When You’ve Lost Maureen Dowd And Frank Rich……….
The bloom is off the rose for some of the President's most ardent 2008 supporters.
As if the unemployment situation, the flailing economy, and his declining job approval numbers weren’t enough, President Obama is now waking up in the morning to find that the same liberal pundits who were praising him four years ago are beginning to wonder if they didn’t make a huge mistake.
First, on Thursday night, Frank Rich, who’s defended Obama in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, argued that Barack Obama’s Presidency has been a rhetorical and substantive failure:
In the same interview, Rich said that the speech timing dispute with the House of Representatives revealed the weaknesses of the Obama Administration:
Then, today, Maureen Dowd came about as close as one can to saying she’s given up on Obama without actually using the words:
ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”
On the razor’s edge of another recession; blocked at every turn by Republicans determined to slice him up at any cost; starting an unexpectedly daunting re-election bid; and puzzling over how to make a prime-time speech about infrastructure and payroll taxes soar, maybe President Obama is wishing that he had thrown the game.
The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.
(…)
Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.
The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.
The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.
After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.
“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”
The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.
Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.
The Telegraph’s U.S. Editor Toby Harnden makes a similar point to Dowd in his piece today as he points out the extent to which Obama as President is so very different from Obama the 2008 candidate of “Hope and Change” and the extent to which it has become clear that the 2012 re-elect will be built largely around the idea of scaring the crap out of people:
It fits with the campaign strategy Obama appears to have decided on – portray Republican leaders as prisoners of the racist, Right-wing nutters from the Tea Party. They’re to blame, the argument goes, for the gridlock in Washington because of their intransigence in the face of nice, reasonable Obama.
The problem is that every smear and insult possible was thrown at the Tea Party in last year’s mid-term elections but the grassroots movement still drove an historic Republican victory. It is also an obvious attempt to change the subject, moving discussion away from the economy by fixating on alleged racism or religious fundamentalism on the Right.
Such a strategy also sits uneasily with the one that brought Obama victory in 2008. It highlights his broken promise to usher in a new era of bipartisanship by fixing a government that was broken. Then, Obama was an outsider running against Washington.
Now, he intends to be an insider trying to be an outsider running against Congress, even though Democrats controlled both houses of it until last year and are still the majority in the Senate.
(…)
Obama seems to intend to urge Americans that he be allowed to stay in the White House to prevent Republican extremists taking over the entire government. The candidate of hope and change in 2008 is fast becoming the candidate of fear and the status quo this time around.
Will his supporters take notice? Some of them, it seems, already have and while it may be premature to say that this signals the media turning on the President, it seems rather obvious that we’re close to that point. Every ultimately doomed Presidency faces a moment like this. For Jimmy Carter it was the triple impact of the hostage crisis, the failed rescue mission, and an economy that seemed to be spiraling out of control. For George H.W. Bush, it was was the flagging economy and the iconic moment when he didn’t even seem to recognize how a supermarket checkout line worked. This moment may be fast approaching for Barack Obama. Thursday’s speech isn’t going to result in any new “jobs legislation” (of course, legislation doesn’t create jobs but that’s another story) but it’s absolutely crucial for re-energizing his base and giving people at least some reason to re-elect him in a year. That’s what it was all about from the beginning, of course, which is why he tried to play politics with it before getting burned by the Speaker of the House.
Barack Obama may well be re-elected in 2012, that’s not something I’m willing to bet against just yet. If he does it, though, it won’t be on his record, it won’t be because of the “hope” and “change” he brought America. It will be because he and his party demonized the opposition. That’s not very much to build a legacy on.
Maureen Dowd:
Isn’t this from the same chattering class that fell in love with an Obama speech in 2004 and then put him at the front of the Democratic line to run for president? The same chattering class that refused to vet Obama prior to the nomination in 2008? The same chattering class that ignored experience (and I don’t mean John McCain)?
I don’t believe Obama’s risk to a second term comes from the Republicans. I think there could be be a Democrat who jumps into the primary and puts the pressure on him.
You can only blame the previous administration for so long. Three years is beyond long enough. It’s time for someone from the Democratic side of the aisle to be the adult in the room and say, “this inexperienced president isn’t working for anyone.”
But didn’t Clinton abandon his core supporters in order to win reelection?
Obama may have mis-played his move to the center, but I think that was his clear intention. Perhaps with better management he could have moved right without losing the left, but that’s not a sure thing.
