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Obama as Greek Bank PDF Print E-mail
Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson   
Wednesday, 23 May 2012 13:39

At least inside my own head, whenever I do forecaster punditry, I feel like I always qualify what I say. Our lives are a mist, we know not what cometh, I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, etc. But then some years down the road somebody chortles at me in the comments, saying, "Yeah? well, you said . . ." or something along those lines. And yeah, I said that, but I thought I qualified it, and I am not motivated enough to go hunting in the archives to see if I qualified it adequately, and what's the use anymore, I think to myself. But then my inner dogmatism bubbles to the surface once more, and I find it is time to pop off again. But not without qualifications.

That said, it seems to me that Obama is in serious trouble. But let me state this in terms of a flipped around thought experiment. Suppose there were a hard left president whose policies were deeply unpopular with the people, but who who had a mainline media that was completely in the tank for him. What would that look like?

It seems that it would look something like what we have now -- clear and undeniable signs of major trouble, with those clear and undeniable signs not getting any major media play at all. That's what it would look like.

Think about it. In the Democratic primary in West Virginia a few weeks back, a felon sitting in chokey in Texas got 42% of the vote against Obama. In Arkansas, a no-name opponent garnered 41% against Obama. In Kentucky, with no opponent whatever, "uncommitted" got 42% of the vote. This is among Democrats, and it is way worse than just soft support. Moreover, these are elections, not polls, and they are spontaneous, not orchestrated.

I am not writing any of this as a Romney cheerleader, obviously. But it seems to me that Obama is officially perceived as being about 10-15% above where he actually is, and he is being held up there by the sheer cussedness of a leftist media.

Obama's support is like the solvency of a Greek bank. By all accounts, there should have been run on the banks months ago. And . . . maybe there was, and nobody is telling us about it.



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C. Frank Bernard  Wednesday, May 23, 2012 3:23 pm
Many news sites have been thinking about it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+Arkansas+Kentucky+vote+uncommitted+Texas+prison+felon+West+Virginia
and at least one MSM site replied why it “shouldn’t be surprising”:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/23/11828661-obama-why-ar-and-ky-shouldnt-be-surprising :roll:
Matt Weber  Wednesday, May 23, 2012 7:41 pm
I was about to come in and say pretty much this. It was obviously just going to be racism. I'm from KY, and the prejudice annoys me to no end, but it's like a script now and we all know the lines.

To be honest, coastal urban liberals don't really like states like KY and would rather they not exist. This is no doubt behind the ideological immigrationism of the Democratic party. If we fill the interior up with Mexicans who are something like 70% pro-Democrat, we'll finally deal once and for all with the annoying problem of losing elections.

I would like to believe that Obama is soft and weak, but I don't know. These early polls are pretty meaningless, because a lot of voters are squishes that make up their mind at the last minute based on some mystical calculation that only they understand. It also depends on what kind of campaign Romney runs. If he hits Obama on the economy then he might win, but if he focuses on right-wing identity platitudes he loses, due to being unconvincing. If he pulls a McCain and softballs it, he loses. I think McCain's problem was that he couldn't actually find anything about which to disagree with Obama.

This election is more a referendum on Obama than anything else.
Andrew Roggow  - re:  Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:17 am
Matt Weber wrote:
I was about to come in and say pretty much this. It was obviously just going to be racism. I'm from KY, and the prejudice annoys me to no end, but it's like a script now and we all know the lines.


Ain't that the truth!

As for the Democratic primary numbers, I can't help but guess that, in order to register their discontent, the Dems who dislike Obama are more motivated to show up to those primaries than the Dems who like Obama. So the numbers might be a bit skewed.
Matthew Massingill  - Cussedness  Thursday, May 24, 2012 11:49 am
I feel like Wilson isn't doing his job if I don't have to look up at least one word in a piece. I was about to be disappointed, but then he tossed "cussedness" in at the last second!!

And yes, the overall tenor of coverage differs not just in degree from the truth, but in kind altogether. The conventional wisdom is that Obama will either win big, or, worse case scenario (for him) win close. All assessments of the potential of a Mitt presidency aside, I suppose we should be expecting just the same two possibilities (win big or close) - but applied to Romney and not the President.
Brian Roden  - Arkansas primaries  Friday, May 25, 2012 7:19 am
Just to inform you, the vote in Arkansas shouldn't be interpreted so much as discontent on the part of Arkansas Democrats. Arkansas is an open primary state.

Since in many parts of the state there isn't really any Republican presence strong enough to field a candidate (especially for local offices or state legislature positions), the election is actually determined in the primary. So a lot of voters in Arkansas are not registered as R or D, and can therefore vote in either primary. The 41% the other guy got may reflect a lot of Republican-leaning non-partisan-registered voters going to the polls to decide on mayor, state senator/representative, and dog catcher, and casting a vote against Obama while in the booth.

I can't remember the exact election, but I do recall allegations several years ago that non-partisan-registered Democrats voted in the Republican primary to try to put a weaker Republican up against their Democrat candidate, who had no opposition in the primary.