of the civilian population with a job never returned to its previous peak before this downturn began, and incomes were stagnant throughout the decade. Still, the weakness that lingered through much of the 2000s shouldn’t be confused with the trauma of the past two years, a trauma that will remain heavy for quite some time.

The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little. [snip]

There is unemployment, a brief and relatively routine transitional state that results from the rise and fall of companies in any economy, and there is unemployment—chronic, all-consuming. The former is a necessary lubricant in any engine of economic growth. The latter is a pestilence that slowly eats away at people, families, and, if it spreads widely enough, the fabric of society. Indeed, history suggests that it is perhaps society’s most noxious ill.

* * * * * *

The end of “don’t ask, don’t tell”? Nonsense, gay-basher Obama is all talk. It’s another publicity stunt, more flowery words, no action:

It also sent a strong signal to the Democrats’ demoralized, demobilized progressive base that he’s still on their side, after delays and compromises on the public option, cap and trade and the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

But House Democratic leadership aides tell POLITICO they are growing increasingly worried over the lack of a detailed White House road map for passing a repeal — and that without such a road map, repeal will end up in the same kind of Senate gridlock that hobbled health reform.

It’s all a crock. It’s a publicity stunt.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) cast the issue in the context of Obama’s recent dual-track political approach of soothing liberals in his national messaging while stressing centrism inside the Beltway.

“There’s frustration, and ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is one small part of it,” says Weiner. “The frustration has been that while the president has said the right things when he’s on the road, he’s emphasized bipartisanship and not [moved] towards issues of importance to the Democratic base when he comes back to Washington.”

Weiner is no dope. Obama is an establishment stooge. It’s all a crock.

* * * * * *

Speaking of crock pots, Michelle Obama has a new publicity stunt now that her “fashion icon” has turned to “fashion icky”.

Fat kids are a “national security” matter to Michelle. Obama thinks everything he does is of world shaking importance too. Parents should encourage active healthy kids, but Michelle wants to make it a national security issue so she can wear her gutter outfits purchased at auto repair shops. Here’s the fatty issue:

At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”

Every day Michelle Obama reminds us more and more of Mary Todd (although we actually like Mary Todd) with her bizarre statements – fashion and otherwise. The new Michelle project will be an opportunity to waste billions every year.

Some of the goals include ending what Obama referred to as “food deserts” with a $400 million a year “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” which will bring grocery stores to low-income neighborhoods and “help places like convenience stores carry healthier food options.”

Obama called for overhauling many federal laws and guidelines, including adding $10 billion over the next decade to “update” the Childhood Nutrition Act, which feeds 31 million children at school and would add funding to feed more children.

Good child nutrition is always a good idea, but we envision Michelle force-feeding arugula from her poisonous garden to innocents. Michelle Obama’s “find something to do between shopping and Wednesday night parties” effort on obesity, with obligatory website, is already annoying. Good nutrition and exercise is always a worthwhile endeavor, although we cringe at the thought of Michelle taking over the nation’s kitchens.

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Finally, Big Pink secrets revealed.

Here at Big Pink we are blessed with wonderful physiques, unquestionably attributable to excellent nutritional habits and appropriate exercise. Svelte, toned, energetic and happy we roam among the Pink clouds, sensibly yet elegantly clothed, surrounded by pictures of Hillary Clinton. Many, not Michelle, seek access to Big Pink dietary secrets. Today, like the Iranians yesterday, we will reveal our dietary atomic bomb.

How can you maintain yourselves in tip top physical shape? What are the secrets to toned arms and colt-like legs? Is there a chemical free, unquestioned, absolute best way to suppress the appetite?

An entire industry is dedicated to profit from the answers to the above questions. Usually there are high fees and berries associated with the answers to these health, diet, and exercise questions. Here at Big Pink, prodded by Bill Clinton’s health problems of yesterday, we will reveal dietary secrets never before revealed to man or woman – and all for the low cost of – FREE.

The Big Pink Diet secret, better than Atkins, South Beach, or any other diet is herewith revealed: Place an 8 x 11 photograph of Michelle Obama (or Barack Obama) inside your refrigerator and/or pantry. This photograph technique is not only an excellent appetite suppressant. Toned arms and nimble legs will soon be yours as you move swiftly and vigorously to open and shut refrigerator doors as quickly as possible. Heath and exercise benefits will soon be yours as you learn to leap through the air, laden with the few items you retrieve from the pantry or fridge without catching a glimpse of Michelle and/or Barack Obama.