Anyway, It’s not like Dowd or Rich are in danger of becoming Perry voters. If the choice is that stark, Obama owns them, no matter how much they squawk.
>the same liberal pundits who were praising him four years ago
If you believe that Maureen Dowd was busy “praising” Obama four years ago, you either didn’t read her columns back then or you’ve forgotten. Or, perhaps, you are somehow under the impression that dubbing the senator “Obambi” and referring to him as an “empty suit” constitutes praise. Like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Bob Herbert, Ruth Marcus, Richard Cohen, and most of the rest of the mainstream pundits in 2007, Dowd greeted Obama’s candidacy with considerable skepticism if not downright mockery. You’d know that if you’d actually bothered to check the archives of the NYT and WashPost instead of just blindly accepting the right-wing meme that the entire MSM fell in love with Obama from the start.
Stick a fork in’im: He’s done. Just don’t tell him, though.
Whatever happened to that thrill that went up Chris Matthews’ leg?
@john personna:
Unless if course they don’t vote. That’s the real danger for Obama due to dissaffection from his base supporters. If they don’t turn out like they did in 2008, Obama probably loses especially given resurgent GOP enthusiasm.
-Polaris
Obama’s base has been especially hit by events of the past two and one half years. They will be staying home.
@OldSouth:
It went to the same place that Matthews put his joy over Fred Thompson’s scent.
And anyone who thinks Maureen “Obambi” Dowd is some kind of warrior for Obama is either obtuse, ignorant or completely dishonest.
@MM:
Not really. I agree it’s stretching the truth perhaps beyond the breaking point to claim Dowd was some sort of “warrior” (whatever that means) for Obama, but it is completely fair to take her piece today in comparison to her past support of Obama as evidence of Obama’s declining support even with his core supporters.
-Polaris
“Barack Obama may well be re-elected in 2012, that’s not something I’m willing to bet against just yet. If he does it, though, it won’t be on his record, it won’t be because of the “hope” and “change” he brought America. It will be because he and his party demonized the opposition. That’s not very much to build a legacy on.”
This is absolute bullshit. Yes, many Democrats, not enough in my opinion, are saying that the Republicans favor the rich over the poor. How else can I interpret Paul Ryan’s budget plan or Rick Perry’s attacks on Social Security and Medicare or the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends? In what sense is this demonization?
@Kylopod:
I think you are being less than fully honest by not telling us the context in which those comments were made though. Specifically almost all of the people you mention were either Hillary supporters or favored Hillary. Obama was not loved by the mainstream Dem party when he first announced because they backed Hillary, and the comments you mention should be digested with that fact in mind. The tone changed considerably when Obama had locked up the nomination.
-Polaris
Stan,
Poor people don’t create jobs. Rich people do (or at least can) if they feel comfortable enough to spend their money. Right no no one feels comfortable spending money which is one reason the jobs picture is as bad as it is.
-Polaris
Oh, cry Doug a river, this really is concern trolling at its worst…considering how the GOP has been the party of NO for just about everything that the President has done or has wanted to do, and considering how they have and will paint him as the scary, demon, socialist menace, what should he and his party do, praise the opposition?
Ahh, so that’s why everyone else should grovel at the feet of these rich people in the hope that they will trickle down some of their wealth on everyone else…
@An Interested Party:
Oh please. Millions of people do it everyday, and right now millions more would kill for the opportunity to grovel. It’s called ‘working’.
-Polaris
@Polaris:
To some extent true, but it’s a weak team that hopes the other won’t show, and that they’ll take the default.
@Polaris:
That was the theory of the Bush Tax Cuts. Unfortunately they are 0 for 2 in producing economic recoveries.
@john personna:
False. Look at the GDP increase after the Bush tax cuts, and the increase in tax revenues during the same period. What you (and many others) forget was during most of GWB’s term between post-dot.com bubble burst and the Lehman’s bros crash, the economy was doing very well.
What GWB’s problem was was he didn’t know how to stop spending.
-Polaris
Curiously, Obama has had a very good week in the polls.
Guess average Americans don’t really care what Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich think.
I noticed the same thing about myself when I recently caught “Meet the Press” for the first time in years.
Half way through the show it occurred to me I could care less what people like them think and turned off the TV.
@john personna:
Perhaps, but I don’t think anyone thinks the GOP is counting on any such thing, at least I haven’t seen any sign of the GOP counting on Obama’s supporters not showing. I was merely pointing out that if they don’t, then Obama in this environment is probably toast, and it’s harder to get out to support someone you aren’t as enthusiastic about as you once were.
