Progressives turn on Obama, and so will some gays
The pathetic performance of President Obama in the debt debate is showing the left how incompetent and weak a leader it selected. Many are wishing they had Hillary Clinton in the White House instead!
Once the man has to move beyond a set teleprompter speech, he is lost. During the BP disaster, he showed what a poor administrator he is. And now he has belied any pretensions to legislative skill.
Moreover, the first-ever credit downgrade of the US economy reveals that the financial community, which includes Wall Street, Europe, Russia and China, have little confidence in Obama as an American President. Unlike many in the Gay community, serious-minded people are no longer impressed by his pageantry.
The consequences of this disillusionment will be profoundly felt in the 2012 election. Republicans and independents will vote against Obama with their hands. Democrats and liberals will do so with their feet — by staying home.
Turnout was the key to Obama’s 2008 electoral majority. The vote among under-30 whites, African-American and Hispanic American communities set new records. Obama won, after all, about the same share of the white vote — in total — that Gore did in 2000. He only won because the young white turnout offset defections by middle-aged and elderly whites, black turnout rose from 11 percent to 14 percent and Hispanic votes rose also. Any diminution of the white-hot intensity of enthusiasm that animated his 2008 election will cost him dearly.
Nor can Obama and his allies with the Human Rights Committee or the Gay Victory Fund assume that Gay voters will support the President in overwhelming numbers. In 2008, a liberal watchdog group reported that 35 percent of Gays voted for the Republican, John McCain; probably because they thought Obama and the media stole the nomination from Hillary Clinton. Two years later, nearly half of Gay voters in South Florida and at least one-third of Gay voters nationwide voted for the GOP/Tea Party. In 2012, Gay support for Barack Obama may reveal even more defections.
Obama’s attempts to portray himself as pushing a “balanced approach” proved laughable in view of his surrender at the end. And his deal-making to resolve the problem resembled a surrender far more than a compromise.
Now Obama will have a devil of a time replenishing the Gay enthusiasm that helped lead his march to victory in 2008. He will instead meet with the same tepid support from his national base that doomed Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992. His voters are discovering that there is no “there” there