Polls are only bad for Obama…
…if you think he still cares about public opinion.
I, for one, think he has o’erleaped public opinion. His vaulting ambition is to fundamentally change America, and that means a lot of people—maybe even a majority—will be expected to whine about it and even to stop thinking he’s such a likeable guy. But why would that matter to him, if he is intent on shoring up his and his party’s support with new immigrants, new ways to make people dependent on the federal government, and new ways to intimidate and silence the opposition? He can even do it without the help of Congress, if he continues to have the support of enough of his party members and the MSM.
And perhaps, if he’s audacious enough, he could even do it without the support of many in his party and the MSM. Not that those two entities are likely to turn on him. This crocodile would never eat them, right?
So unfortunately I disagree with Philip Klein’s evaluation of a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll:
But going into the sixth year of his presidency, Obama still hasn’t sold Americans on his view of the role of government, which could have significant ramifications for the liberal agenda in the future…
According to the poll, just 46 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that, “Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people” compared with 50 percent who agreed with the view that, “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” In February 2009, right after he was sworn into office, the same poll found 51 percent thought government should do more and just 40 percent who thought it was doing too much…
…[I]f Obama-era failures make Americans more skeptical about federal bureaucracy in general, it makes things that much more difficult.
But I suspect that Klein has a fundamental misunderstanding—shared by many politicians and pundits on the right—of what is being attempted here. Those polls are already way too close, given what’s been happening lately. But if the current plans of those who advocate the “liberal agenda” go as they hope, even that slim margin of smaller-government advocates will evaporate, and permanently. It’s not a question of convincing the population, it’s a question of changing it. And to further that goal, it not only helps if illegal immigrants from Latin America flood the country expecting the federal government to take care of them (and perhaps voting illegally, too), it helps if the federal government fosters the increasing financial dependency of more and more citizens on the feds.
Just look at Obamacare, for example. Besides everything else it does and doesn’t do, it makes a hugely increased number of people dependent on government for their health insurance premiums, and therefore for their health care and even their lives in some cases. How could that largesse, once given, be relinquished?
So why would Obama care about today’s polls? I can’t imagine a single reason. He’s not even the sort of person who basks in the glow of being liked (Bill Clinton comes to mind). Being liked is just a means to an ends to Obama, a tool for getting elected. He has bigger goals in mind than being liked, and anyway he already likes himself well enough to make up for all the rest of us combined.
The intellectual elites somehow think polls are a data point for them to launch their thesis off of. In reality, polls are merely tools propagandists use to form public opinion, not to report on PR, but to make PR.
Even illegals are rational: they are counting on benefits (i.e. bribes) to be available.
But when the socialists run out of other peoples’ money, as will inevitably happen, how are they going to bribe anyone?
In microcosm, think of Detroit as a smaller U.S. Don’t you think the politicians there would’ve liked to have kept the game going? They did want that, but economic reality intruded.
And if Obama’s bumbling foreign policy comes home to roost, and there’s another 9/11-scale attack, what will people say then?
Kinda hard to spend your gub’mint check if you’re dead.
The only caveat is that by drawing down accumulated capital, the game can go on for quite a while…think Japan. No telling when total collapse will happen, but I expect that two months from now we’ll be in a double-dip recession.
That should be “o’erleaped”: It’s short for “overleaped”, with the apostrophe marking the missing “v”. I like that you’re using such interesting and unusual words!
Y
You’re absolutely correct.
I’m amazed that the Beltway crowd STILL thinks that polls drive policy.
All that they do is drive posturing during campaigns.
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As for what Barry wants…
He knows straight up his wants would poll terribly, starting with his want to stay in the White House forever.
BTW, being a Gonnabee of the first water, Barry is ALWAYS making things up as he goes along.
He also is wallowing in Magical Thinking…
He believes that his ideas/ nostrums are outstanding — just because HE came up with them.
(Actually, the chance of Barry actually creating a new idea is remote. He’s not a deep thinker. He’s never hung around with deep thinkers.)
So all of Barry’s great ideas come from (unacknowledged by himself) others. He can’t even remember where he stumbled across them.