-Polaris
@Polaris:
From memory it was something like 2-3% economic growth. Ah yes, we touched 4% in 2004 and then fell off, were falling, as the 2008 recession hit.
That is not a success, especially given that unemployment rate was only creeping down, a couple fractions of a percent per year.
Basically (1) there was no raging success, and (2) we don’t know this was any better than the “natural” rate of recovery, without those cuts.
Given how sluggish it was, I think it was the natural rate, and driven more by global conditions, including the trade imbalances, rather than by domestic policy.
Ok John,
Right now a 3-4% growth rate sounds pretty dang good, docha think? Oh and what was that unemployment rate? Yeah…..
Most of GWB’s term is looking pretty good right now.
-Polaris
Edit: PS. At the very least Bush’s tax cuts didn’t make the economy worse than projections….unlike a certain so-called “Stimulus Package”. Also fair that Job growth basically halted when Obamacare was passed because of business uncertainty. At least GWB didn’t make things worse…unlike someone else I could name.
@Polaris:
Dude, don’t forget those policies were in place when we GOT the 9% unemployment rate.
@Polaris:
Pfft. That depends on how you choose your projections.
Extra credit: What was Bush’s 2006 projection for 2008?
It’s a simple fact that job growth in this country ceased when Obamacare was passed. Look it up.
I also don’t recall a single Bush projection that had joblessness actually increase let alone to nearly 10 %.
Obama owns all that. Like it or lump it. Whether you agree or not, that will be the verdict of the electorate.
-Polaris
@john personna:
No joy. It was Obama (and the Dem Congress in case you’ve forgotten) that made a huge deal about needed to pass his stimulus package “right now” to prevent the unemployment rate from going about 8%. He even had all sorts of pretty figures and charts that “proved it”. Does that refresh your memory?
It’s perfectly fair to blame Obama for the failure of a policy he promoted.
-Polari9s
Poll after poll shows “the electorate” has already decided George W. Bush is responsible for our current economic troubles.
They made him the “Magic Negro.” They “pumped him up,” ignored his past and got him elected.
Now they can’t control their own invention, and I’m supposed to feel pity or something.
Good Grief !
PS: the polls now have Obama owning this mess
@ponce:
What, you mean the AP-GfK poll that’s carried his water for years? What you say used to true but it’s no longer true. See the latest sets of Gallup polls (let alone Rasmussen or others). Obama’s rating on economic matters is abysmal, and his reelect numbers clearly show that the electorate at the moment is blaming Obama for the continued state of the economy whether they blame him for getting us into the mess or not.
Obama himself in 2009 said that if the economy didn’t turn around and things didn’t start getting better, than the voters would hold him accountable, and he would be a one term president. In this, at least, he was correct.
-Polaris
@Polaris:
The context of my comment was Doug’s reference to “four years ago,” i.e. 2007, before the primaries began.
I don’t think Dowd was. She was even more disparaging toward Hillary than she was toward Obama.
But among the pundits I mentioned, it didn’t turn into fawning praise. Many of them continued to be highly critical of Obama even after it became clear he was going to be the nominee. Here, for example, is Richard Cohen in July 2008: “Barack Obama can talk, but his record is tissue-thin.” And here is Paul Krugman in August of that year: “I was astonished at the flatness of the big economy speech he gave in St. Petersburg at the beginning of this month.” And here’s Dowd in April: “Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo.”
The MSM pundits were drooling over Obama only if you define “drooling” as “failing to talk incessantly about Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko.”
Polaris,
If you and your fellow fringe right fanatics didn’t have magical thinking, you’d have no thoughts at all..
@ponce:
Ah, so you attack the messenger when you can’t stand the message I see. What I say now is really no different than Obama said in 2009. If he (Obama) could not make progress with the economy, then the electorate would hold him accountable for it in 2012. Obama did say that. If that makes Obama a “right wing fringe fanatic with magical thinking” to you, then we have little to discuss.
-Polaris
@Kylopod:
Minus the sarcasm, yes. Obama was given the biggest free pass in terms of having his background examined in modern political history. By the way, the “right wing radical” that complained about it the most was a woman named Hillary Clinton. You may have heard of her.