[Warning: few (if any) other portraits will have the effects of Michelle/Barack Obama pictures. For instance, a Hillary Clinton portrait will cause you to dreamily consume the Godiva chocolates, Vodka and champagne stored in your freezer unit. You might pluck one of those, only for super special occasions, Sobranie of London Black Russian cigarettes from their box. The sleek elegant black cigarette topped with a gold foil filter, emblazoned with the Czarist Imperial Eagle - wisps of smoke dreamily transport you to a glorious day before anyone heard the name "Obama".

Portraits of Claire McCaskill and/or John Edwards/Richardson/Dodd/Teddy/Oprah/Brazile/Pelosi/Bush/Russert have been reported to be efficacious as well, but not at the high levels of ambulatory fright and appetite suppressing horror as Mr. and Mrs. TOTUS/POTUS/FLOTUS.]

As always, before beginning a dietary and exercise program such as this one, make sure you consult with your physician.

In the article we discussed in Mistake In ‘08, Part II – The Power of Hillary Clinton Supporters we included the following information about [...]]]> At every turn Obama Hopium guzzlers and goons shout “racist!” Any mention of “white”, as in “white working class” is deemed “racist!” The White Working Class itself is deemed “racist!”

In the article we discussed in Mistake In ‘08, Part II – The Power of Hillary Clinton Supporters we included the following information about the White vote and Buchanan County in Virginia:

Reviewing the primary fight, Michael Barone noted that Obama got majorities “from whites only in his home state (Illinois), in states where the white Democratic primary electorate is unusually upscale and non-Jewish (Virginia, Vermont), and in mountain states where the cultural divide is not black-white.” This racial divide, Barone explained, was part of a larger, cultural divide between Jacksonians and academics. “In state after state, we have seen Obama do extraordinarily well in academic and state capital enclaves. In state after state, we have seen Clinton do extraordinarily well in enclaves dominated by Jacksonians.”

The Jacksonian Democrats tended to be white and working-class; the academics tended to be highly educated, and often government employees. This divide is often attributed to latent racism in the Jacksonians. But a suspicion of Barack Obama shouldn’t make you a racist. Consider the case of Buchanan County, a Jacksonian stronghold on the Virginia border next to both West Virginia and Kentucky. Obama lost Buchanan County to Hillary Clinton by a margin of 90 to 9. Which might make one view Buchananites with some suspicion—except that in the 1989 gubernatorial race, Douglas Wilder won Buchanan County by 18 points over his (white) Republican rival.

The Obama Hopium guzzlers and goons want to terrify with shouts of “racist!” Hillary supporters and anyone who dares speak to Obama’s lack of qualifications and inexperience. But White Working Class voters in Buchanan County in Virginia voted for white woman Hillary Clinton and black man Douglas Wilder – but not Barack Obama. In the latest elections in Virginia, true blue New Jersey, and blue of the bluest Massachusetts, White Working Class voters turned with fury against White Obama Dimocratic candidates.

John Judis has examined the question of Obama, the White Working Class and the charges of “Racism” and he has an answer as to why the White Working Class snubs Barack Obama. The Judis article is called “He’s a Yuppie. Why Obama can’t connect with the working class”:

Here is a fact: Barack Obama has trouble generating enthusiasm among white working class voters. That’s not because they are white. He would have had trouble winning support among black working class voters if they had been unable to identify with him because he was black. He has trouble with working class voters because he appears to them as coming from a different world, a different realm of experience, a different class, if you like. And that’s because he does.

I have recently read several stories about Obama that treat these difficulties as if they were paradoxical. The latest is from The Washington Post. “Despite his roots,” the article is headlined, “Obama struggles to show he’s connected to middle class.” And the story—which seems to use middle class, working class, and blue collar interchangeably—describes his supposedly non-elitist roots as follows: “He turned down high-paying jobs after graduating from Harvard Law School and became a community organizer, compelled by the experience of growing up with a single mother who sometimes lived on food stamps. He married a woman from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago, and they rented a walk-up condominium in Hyde Park.”

