Spectacular Delusions
Try to read the lede in E. J. Dionne's piece in today's Washington Post without laughing:
A couple of hours before President Obama offered a boffo revival of his 2008 campaign persona during a boisterous rally at the University of Wisconsin, Sen. Bernie Sanders was analyzing why the president was in a political pickle in the first place.
It's an almost perfect artifact from a deluded, cocooned, utterly in-the-tank mind. A "boffo" performance at the University of Wisconsin! Well there's a reasonable, centrist crowd. The political analysis of America's leading socialist! Well there's a guy who knows how to appeal to the middle. Dionne kicks off his essay with a couple of cheery items from the academic left and the socialist movement, two groups it would seem are the source of Obama's current difficulties, not the solution to them.
Not so, says Dionne. Obama's troubles started when he moved to the center. (Apparently, he moved to the center.) Put down your morning coffee before you continue:
[Sanders says:] "The most serious mistake the president made was not, in a sense, continuing the thrust of his campaign, and [in] forgetting all he accomplished."
Sanders does not discount what Obama and congressional Democrats achieved through the economic stimulus, health care and financial reform. But he argues that by replacing a mobilizing approach and clear progressive goals with an insider strategy aimed at compromising with a few moderate Republican senators, Obama deactivated his own enthusiasts. These are the very people the president was trying to motivate in Madison.
"While Obama and the Democrats have a large number of achievements, it was not enough," said Sanders. "We needed to be bolder."
He wasn't progressive enough, see. It was all that compromising that did him in. But luckily, E. J. Dionne sees the green shoots of an Obama recovery:
That's why liberal blogs are rallying behind scores of Democratic candidates. It's why the "enthusiasm gap" about this year's election is slowly closing. It's why labor and civil rights groups have organized their One Nation Working Together march this Saturday. (And, yes, it's another sign of Fox News' continuing ability to set the mainstream media agenda that you have heard far less about this rally than you did about Glenn Beck's.)
And it's why the polls have begun to show signs of a modest Democratic revival. Buried in the eighth paragraph of a Wednesday Wall Street Journal story on its survey with NBC News was this fact: When likely voters were asked which party they wanted to control Congress, Republicans led Democrats by three points, but that was down from a nine-point GOP lead just a month ago. Could the plates beneath this election be shifting?
These are spectacular delusions. This is straw-grasping as an Olympic sport. From a rally at America's most left-wing college to the activism of liberal bloggers to the ludicrous political analysis of America's lonely old socialist, it's almost painful -- and hilarious -- to read a major journalist so tone-deaf to his own cocooning, so unable to see and hear and feel a country turning resolutely away from the very things -- liberal bloggers, left wing universities, socialist politicians -- he cites as authorities.
Hard to read the whole thing without laughing. But then, I have to admit, a thought occurred:
What if he's right?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
You scoff, Rob, but I'll remind you that Sanders has been elected repeatedly by the voters of Vermont. And who could say fairer than that?
Jun '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Note to E.J. Dionne:
This is the kind of prattle that needs to stay between you and your therapist. And you might want to bump those sessions up to twice a week for the foreseeable future.
Sep '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
This whole article is so magnificently removed from reality that even a thorough Fisking wouldn't do it justice. It is an monument to exactly how much progressives have gotten it wrong. If he is right, we are doomed. If he is wrong, the Republicans will gain enough seats in the Senate and be able to put enough fear into the few remaining Democrats to start seriously considering be able to override vetoes (hey, if he can be delusional, so can I.
Sep '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
I can see Prague from my house.
Jul '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
For his next rallies, Obama will be stopping at Chapel Hill, Ann Arbor, and Berkeley.
May '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
I've no doubt, Rob, that enthusiasm is higher on our side, but my worry is that voting no longer requires enthusiasm. It's gotten too easy.
Mail-in voting begins today in Ohio.
Jun '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Scott Reusser: I've no doubt, Rob, that enthusiasm is higher on our side, but my worry is that voting no longer requires enthusiasm. It's gotten too easy.
Mail-in voting begins today in Ohio. · Sep 30 at 6:11am
Why should citizens of any modern state be burdened with going to the polls when the government can do it for them? I'm sure E.J. Dionne would agree.
Re: Spectacular Delusions
In times of turmoil, I find it reassuring to read E. J. His column is always the same. In reading it, I can be confident that I will learn nothing substantive that I did not already know about the larger world. What I get is an echo of the latest talking points. E. J. missed his calling. He should have gone into public relations.
Jun '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Rush Limbaugh said "I hope Obama fails," but Rush didn't get his wish. In Obama v. America, Obama won. Obama succeeded in getting what he wanted. Maybe he settled for 85%, but in great measure he got exactly what he wanted, and got it in the order he wanted it. America lost that round. Maybe November 2nd will be a different story.
Sep '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
I have read several places where hard lefties aren't happy with Obama. They didn't get single payer, Gitmo is still open, and the Afghan war has been escalated. So I think Dione is right to some extent.
Of course, this is a small segment of the voting population, and even if they manage to narrow the enthusiasm gap, the center-right will still throw many of the bums out.
As an aside, the GOP better not get cocky. Sure, they may take back the House, possibly even the Senate (although doubtful) but they will become Obama's bogeyman that just may get him re-elected.
Sep '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Hey, c'mon, we're just the "Berkeley of the midwest", we're not actually Berkeley..
I actually had a mathematics professor (he was department chair at the time) making off hand comments about Bush/Cheney during the 2004 election campaign. Somehow it was appropriate to mix leftist rants in with lessons on probability theory.
May '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Mark Belling Fan
Hey, c'mon, we're just the "Berkeley of the midwest", we're not actually Berkeley..
I went there for a semester in the early 70s...my dad always referred to it as "The Midwest Chapter of the Kremlin."
May '10
Re: Spectacular Delusions
Read Jim Treacher and Ann Althouse on the Madison rally.