-Polaris
@Polaris: Ponce and Tano have been loyal Obama supporters for a couple of years now. Please be respectful of them while they start eating large portions of crow. They are part of a very large group of emotional zombies who were fooled by the man with the silver tongue
@Polaris: The poor and most of the middle class aren’t employers, but they buy things. The problem is that they don’t have enough discretionary income to keep our consumer economy going. Tax cuts for the wealthy are justified on an economic basis when there’s a shortage of investment income. This isn’t our problem now; corporations are sitting on their cash reserves, and from what I’ve been reading they’re doing so because they feel there’s insufficient demand for their products.
I can’t argue with people like Doug Mataconis who feel that the graduated income tax and social welfare programs are immoral. They have their sense of ethics and I have mine. But I do feel that there’s no economic justification for their point of view at the present time.
Your “messages” are totally divorced from reality, polaris.
Pointing out you and your fellow wingnuts are diffusional isn’t an attack, it’s just a fact.
The sum total of Barack Obama’s achievements prior to election were one book and one speech. Everything else, the sujpposed intellect, temperment and post-partisan political skills were all projections. Seldom has a man with so little to offer been so over hyped.
@DavidL: Uh, what about George Bush?
Regrettably for my conservative friends, this will very soon be turning into a Math Problem in which we grant Obama will not take any states he did not win before. When we consider WI, the ripple effect to OH, and the Ryan Plan in FL, the GOP has to begin the task of deciding which states they are going to take back. They have to have FL, but Obama can win many ways without it.
Confronted with Rick Perry, no democrat is going to stay home. Confronted with Mittens, and there could actually be cross-over appeal, depending on his campaign. But only in single digits.
More importantly, the GOP has to tell the country — the WHOLE country — what it intends to do, and how its policies are better than Obama’s. Bashing Obama is about as fresh as “take my country back.” The GOP is going to have to demonstrate they are worth trusting at governing, and they have few achievements since Nixon went to China to run on.
Polaris could focus on this real problem rather than the ones he invents for us to have. I know math handicaps my conservative friends, but here we are.
Let us not forget that 1/3 of that stimulus was also in the form of tax cuts…
Oh really? So where was all the great job growth right up until the moment PPACA was passed?
Actually, you should feel pity for all the fools who actually believe what these pundits have to say on a regular basis…
Oh yes, we heard nothing about Jeremiah Wright or Tony Rezko or Bill Ayers or birth certificates until well after November 4, 2008…
@James in LA: The GOP is short on ideas, but unless the economy turns around, and if the GOP offers up another dunce, Obama might win. I agree that the Dems will put up another candidate for a primary fight. Then we always could accept the possibility of an independent candidate shocking the wolrd.
@Pete: Obama will not be primaried. No one wants to be Hillaried, because Obama knows how to compete in a caucus. Not only her, but Bubbuh was also unseated that Spring. O remains King through 2012.
Also, the dems have not tipped over the apple cart gone round the bend coo-coo crazy bananas with enough made up hooey to fill an invisible boxcar. Dems see other dems, including the President, as trying to solve problems, not “drown the gub’ment in the bathtub” so the waiting theocratic oligarchy can be ushered in.
A third party would be starved of funds, and only help Obama by dragging in indies both parties need.
No business for which I consult has ever based a move on what the fed does. They hire if they have customers, period. And all of them are hiring at the moment, mostly front counter jobs. School is the only way to climb over the counter and into the back office, and here the Fed helps with Pell Grants and such. Absent Pell Grant and Work Study, my student loans would have been quadrupled.
And for what? An education? Can’t have that when we rely on our own facts, now can we?
Rhetorical question: Why should I give a crap about what Dowd, Krugman or Rich has to say? Who died and made them the oracles of the Democratic Party?
Actually as I recall, there was about a 60,000 net job increase per month on average before Obamacare was passed (it might have been a bit more actually) for the prior six months along with aenemic but positive growth (of about 2% or so). Those gains vanished almost overnight when Obamacare was passed.
Don’t take my word. Look it up. Employment was (too slowly) getting better until Obamacare was passed. Since then it’s been dead in it’s tracks.
-Polaris
James in LA,
Not only won’t Obama not take any state he didn’t win before (a given since Obama actually preformed worse than Kerry in McCain states except Mo as I remember), but there are some states that were anomalies and will almost certainly flip GOP.
