20 July 2010

Obama Losing Democrats Over Reckless and Divisive Race-War Strategy

"Dismaying and Dumb"



Dick Morris says a truly-desperate president has painted himself into a corner in dumping the "post-racial" role that did so much to get him elected. This is already doing substantial damage to 
Obama's Democratic support, and all but ensures 
comprehensive defeat in November (highlights mine):

Throughout the Obama Administration, the president has been able to count on the solid support of Democrats. Not anymore.


According to the FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Obama’s job approval among Democrats has dropped from 84% two weeks ago (June 29-30) to 76% on July 13-14. At 76%, this level of job approval is below any the Fox News poll has ever recorded. 


Why the collapse? Most likely it is due to liberal disappointment with the continuation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued use of Guantanamo, Obama’s inability to cope with the oil spill, and his refusal to push immigration reform when he could have passed it before he lost his 60 vote majority. Undoubtedly, the renewed sluggishness in the economy is also playing its part.


Nothing could be worse news for Obama as he enters the 2010 Congressional campaign. Democratic dissatisfaction saps turnout and undermines the president’s efforts to keep his majorities in the House and the Senate.


But Obama is making his troubles worse by his insistence on focusing on his minority voters to the exclusion of even the white liberal electorate. Consider Obama’s decision to sue Arizona over its immigration law. The general electorate backs the Arizona statute by 59-29 according to the FOX News poll. But 38% of Democrats support it as well (50% oppose it). Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers for voter intimidation after they stationed themselves outside a Philadelphia polling place in military uniforms with clubs also underscores the growing exclusion of whites of all stripes — including liberals — from the Obama base.


Polarizing the electorate over hot button issues has long been a viable strategy, especially for incumbents in political trouble. But usually they do so along lines that still gives them a majority of the voters. Obama has polarized the voters but has given himself only the short end of the stick. Not very smart.


A now hyper-racial president is out there rabble-rousing at every opportunity... creating enduring rifts in this society by pursuing a radical and vengeful redistributionist agenda, and all the while slandering white political opponents as "racist"- but it's a fool's game of diminishing returns that he's playing:



Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers so obviously guilty of racial intimidation at the Philadelphia polling places in 2008 is of a piece with the NAACP’s loud denunciation of the Tea Party movement as racists, likening it to the White Citizens Councils of the segregationist past. And the Obama Administration’s decision to sue to overturn the Arizona immigration law — despite the fact that Americans approve of the statute, and disapprove of the lawsuit to void it, by 59-28 — is an attempt to foundation his appeal to Latino voters in racial terms.

In a bid to increase enthusiasm and, therefore, turnout among minority voters, Barack Obama is sacrificing his white support and his non-racial image.

Already, the results of this disastrous strategy are apparent. The latest FoxNews/Opinion Dynamics survey shows that his job approval among Democrats has fallen from 84% two weeks ago to a mere 76% today. This fall has led to a drop in his overall approval from 47% at the end of June to 43% in the middle of July.

But the political implications of Obama’s lurch to the left and his efforts to polarize his Administration racially are only part of the problem. Obama, as president of the United States, is increasingly taking sides in the old racial debates, reigniting them and lending new fuel to their flames. He is no more the president of all the people, but is retreating into the racial cocoon of a supportive minority vote....

But his strategy is doomed to fail. There are just not enough blacks around and the Latino vote is too upset at his economic policies and his past failure to push immigration reform to rally again to his candidacy. And more and more of the white majority is being turned off by Obama’s racial tactics.

It is dismaying to see a president whose rhetoric reflected racial progress to let his attorney general and his supporters play the race card in his bid to keep control of Congress. Dismaying and dumb.