The first thing to note about this description is that, like many accounts I have read of Obama’s life, it gets its facts wrong. He didn’t become a community organizer after graduating from Harvard Law School, but after graduating from Columbia. He left community organizing to attend Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he joined a prestigious Chicago law firm with offices just off Michigan Avenue. In 1991, he began teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He was chair of a Chicago branch of the Annenberg Foundation. Obama’s wife, who admittedly did grow up working-class, nevertheless graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. And Hyde Park is a pricey upper-middle-class section of Chicago.

Judis is inconsistent and somewhat afraid of the “white” in “white working class”. He should not be afraid. The long term euphemisms “lunch bucket Joe/Jane”, or the “blue collar” terminology all mean “WHITE working class” it is just that cowardice abounds when race is the topic. Judis might be inconsistent, if not cowardly, in his use of “WHITE” but he is commendable in the declaration that the reason why WHITE working class voters do not trust/like Barack Obama has little to do with skin color.

Many African-American voters fooled themselves into feeling “affinity” for Obama because of his skin color. “Affinity” is a politically correct term for voting for someone we feel comfortable with. When a campaign wants to “reach out” to a group the campaign drafts a “surrogate” speaker who has an “affinity” with the group being courted. A union speaker will speak with a group of union members, women speakers to women’s groups, gay speakers to gay groups, etc. Judis appropriately notes that BLACK working class voters gave a “pass” to Obama because of his skin color. White voters appropriately did not provide Obama with the “pass” Black voters gave.

Judis must also be commended for his restrained, Obama biography. Judis, as just about every Big Media personality, accepts Obama’s autobiography as if the facts are true – that is an argument for another day. For the sake of argument let’s accept for now the generally promoted Obama “facts” as if they were true and go with that narrative. We see the “community organizer” picked up his Jeremiah Wright tapes and headed on to Harvard. The “community organizer” Obama, like a thief “casing the joint”, knew who the power players in Chicago were and how to court them, and then he came back ready to cut deals.

* * * * * *

Judis contributes a good working definition of “working class”. Judis expands on Marx’s definition of working class. For Marx the working class “cannot claim to own or control the means of production”. Judis rightly notes that even within that meaning there are “enormous social divisions” that must be considered in modern American society. Writes Judis, “Race and income are important, of course, but so is function, which separates people who perform routine or menial or manual tasks from people who produce ideas and complex services. College professors do not always make more money than electricians; but they live in a different world.” Judis distinguishes the world of “professionals from that of “operatives, laborers, clerical workers, and technicians.”

Obama’s parents were professionals—his mother was an anthropology PhD and his father was a Harvard-trained economist. How much money they made was immaterial. His grandmother, who raised him in Hawaii, was a bank vice-president. He went to a fancy private school and to prestigious colleges (Occidental and Columbia) that turn out professionals and managers. He clearly was not obsessed with making money, but with performing a public service—yet that doesn’t distinguish him from other professionals or other Columbia graduates. It does distinguish him from a working- or middle-class American for whom being a civil rights lawyer or professor or politician is at best a passing fantasy.

[Some words of warning for John Judis: prepare for the "uppity" defense. Any time a class based argument is introduced, or Obama is called "arrogant" or "out of touch" or "fancy", the Hopium guzzlers and goons shout: "this is code language! Obama is being called "an uppity Negro" which proves Obama critics are "racist!!!" Of course, acceptance of such a ridiculous defense means that no black person can ever be "arrogant" or "well-off" financially or socially.]

Judis lampoons an Obama myth with restrained flair:

It is admirable that Obama spent three years after graduating as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, but many graduates of elite colleges spend several years after college doing something unusual, before returning to graduate school or settling into a profession. Some travel around the world; some join the Peace Corps; some try to write novels. In the days of Theodore Roosevelt or George H.W. Bush, some became cowboys or oil wildcatters. It’s a tradition that goes back over a century. It’s called “sowing your wild oats.” Afterwards, they usually return to more sober and sedate occupations appropriate to their social background and education. That’s what Obama did. As I wrote of his community organizing period, he became weary of the life of the community organizer. He doubted he was accomplishing much, and decided to go to law school. He didn’t choose to go to Kent College of Law or John Marshall Law School—schools where he could have retained his ties with working class Chicago—but to Harvard Law School.

