Obama has lost the Hamptons
The left’s Obama pile-on is becoming ubiquitous. Now it’s Richard Cohen in the
Washington Post telling us:
Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them—that’s none—was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.
… I am talking about writers and editors, lawyers and shrinks, Wall Street tycoons and freelance photographers, hedge funders and academics, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Democratic activists. They were all politically sophisticated, and just a year ago some of them were still vociferous Obama supporters. No more.
Frankly, I was surprised. The Hamptons are a redoubt of New York liberalism. It is to campaign money what the Outer Banks are to fishermen. I expected more than a few people to defend the president. No one did…. Most, though, skipped the details and just registered dismay: Where had their “change” agent gone?
In general, Obama was faulted for lacking political skills. I have long held this view, citing just recently his refusal to take advantage of the Republican leadership’s desire to nickel-and-dime disaster aid and instead give them the gift of scheduling his jobs speech on the night of the GOP debate. Obama held out for an hour or two and then ordered a retreat—an epochal moment in weakness, confusion and brain-dead politics. From his grave, Lyndon Johnson wept.
I grant you that the Hamptons are not America, and I grant you further that some of these people will scurry back to the Democratic fold when they have to choose between Obama and, say, Rick Perry. (Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney is a different matter.) In the meantime, though, these opinion leaders, these political activists, these people with influence and, yes, money, have bailed on Obama—not just some of them, not just a few of them, but all of them. The early returns are in: Obama has lost the Hamptons.
I would remind readers where we would be today if Republicans had had their way and John McCain had won the 2008 election. President McCain would be yielding to the left on every issue, the right would be utterly demoralized, and Barack Obama, universally considered the country’s savior who had been robbed of his deserved victory in 2008, would be starting up his second race for the presidency.
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Jim C. writes:
Needless to say, behind Cohen’s back they’re calling Obama a stupid affirmative action case.
David B. writes:
The Richard Cohen column reminds me of a piece by the late Samuel Francis, who wrote that Cohen was one of his favorite columnists. The reason was that Cohen’s columns told you what liberals were thinking.
Richard W. writes:
You wrote:
I would remind readers where we would be today if Republicans had had their way and John McCain had won the 2008 election. President McCain would be yielding to the left on every issue, the right would be utterly demoralized, and Barack Obama, universally considered the country’s savior who had been robbed of his deserved victory in 2008, would be starting up his second race for the presidency.
Counter intuitively in 2008 you prescribed a “dose of Obama” as a cure for the all pervasive but invisible liberalism that is killing our society. It seems to have worked very well, and you are to be congratulated for that prescription. Now the new question is: do we need another dose?
Is Mitt Romney different enough from McCain that voting for him is a net plus for us, as McCain was not? Is the deconstruction of the left complete, or do we require another four years to finish the job?
It seems difficult to contemplate volunteering for another four years of Obama, but like a toxic drug you need to take to cure a potentially fatal disease, sometimes you have to take medicine in doses that make you horribly ill to gain the full effect and kill off the targeted disease.
If we stop now, won’t the left just bounce back with some narrative about racist Republicans preventing Obama from fixing everything? Or how Bush’s ruined economy was too horrible for anyone, even the great Obama, to fix? I can already imagine him as a smug Clinton style ex-president lecturing everyone in sight about what’s right and what he tried to do.
Have we knocked back the disease of liberalism enough to stop the treatment? I’m not sure.
Nile McCoy writes:
Richard W. wrote:
“I can already imagine him as a smug Clinton style ex-president lecturing everyone in sight about what’s right and what he tried to do.”
Better for Obama to be a smug one-term ex-president than a smug two-term ex-president. One-term presidents will always be seen as lesser than two-term presidents. For all his sense of superiority, Jimmy Carter will never escape history’s verdict, and if Obama follows him as a one-term president, historical fact is hard to dismiss.
“Have we knocked back the disease of liberalism enough to stop the treatment? I’m not sure.”
I don’t think it will matter. Liberalism will never be regarded as the disease it is by academics, historians, and political theoreticians. A century of so-called academic experts that will never admit to being the equivalence of flat-earthers. Even if liberalism was capable of being killed, a new form of it will arise.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 06, 2011 10:41 AM | Send