&&&
Barry is not only innumerate — he is ANTI-NUMERATE.
The world of numbers is a hate filled place for Barry.
His Grandmother owned that space, and he hates his Grandmother.
(You would too, if you’d met her. That’s why the MSM focuses all attention to his biological mother. Anything to keep the spot light off of Grandmother. All of Barry’s disfunctions turn on her, as she raised him in infancy — and from age 10 on up.)
%%%
ANYONE who takes a numbers approach with Barry (exception: vote tallies) is in for heavy sledding.
Hence, his maladministration operates without a budget. (and without budge, too. He pivots and spins… but never changes course.)
Heck, even his own family operated without a budget.
Language Nazi:
Thanks, I’ve fixed it. Although in this case it was a careless error—I knew where the apostrophe should go and why.
It’s actually a reference to Shakespeare—including the word “vaulting ambition,” too. From Macbeth, here.
blert:
You mean his grandmother, the typical white person?
Matt_SE,
Fundamental to Thatcher’s premise that sooner or later “socialists run out of other peoples’ money” is the assumption that socialists will respect boundaries. But they do not. As evidence I point to France’s recent 75% tax, the EU’s partial seizure of private Cyprian savings accounts with savers in Spain, Italy and other European countries to be raided to save the euro in future crises.
Here in the US, death taxes and my personal favorite: Civil Forfeiture Laws.
Then there’s ‘Qualitative easing’ with its obscenity of impoverishing future generations.
Under the radar, Obama’s plans for income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities. That’s probably how they’ll ‘save’ Detroit.
As of January 1, 2010, the amount of money owed to federal civilian and military pension trust funds passed the $1 trillion mark as Congress continues to loot all of the federal government’s trust funds to pay for deficit spending.
Federal Regulations Cut Standard of Living by 75 Percent Over 56 Years
There are a thousand ways to skin the cat and I haven’t even mentioned nationalization. Just remember… “you didn’t build that”.
“But why would that matter to him, if he is intent on shoring up his and his party’s support with new immigrants, new ways to make people dependent on the federal government, and new ways to intimidate and silence the opposition? ”
This is known as shaping the electorate so that you and your friends get elected forever, consequences be damned. In political science it’s known as the Curley Effect after the Mayor of Boston who practiced something similar. He drove out the rich Brahmins by class warware and loaded up State and local government with zillions of drones. As Barney Frank said, the State House had more doorholders than doors. After a couple of decades of this the city was auguring itself into the ground but the locals, especially the Irish, loved Curley and voted for him until he died.
I don’t think if Chairman O ever cared, only to the point of getting elected and then re-elected. Lie, cheat, steal, the dinosaur media will cover for you. As our former Secretary of State once said: “At this point, what difference does it make?”
You nailed it in the first sentence.
Why should Obama care what the current electorate thinks of him when he’s well on his way to creating his own?
We’ve disappointed him; it’s not about what we think.
What difference does it make if Chelsea is the last one left in Iraq as the ISIL and Iranian death squads occupy the embassy?
GB,
Socialists respecting boundaries will run out of money because it’s easier to spend money than make it (Mike Tyson, lottery winners, et. al.), and because resources are limited but desires are not.
But even if boundaries are not respected, they run out of money by “killing the golden goose” (Soviet Union). It just takes a while longer.
This is how you fight back…
http://www.weedwrench.com/weedwrench/
So bother to sending “advisors” or whatever into Iraq? He claims it’s wrong to be involved, and clearly wants no part of it.. It’s only been public criticism that motivated him to generate an appearance that he’s engaged. If he truly didn’t care what the public thought, he’d ignore it like the Keystone pipeline, the IRS, The NSA, etc. The fact that his efforts are frivolous and to give the appearance he’s studying the situation is evidence of a thin skin. There’s no other reason for these half ass measures than to show his fans he’s being presidential. It only takes a few half hearted gestures to keep Juan Williams and his kind happy and supportive. He cares what the Juan’s think, and when they start jabbering about him needing show he’s in charge, Obama listens. He doesn’t want legions of core believers to stray. He’s still got a thin skin, it just depends on who’s opinion it is.
