How Obama Haters May Help Democrats in Midterm Elections

[Lone_Star_Dem]

The late, longtime New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was said to have expressed confusion over Richard Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972 - because no one she knew had voted for him. To borrow that notion, conservatives today imagine that everyone views the current occupant of the White House as they do: Barack Obama is the worst President ever. Conventional wisdom posits that this potent right-wing, anti-Obama sentiment will diminish the President's power - enough for Republicans to vanquish Democrats in November, regain control of Congress and weaken the incumbent for 2012.

But this myopia has been created within an electronic cocoon of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites and rhetoric from Republican leaders, all passionately reinforcing the message that the Obama Administration is disastrous on a historic scale. It's a message that is being transported as gamely by rank-and-file Republicans as it is by erudite conservative columnists with national readerships. (See 10 elections that changed America.)

Of course, in this modern age of extreme polarization, only one President these past 30 years (George H.W. Bush, the pÈre) has escaped the regular damning hyperbole of "worst ever." But the condemnation of Obama seems somewhat more extreme.

The blue-red divide, by almost every measure, has gotten worse, and the ubiquity of electronic media spreads intense political and cultural disdain in the blink of an eye. The always enlightening Google reveals that typing in "Obama worst president ever" yields 3.4 million results, vs. 1.8 million for "Bush worst president ever" and 1.2 million for Clinton. That stat seems representative of where we have arrived as a nation and illustrative of the relationship between the incumbent President and his critics. (See the top 10 political defections.)

Read more: link

[Lerkfish]

1. your broken link extends the post too far wide.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

2. Is it broken for you?

Odd. It works for me. I'll slip it in text to shorten the size, but I have no idea if that will fix it for you.

Done. Hope that fixes it for you. If not here's a possible alternate link which may.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1993050,00.html

[Lerkfish]

5. sorry, I didn't mean broken as in non working

I meant broken as in a line break.

sorry for the confusion.

[zipplewrath]

3. Some sad truth to this

Loud cries of opposition which don't actually discuss the underlying issues, don't really shift alot of voters. And they drown out potentially more effective criticism. I tend to find Palin useful in that sense. Someone uttering what the vast majority of people can see is jibberish, rather than someone eloquent making what at least APPEARS to be legitimate criticism. If she could actually make an argument, she could be dangerous. But she can't seem to get through a week without looking stupid.

The GOP seems to be dominated by these folks today. From Fox News to Rand Paul, the GOP seems to have more "nutballs" than eloquent critics. All the better for the midterms.

[Daveparts still]

4. The Republicans

have few valid arguments against Obama so they need to make them up, birth certificates, socialism, Rev Wright when Obama has continued the Bush agenda.
Expanded wars, funded the banks, wiped corporate America's backside.

Even the mainstream media continue the fantasy (Time)

"The blue-red divide, by almost every measure, has gotten worse, and the ubiquity of electronic media spreads intense political and cultural disdain in the blink of an eye. The always enlightening Google reveals that typing in "Obama worst president ever" yields 3.4 million results, vs. 1.8 million for "Bush worst president ever" and 1.2 million for Clinton."

A Faux argument since Bush is out of office since when is Google hits a valid source of public opinion?

[Demeter]

6. And Since All Valid Arguments from the Left Are Ignored, We Have Stalemate