Once out of law school, Obama lived and worked over the next decade in a grey area between the very upper reaches of professional America and the country’s managers, owners, and rulers. He didn’t just have access to more money and live differently from ordinary Americans; he possessed power and authority that they didn’t have. He was of a different world, even if as a politician he would occasionally visit theirs.

Judis is subtle in his dissection of Barack Obama. In his previous work Judis noted about Obama that he was “a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it.” Like a Chicagoan on a hooker binge weekend, Obama tired of the play and decided to advance himself. Isn’t that what Howard Dean did too? Dean became a ski bum as his “wild oats” adventure, Obama decided to check out the “peeps” he never knew and was disgusted by.

Judis concludes with the obvious – but it is still an “obvious” that Big Media will not allow the public to read on Big Media outlets:

There is no paradox, therefore, in Obama’s distance from white working class voters. What would be unusual is if he were able to echo their concerns in a deeply moving rather than in a somewhat mechanical way. Yes, there have been some gifted politicians of an upper class or professional background who have been able to do so. Some, like Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or Ronald Reagan, could draw upon their working class childhoods; others, like Franklin Roosevelt or Edward Kennedy, could evince a kind of upper-class paternalism.

This is not the first time we have quoted John Judis here at Big Pink. Judis had a smart thought about Obama’s “bitter” and “clinging” remarks as well. John Judis at The New Republic had this to say at the time:

These difficulties were clear before Obama spoke in San Francisco, but they’re much more glaring now. In the speech, Obama appeared to say that Pennsylvania voters’ opposition to gun control or abortion or immigration or free trade was pathological–a product of what Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once called “false consciousness.” On the other hand, he implied that when he voiced opposition to an issue like free trade–Obama has consistently hammered Clinton on her support for the North American Free Trade Agreement–he was simply pandering to these voters’ displaced anxieties. He was saying to these upscale San Francisco Democrats, “I am really one of you, and I am not one of them.”

Was it “code language” that Judis employed when he traced Obama’s remarks in San Francisco to Marxist Marcuse? Certainly, like his “creative class” cheerleader pom-pom Big Blog Boys, Obama has contempt for the White (yes, Black too) Working Class. For those that have forgotten, here is what Obama said in San Francisco, among the wealthy:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Like liberal John Judis, Patrick Buchanan picked up on the hateful subtext of Barack Obama’s words, which dripped with loathing aimed at the white working class:

It was said behind closed doors to the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.

Like Dr. Schweitzer, home from Africa to address the Royal Society on the customs of the upper Zambezi, Barack described Pennsylvanians in their native habitats of Atloona, Alquippa, Johnstown and McKeesport. [snip]

This is the pitch-perfect Hollywood-Harvard stereotype of the white working class, the caricature of the urban ethnic — as seen from the San Francisco point of view. [snip]

Though he sees himself as a progressive who has risen above prejudice, Barack was reflecting and pandering to the prejudice of the class to which he himself belongs, and which he was then addressing.

A few months back, Michelle Obama revealed her mindset about America with the remark that, “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Barack has now revealed how he, too, sees the country. The Great Unifier divides the nation into us and them.

The “us” are the privileged cosmopolitan elite of San Francisco and his Ivy League upbringing. The “them” are the folks in the small towns and rural areas of that other America.

The Obama “us” versus the “them” was eloquently expressed by Donna Brazile and David Axelrod:

Donna Brazile: A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.

David Axelrod: The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.

Obama snubbed the White working class and now the white working class returns the favor. [We'll have more on the implications of this in Part IV of this series of articles.]

Hillary Clinton was the change, the big change and could have altered the electoral landscape. According to CBS News:

CBS News’ Election and Survey Unit’s survey analyst extraordinaire Jennifer De Pinto goes inside the exit polls from last week’s election and finds some interesting nuggets about those Hillary Clinton supporters who voted for John McCain:

As voters left the polls on Election Day, many were asked how they would have voted if the election match-up were between Hillary Clinton and John McCain rather than Barack Obama and McCain. 52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama’s 7-point margin over McCain.

