I cast my first presidential ballot in 1972. Being a mere lad of
18, I was pretty clueless and thus voted for George McGovern.
Having long since become a knuckle-dragger in good standing, I
guess I shouldn’t admit that. But, as I say, I was just a kid. And
McGovern, despite his penchant for being wrong on every issue, was
at least an honorable man — a thing that cannot be said about the
people who now run the Democrat party. Moreover, that vote did no
real harm. Our type of representative government has a strong
immune system that protects it from the most virulent outbreaks of
naïveté. And even when it does contract a new strain of stupidity,
the system responds well to treatment administered via the secret
ballot.
Which brings us to next week’s election. In 2008, millions of
voters developed a malady that Andrew Klavan has
diagnosed as “electile dysfunction.” They voted for Barack
Obama because their capacity for critical thinking had been
rendered flaccid by content-free mottos like “hope and change” and
meaningless slogans like “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
During the ensuing four years, however, many have recovered. In
addition to the millions of independents who now realize that they
made a grievous error in casting their ballots for Obama, more than
a few progressives are also in remission. A typical example is Matt
Stoller, who just
published a piece for Salon titled, “The Progressive
Case Against Obama.”
Stoller, whose progressive credentials include a stint as a
senior policy advisor to Rep. Alan “Republicans want you to die
quickly” Grayson, believes that “The president is complicit in
creating an increasingly unequal — and unjust — society.” Most
conservatives would agree with that general conclusion, of course,
but for different reasons than Stoller cites. While conservatives
object to the very notion that self-appointed elites have a right
to orchestrate our daily lives from Washington, Stoller has no real
problem with that kind of statism. His primary complaint is that
Obama’s brand of “trickle down government,” as Mitt Romney has
taken to calling it, hasn’t served the cause of social justice.
By way of proof, Stoller offers what most progressives would
consider the ultimate indictment: income inequality has been worse
during Obama’s term than under the hated George W. Bush: “Under
Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of
income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that
number is 93 cents out of every dollar.” And Stoller goes on to say
that this is no accident. “[M]ost of this shift happened in
2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in
other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress.… This is
the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional…”
From the progressive point of view, this is indeed an unkind
cut.
And this kind of disillusionment is by no means limited to the
occasional opinion writer. During the past week, a variety of
newspaper editorial boards have demonstrated that they share
Stoller’s disappointment by endorsing Romney this year. In fact, as
the Washington Monthly
reports, “seven of the top 100 newspapers have flipped from
Obama in 2008 to Romney this year.” And three of them, the
Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel and
the Des Moines Register, are located in swing states. It’s
difficult to know how much such switches influence voters, but the
quick and snarky reaction from the Obama administration to the loss
of the Iowa newspaper’s endorsement suggests that they think it
matters.
White House propaganda merchant Stephanie Cutter
snarled, “It was a little surprising to read that editorial,
because it didn’t seem to be based at all in reality — not just in
the president’s record, but in Mitt Romney’s record.… It says that
he’d reach across the aisle, which he’d do the exact opposite. It’s
the exact opposite of what he did in Massachusetts.” This is a
curious statement, considering that Romney was a Republican
governor in a state so dominated by Democrats that he would not
have been able to get a cup of coffee without reaching across the
aisle. Indeed, it was his frequent willingness to compromise with
Democrats that caused many conservatives to regard him with
suspicion during the GOP primaries.
It isn’t hard, however, to see why Cutter reacted with such
vehemence to the Register’s endorsement of Romney. It was
also an
indictment of Obama: “The nation has struggled to recover from
recession for the past 40 months. Still, the economy is growing at
an unacceptably anemic rate.… The president’s best efforts to
resuscitate the stumbling economy have fallen short. Nothing
indicates it would change with a second term in the White House.”
This has been said many times by conservatives, of course, but it
is much more devastating coming from a high profile publication
that once endorsed Obama. Combined with columns like Stoller’s, it
suggests that progressive disillusionment with Obama is
pervasive.
This disillusionment is, for many progressives, probably
accompanied by a certain amount of embarrassment. When they recall
how they mindlessly chanted “Yes we can!” like so many
preschoolers, they probably feel as if they were in the grip of
some fever. And they were. Now, for those who have recovered
sufficiently to think for themselves, there is a way to complete
the cure. Anyone who voted for Obama in 2008 can change their vote,
just as the editors of the Des Moines Register changed
their endorsement. But it’s easier for the voter. Thanks to the
secret ballot, no one has to know. All one has to do is hit the
“Romney” button and, if accosted by an exit pollster in front of
your neighbors, lie like Obama did in 2008.