IN and NC should be obvious. Florida will almost certainly flip too. Remember that when 8-12 otherwise “likely” republican voters actually stayed home in 2008 (found by comparing VEP and Exit Polling data), Obama and the Dems were at the high water mark with a huge number of new voters that broke Obama 70-30 or even more. In spite of that, Obama only carried Florida by 2pts when he carried the country by 7.
There are a whole host of other states I’d say are likely to flip but those are arguable. However, IC, NC, FL, and probably VA are pretty much guaranteed to flip back to the GOP as things stand now.
-Polaris
Edit PS: The Omaha CD will certainly flip too (or the Neb Legistlature will elminate the CD methode of EV assignments). EIther way, Obama will certainly lose is one Neb EV in 2012 as well.
Ahh, but that’s not the point…the point is how they can be used in an attempt to trash the President…
Even if he loses all those states (and Florida isn’t a certainty), he still wins the electoral college…so much depends on who is running against him…the current GOP field doesn’t appear to be all that intimidating…
He is going to destroy the Democratic Party… I don’t know why they keep hitching their horse to this guy, he’s awful.
@Polaris: Polaris, I will see your IN, VA, NC, FL and raise you a NH, CO, and NM. This lowers Obama’s electoral count to 282, which is more than enough to win.
So, the GOP is going to have to have a banner night, whereas Obama has many pathways.
Given his performance in the 2008 primary caucuses, you can bet solid money the electoral count is chief on his mind because it is the only count that matters.
@James in LA:
How about OH, and NV? I can easily see Obama losing both those states too. You seem to still live under the illusion that the 2008 electorate (D+7 the most lopsided for one party since 1980) is going to hold true now. If anything the leading indicator by Pew and Gallup is that the 2012 electorate is going to be D+1 at best and possibly a push meaning it will be the most GOP friendly electorate since 2004…and that means you need to use 2004 numbers…and don’t forget that redistricting favors the GOP entirely this cycle.
The point is if you use the correct political map (2000 and 2004), you find that Obama is in deep trouble. In fact it’s only because of the loyalty of his key constitutants that he has any realistic chance at all given the economy. (Enthusiasm matters for turnout and right now the GOP has it and the Dem’s don’t.) Thus if we see any erosion of enthusiasm in Obama’s core support, we need to take that as more bad news for Obama’s reelection chances.
-Polaris
@An Interested Party:
The leading poll that matters for an incumbant Potus is the Potus vs a generic member of the opposite party. By that measure, Obama’s chances look grim.
I didn’t say that the states you mentioned “would be enough”. I was pointing out that NC, VA, FL, Neb-5 (Omaha), and IN are certain or near-certain flips and thus won’t be true “battlefields” in 2012 with a more more energized and GOP leaning electorate than in 2008 which is why it’s a gross mistake to use the 2008 map and say things are fine for Obama.
-Polaris
I doubt Obama will have too much trouble winning Florida next year seeing as its wingnut governor has covered himself in feces.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1297.xml?ReleaseID=1633
Ditto Ohio and Wisconsin.
@Polaris:
Ass-backwards, childish, rationalization.
You don’t engage with what the recession was (a housing and credit bust) but instead just say “but he promised” like a frickin’ 9 year old.
Oh yeah, he “promised” as you fought him every step of the way, and reduced his remedies.
Seriously, step back and think about it like an adult. The economic explosion happened before Obama, and no one on watch at the time (Bush, the then-congress) could stop it. None of the stimulus in place could stop it.
Nonetheless, you are prescribing the same stimulus again, as a cure, like a broken record.
Pfft, you have heard that definition of insanity right, to keep doing the same thing again and again, and expecting a different result?
We have cut taxes, we have cut spending, and we are mired in recession. I’ve had people tell me “we need to keep cutting taxes until it works.” That’s the very definition of madness, and a refusal to accept evidence staring them in t he face.
@Polaris: Ye, if Obama had to run against Generic Republican, he’d be in trouble. Funny what happens when you put him up against an actual Republican, though…
@WR:
That is actually typical for an election cycle this far out. Do you think a Romney supporter would vote for Obama rather than Perry or vice versa however the case may be? The GOP number (again assuming all things remain the same which is hardly a given) will tend to be the number that the actual GOP nominee will tend to get unless that nominee has DQed himself to a large number of voters that would otherwise vote republican. This is probably true for Gov Palin (for example). So far it is not true (per the latest polling data) with either Romney or Perry (the two leading GOP hopefuls).
So the correct number to use now is the generic one…..as is the JA number…if you want leading indicators.
-Polaris