Interestingly, 16 percent of McCain voters said they would have voted for Clinton, the Democrat, if she had been her party’s nominee.

So who were these potential cross-over voters?

# They were older: 61% of them were age 45 and above.

# 53% were women; while 47% were men.

# 43% of these voters who supported McCain but would have backed Clinton if she were in the race described themselves as Independents. 31% were Republicans; while 26% were Democrats.

# 84% of them were white – higher than the electorate at large. 12% were Hispanic, compared to 9% of the total electorate.

# 21% of McCain voters who would have supported Clinton said race was factor in their vote. 19% of McCain voters overall said race was factor in their vote.

# 61% of these McCain voters who would have backed Clinton earned $50K or more annually. 39% earned less. 61% do not have a college degree.

# These voters valued experience over change. 47% said experience was their top candidate quality and 32% said a candidate who shares their values. Just 10% picked change. But like voters overall, the economy was the top issue for these voters.

# 58% of McCain voters who would have supported Clinton if she were a candidate said their candidate’s personal and leadership qualities was more important in their vote; 36% said it was their candidate’s positions on the issues.

# Among McCain backers overall, voters were divided with 48% choosing issues and 49% picking qualities. But among the electorate at large, 58% said their candidate’s position on the issues was more important.

While 85% of Obama voters said they would have voted for Clinton had she been the Democratic candidate, 13% would not have supported her including 6% who said they would have backed McCain and 7% who said they would not have voted.

# 60% of these voters were under age 45.

# They were mostly men. 59% were men; while 41% were women.

# 41% of these voters who supported Obama but would not have backed Clinton if she were in the race described themselves as Democrats. 20% were Republicans; while 38% were Independents.

# While most of these voters were white (74%); 17% were black – higher than the share of the total electorate. 5% were Hispanic.

# 53% of these Obama voters who would not have backed Clinton earned $50K or more annually. 47% earned less. 58% do not have a college degree.

# These voters were clearly looking for change – 57% picked it as their top candidate quality. This was followed by values (20%) and cares (12%). Experience ranked last with 8%.

# 60% of these voters said issue positions were more important; 38% said it was leadership and personal qualities.

With Hillary Clinton we could have had fundamental change AND an experienced leader, not a boob and a stooge. But the Democratic establishment imposed their will and gifted Obama the nomination. This is one of the greatest historical mistakes in American history.

The “Mistake In ‘08″ is increasingly recognized but not yet repudiated by the perpetrators. The guilty will be punished with the electoral death penalty.

[Part IV, coming soon.]

JanH, quoted from a gossip columnist [...]]]> A little snowflake can’t do much. Put enough snowflakes together however, and it’s a beautiful sight to see. Whole cities stop functioning and entire countries are forced to wait until those little snowflakes go away. Sometimes those snowflakes don’t go away – they’re called Hillary Clinton supporters.

JanH, quoted from a gossip columnist yesterday. The quote goes to show that even in those precincts, the smell of Obama desperation is in the air. Cindy Adams published a ridiculous “item” which can be dismissed completely as a possibility, but the news “item” is but a small example of how even in the society pages the “ladies who lunch” are aware of the mess Mess-iah Obama is and the only solution to the problem: Hillary Clinton. Here’s Cindy, fresh from a manicure:

Now, anyone mentioned the so far mumbled-about-only-behind-sealed-doors possibility that in this coming Supreme Court draught Our Father Who Art in the White House could . . . would . . . might . . . nominate Biden to the bench? The idea being to get Hillary as VP. To shore up his poll numbers. Let nobody say he’d even throw Michelle under the bus so’s to keep his government housing job. Let nobody say that. However, let somebody say that since his support has eroded with working-class Democrats, and that’s Hillary country . . . is all I’m saying.

Hillary country. Cindy Adams is saying what Americans of all colors and all parties are saying: Obama is a loser; “Hillary, save us!”

Cindy Adams is wrong on the Supreme Court nomination angle, but this gossip “item” is exactly right on the point of Hillary Clinton’s strong support with working class Democrats. Oh, and Michelle should be worried, that bus has big tires.