But I agree he will continue a reign of terror in the face of criticism, as long as it’s essentially those whom he disregards.
I’m still of the opinion that if the media turned on him, and a large percentage of his traditional support eroded for more than a couple of news cycles, he would be very agitated. And I think his reaction would be spiteful rather than conciliatory – I believe he would lash out like a spoiled brat at anyone if his approval went below George Bush’s, and stayed there.
He has great control over hatred for anyone that would undermine the power trip he’s been riding, but there is an ugly, mean spirit beneath his polished exterior that would surface if the opinions of his groupies changed.
Matt_SE,
With all due respect I don’t think you get ‘the game’ or perhaps more likely, I was unclear. IMO; the left is composed mostly of fools, disconnected from reality and ideologically committed to what they believe to be or have been told to be, the ‘truth’.
A much smaller percentage are the Stalin archetype (Rahm Emanuel), power is what motivates them and out of sheer ruthlessness, they in time come to dominate.
For the power seeking, it’s not about providing for the masses, that is just the means to acquire power. Once power is achieved, they could care less about running out of money because what ever level of poverty that a society might descend into is of no concern to them nor the lackeys who serve them.
A great example is N Korea. The elite of N Korea could care less how many N Koreans starve to death. As its all about them. In such a system, the masses can always be compelled to provide enough resources to keep their masters satisfied and if they starve doing it, so what? They’re sheep and, “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.” Mexican bandit speaking of poor villagers in the movie “The Magnificent Seven”, Hollywood’s homage to Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai”.
It’s not a coincidence that all socialistic/communistic systems are poor, its a feature not a bug. The left’s elite could care less that eventually they’ll run out of enough money to provide for their duped followers, that after all is the lot of sheep. The left’s elite are NOT disconnected from the reality of dog eats dog. That’s the only reality they understand and can comprehend.
That the western left elite’s plans will result in the devolution of the first world into a third world hell-hole isn’t even a distant concern. It’s the price necessary to dominance and that’s all they care about.
GB,
Oh, I “get” it. I’ve ruminated on sons/daughters of African dictators sent to the U.S. to be educated. These students must’ve been shown that dictatorships are evil, and why. They then returned to Africa and “took over the family business.”
(Bashar Assad was very much like this)
How could they do this? The answer I came to was that they didn’t give a crap about their citizens, but only about themselves. And they were willing to have their country descend into third-world economic dysfunction, as long as they got to be on top…”ruling in hell rather than serving in heaven,” as it were.
So you see, I agree with you completely.
The only question is whether the “sheep” in the U.S. will respond in the same way as in other countries when the gravy train ends.
Obama’s poll numbers will matter to him when Democrats across the country do badly in November. Of course, that just gives him more of an excuse to blame whatever happens (or doesn’t happen) for the next two years on the Republicans. Still, it will hurt his legacy, and I imagine he cares about that.
PapayaSF, 11:30 pm — “Still, it will hurt his legacy, and I imagine he cares about that.”
It depends a great deal on who gets to write the hisory textbooks. My money’s on the lefties. The One will come out just fine . . . and He knows it.
history, not “hisory”.
On some level he will know how far he’s fallen, and besides, journalism (and thus the writing of history) has been democratized by the Internet. There’s only so far historians can now go to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
I’m with PapayaSF on this.
In a real sense, there is no such thing as a “dictatorship.” There are only those at the top of a power structure, and those below them.
Stalin couldn’t control the Soviet Union. He had to rely on the actions of his delegates, because he couldn’t do it himself.
If the power structure (i.e. the Democratic party) supporting Obama is defeated, he will find his options severely limited. And the power structure, composed of individuals, cares very much about whether Obama is hurting their chances.
Sure, they’ll never openly disparage him for fear of being cast out as “RAAAACIST!” But they’ll stew under their breaths anyway and conduct a cowardly whispering campaign against him.
Because that’s how they operate; like assassins.
Like John Kerry fell because of his “damaged” legacy? People are living in a fantasy here, while the overlords rule them.