After dear old Pastor Wright made his appearance at the National press club, the commenters on Democratic Underground thought that he had done a marvelous job. They predicted that Wright-mania would soon propel Barack Obama to a 50-state victory. A couple of days later, Obama left Wright's church.
When McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin, the Kossacks predicted that she would repulse America, and that a wave of revulsion would propel Obama to triumph:
We're back to LANDSLIDE folks... we'll win West Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia....
(I may give this quote a permanent berth on this blog. I
love it!)
And now we have the polls, which factor in the convention bounce:
CNN -- 48/48
Gallup -- 54-44 McCain ahead.Even if this latter poll is an outlier, I think we can safely say that the Kossack predictions about Palin's unpopularity were just as inane as the DU predictions about Wright-mania. The responses over on
Talking Points Memo (
"Let's not panic!" he said through gritted teeth, half-blinded by beads of sweat) have been hilarious.
Why did things turn out this way?
Many pundits will blame racism. The R word is already being heard throughout progland. But...
wait a minute! Was not Barack Obama
ahead for a while? I guess people were less racist then. At some point during the past week, the earth must have drifted into a cosmic cloud of bigotry. Similarly, I was considered a non-racist when I supported Obama in the primary and when I voted for Jackson in '88. I became "racist" only when I turned against the Lightbringer.
"Racism" has now been redefined to mean "opposition to Obama." The term has
no other definition in modern American political discourse.
But if you want a better answer for Obama's lagging poll numbers, consider this comment by Erica Jong over on Huffington Post:
White trash America certainly has allure for voters. Some people think rednecks are more American than Harvard educated intellectuals of mixed race.
The fact that Jong feels comfortable describing a vice presidential candidate and governor as "white trash" explains why Democrats keep losing elections. As I've said before: Progressives
want to lose. They consider power in bad taste, and they love their snobbery so much that they refuse to squelch it to achieve a victory that they subconsciously fear.
(Question: What would happen to any writer who used the term "black trash"?)
People like Jong refuse to consider the possibility that the "white trash" members of the electrorate
are starting to catch on.
While most voters still have not read Evelyn Pringle's work on Obama's participation in Chicago corruption, they do understand that Obama has told so many provable lies and switched his views so many times that people no longer have any reason to care about his announced stances on any subject. NAFTA, FISA, campaign finance, Rezko, gay marriage, the surge, and most recently, taxes: Obama's word simply cannot be trusted.
Don't underestimate the damage that the Obots did to their own cause by spreading fake claims. I refer to claims about Sarah Palin's daughter, claims about her "alcoholism," claims about her alleged membership in a "Dominionist" church, claims that she slashed a program intended to help pregnant teens (
here's the truth) and claims that she left her town in a sea of red ink. (It was quite black, thank you very much.)
The hoax allegations only built sympathy for Palin. (I was sorry to see Bill Maher spread the worst of these fake claims -- but then again, perhaps Palin should
thank Maher, since these smears helped her. I'm starting to wonder if Rovian forces seeded the prog-blogs with that disgusting yarn about Sarah's youngest.)
In the end, after all the buncombe stood revealed as buncombe, what did Palin's critics give us? They were reduced to carping about her decision to build an allegedly unneeded "multi-purpose" sports center. America is not going to choose its next president based on a sports center in a suburb of Anchorage.
By the way, I've been receiving some responses from Obots who claim that Hillary was treated fairly, even gingerly, during the primaries. Nobody in progland called her a "bitch" or a "cunt." Nobody called her a Republican. Nobody resurrected all the "Whitewater" lies of yore. Nobody accused her of murdering Vince Foster. No, my Obot correspondents insist that
she caused all problems, with her "racism" and alleged presumption of entitlement.
These commenters share Jong's blind spot.
You can't win people over by insulting them, dummies.
I'll say it again. Boldfaced. This is THE lesson of election 2008:
YOU CAN'T WIN PEOPLE OVER BY INSULTING THEM, DUMMIES.Of course, "dummies" is an insult. But I have given up on trying to win over anyone brainwashed by the Obama cult.