* * * * * *

Big Pink readers know we wrote long ago and often about the situation comedy demographics of the monster Obamination Dimocratic Party. We wrote long ago about how this hideous apparatus which supplanted the winning FDR/Hillary Clinton coalition was a loser that would not last. Barack Obama Destroys the Democratic Party, we wrote because his situation comedy coalition essentially is the old George McGovern coalition. The financial emergency and the reemergence at the end of 2008 of George W. Bush to deal with that financial emergency created an historical aberration: the election of Barack Obama after the selection and gifting of the Democratic nomination to B.O.

That historical aberration which led to the current catastrophe is increasingly recognized even among the Obama Apologists who are in retreat. Now, almost on a weekly if not daily basis, articles are published which agree with the arguments we have made for years.

The latest article which adopts most if not all of our premises comes from the Weekly Standard. The article is called The Clinton Voters Jump Ship:

The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama’s decline in the polls represents a new, unexpected turn against him. But an examination of the results of the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts suggests that what we might really be seeing is a return to the skepticism that significant portions of the electorate have showed about Obama from the beginning of his national career.

Barack Obama was the chosen stooge of an establishment cabal we now know. Hillary Clinton could have healed the breach in the Democratic Party caused by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and united African-Americans and the White Working Class under one huge Democratic tent. Unlike JFK who worked for the votes of Southern protestants resistant to his candidacy, Obama choose to ignore the white working class and now the white working class will ignore Barack Obama.

More from the Weekly Standard article:

For six months during the 2008 primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton crisscrossed the country wooing voters. Obama consistently failed to win over important parts of the Democratic base, even after it became clear that he was going to be his party’s nominee.

On February 5—Super Tuesday— Obama did poorly in both New Jersey and Massachusetts, losing to Clinton by 10 and 15 points, respectively. The exit polls were in line with Obama’s performance throughout the primary race: He did very well with blacks, wealthy voters, highly educated voters, and very young voters. He did poorly with working-class whites and older voters.

In other words, Obama did well with his situation comedy demographic, an ephemeral grouping at best, which benefited his candidacy in the 2008 elections but are a very poor choice to build a party on. But it was always about Barack, not about the Democratic Party. Now the Democratic establishment which conspired to drive Hillary Clinton from the race and install their monstrous selection, will inherit the wind.

And then there was gender and race. In New Jersey, Obama was -19 among white men; in Massachusetts he was +1.

In addition to the demography, there was geography. Obama ran well in urban enclaves. He also did well in college towns and state capitals. But he did poorly in the suburbs and in smaller industrial towns.

“Bitter” and “clinging” small town America, rejected Barack Obama and his insults and snobbery.

Reviewing the primary fight, Michael Barone noted that Obama got majorities “from whites only in his home state (Illinois), in states where the white Democratic primary electorate is unusually upscale and non-Jewish (Virginia, Vermont), and in mountain states where the cultural divide is not black-white.” This racial divide, Barone explained, was part of a larger, cultural divide between Jacksonians and academics. “In state after state, we have seen Obama do extraordinarily well in academic and state capital enclaves. In state after state, we have seen Clinton do extraordinarily well in enclaves dominated by Jacksonians.”

“Jacksonians” as in Andrew Jackson. Every year Democrats in many states celebrate at “Jefferson/Jackson” festivities and fund-raisers. “Jefferson/Jackson” are the Democratic Party and in the modern era we add FDR and Bill and Hillary Clinton. The is the core, the heart, of the Democratic Party. That heart has now been removed to install a TIVO situation comedy.

The Jacksonian Democrats tended to be white and working-class; the academics tended to be highly educated, and often government employees. This divide is often attributed to latent racism in the Jacksonians. But a suspicion of Barack Obama shouldn’t make you a racist. Consider the case of Buchanan County, a Jacksonian stronghold on the Virginia border next to both West Virginia and Kentucky. Obama lost Buchanan County to Hillary Clinton by a margin of 90 to 9. Which might make one view Buchananites with some suspicion—except that in the 1989 gubernatorial race, Douglas Wilder won Buchanan County by 18 points over his (white) Republican rival.

We will discuss the “racism” angle tomorrow in Part III. For now let’s focus on what has happened post 2008 election.

The question, then, is how these various coalition groups—the white ethnic enclaves, the Jacksonians, the suburban and industrial town voters—have reacted to Democrats since Obama took office. And the answer is: Without enthusiasm.

In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell won an 18-point victory in a state Obama carried by 6 points. Obama had been -24 among white men in 2008; McDonnell was +43. Obama had carried every income bracket under $75,000 by at least double-digit margins. McDonnell was -8 among those making between $15,000 and $30,000 a year. He was +6 from there up to $50,000 and +28 among those making between $50,000 and $75,000. Where Obama had lost whites without college degrees by a big margin—34 percent—McDonnell did even better than McCain had, rolling up a 51-point advantage. Buchanan County? McDonnell won it by 26 points, a 21-point swing against the Democrats.

In New Jersey, it was worse. Chris Christie was outspent by a millionaire incumbent in a state Obama won by 15 points. Christie won by 5 points, and the exit polls showed defections among the same groups who had been against Obama in the presidential primaries. Where Obama had been only -3 among white men, Christie was +34; where Obama had run even with older whites, Christie was +25; where Obama had been competitive among non-college educated whites (he was only -4 in the general election), Christie was +34. In the rural south, Obama had won Gloucester and Salem counties easily. A year later, they went for Christie. In heavily industrialized Passaic County, Obama had won by 21 points; Christie came within 8.

Which leaves Massachusetts. There were no exit polls for the January special election. One approximation comes from a Public Policy Polling survey conducted a few days before the election, which concluded with Scott Brown ahead by 5 points. Brown was +12 among white voters (Obama had been +20), and the poll suggested that Brown did very well among middle-aged voters: He was +14 among those age 30 to 44 and +3 from age 45 to 64. Among these groups Obama had been +18 and +20. The town and county results tell the same story. Plymouth and Worcester counties are two ethnic, blue-collar strongholds that went heavily for Clinton in the primaries, by 21 and 25 points, respectively. Brown won them by similar margins: +26 in Plymouth and +23 in Worcester.

What the above numbers mean is that Dimocrats should have seen the blood gushing from the chest in Virginia and New Jersey as an arterial wound, not a paper cut. Bluest of the blue Massachusetts was more than an arterial wound, it was the Democratic heart itself, stabbed and writhing.

But if we accept that the comparisons are at least marginally valid, then Obama is not encountering some new, unanticipated resistance from the electorate. Instead, it may be that his general election triumph was the aberration—that his coalition was never as strong as the financial panic of September 2008 made it seem. It would mean that he is now returning to his natural base of support and that the Jacksonians and others who resisted him in the primaries have turned away once again from his charms.

2008 November was an aberration. McCain followed the winning Republican playbook of “come out fighting only after the convention and ride to victory”. McCain was winning even though Big Media was out to destroy him and Sarah Palin. It was then that the financial crisis hit and George W. Bush came back to the fore and Americans decided enough was enough. Americans had had enough. It took the alleged collapse of the financial system to once again drag Obama over the finish line.

As we wrote in August, the Democratic Party died once Obama was gifted the nomination by the establishment cabal. Now the Obamination wolf which wears the Democratic clothes must be destroyed. It’s the only way to restore the common sense Democratic Party of Jefferson-Jackson-FDR-JFK-Bill-Hillary Clinton.

But it also suggests something more, that the Democratic party is now the party of Obama, for good and for ill. While the president is no Jacksonian, his party has many in its ranks. Democratic officeholders should be concerned about their voters fleeing not just from Obama but from their party as well. The president may be in the process of trimming the Democratic base back into something that looks an awful lot like his own primary base.

Obama’s primary base is the desired demographic of a situation comedy. Situation comedy’s are good to laugh at but they do not last. Hillary Clinton supporters are standing by the door in Winter quarters – bags packed and ready. From those Winter quarters Hillary Clinton supporters will either leave to do battle for Hillary, or we will leave, never to return to the fold.

A few weeks ago Representative Marion Berry, a Jacksonian from Arkansas’s First District, recounted an exchange he had with the president. Asked how he was going to prevent a midterm disaster on the scale of 1994, Obama replied, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.” Which may be precisely the problem.

The problem precisely. Barack Obama is the Problem.

[Part I HERE. Part III tomorrow, and the "racist" question.]