By David Catron on 8.20.12 @ 6:08AM
How inspiration devolved into desperation in four short years.
As everyone in the galaxy has by now learned, our esteemed Vice President spoke before a group of Barack Obama's remaining supporters last week and included the following in his observations about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: "Look at what they value, and look at their budget. And look what they're proposing … unchain Wall Street. They're gonna put y'all back in chains." This was no slip of the tongue. It was in a prepared speech delivered with the aid of a teleprompter, and it is part of the trifecta of fear on which he and his boss are betting in the hope that a majority of the electorate can be frightened into voting for them in November. Biden's slimy race-baiting is the inevitable complement to "Mediscare" and "the war on women."
How sad. Four years ago, then-Senator Obama was an inspirational figure for many. Millions of voters pulled the lever for him and watched with glistening eyes as he declared, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time … tonight is your answer." Four years later, however, he is just another cynical pol. Thus, when his Vice President produced a disgusting minstrel drawl to conflate GOP victory with the return of slavery, he shrugged it off: "The truth is that during the course of these campaigns, folks like to get obsessed with how something was phrased even if everybody personally understands that's not how it was meant."
It would appear, however, that not everyone believes "that's not how it was meant." Douglas Wilder, the grandson of slaves who became the nation's first elected African-American governor when he won Virginia's gubernatorial election in 1989, isn't buying the President's excuses. Shortly after Biden's speech, Wilder said the reference to "chains" was an obvious appeal to race, and he went on to point out that the Vice President's comments revealed his own racism: "Biden separated himself from what he accused the people of doing. As a matter of fact what he said is, they are going to do something to y'all, not to me, not us. So he was still involved with that separate America. And I'm sick and tired of being considered something other than an American."
Wilder, who is a Democrat, went on to characterize Biden's remarks as offensively patronizing to his audience and to African-Americans in general. And the former Virginia governor is not buying the standard "crazy old Joe just committed another faux pas" excuse: "You can forgive people for gaffes, but there comes a time when you realize you're forgiving the same guy for making the same mistakes." Finally, Wilder delivered the unkindest cut of all by suggesting that President Obama would be much better off with a different running mate than Biden: "If Hillary were on that ticket today, based on the job she's done as secretary of state, I think there would be a clearer advantage the president would be seeing."
Wilder is right about Hillary's superiority to Biden. The Vice President is indeed a buffoon. And Ed Klein, author of The Amateur, says Hillary was actually offered the number two spot on the 2012 Obama ticket: "Up until just a couple of weeks ago the White House was putting out feelers to see if Hillary would accept the vice-presidential nod and replace Joe Biden.… But then Hillary had lunch in the White House a couple of weeks ago with Valerie Jarrett … and she told Valerie that she would not accept the vice president's spot." But even had Hillary accepted, her presence on the ticket would not have obviated the real problem that has forced the White House to trade in the 2008 message of hope for a reelection campaign based on fear -- Obama's pathetic record.
Barack Obama's presidency has been a catalogue of clumsy failures. His domestic initiatives, particularly the "stimulus" package, ObamaCare and the financial "reform" law, have exacerbated the problems they were allegedly meant to solve. His foreign policy has been even more amateurish. Obama's mishandling of the "Arab Spring" has abetted extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood, the "Russian reset" is a dangerous joke, and his politicization of the Osama bin Laden killing has provoked former special operations officers to produce a documentary accusing him of taking undeserved credit for the raid and leaking sensitive secrets about U.S. covert operations to the news media. These and other failures have left the country demonstrably worse off than it was four years ago
Obviously, no President could hope to win reelection running on such an abysmal record. Thus, the Obama reelection crew decided to bet on their trifecta of fear. First, they fabricated the Republican "war on women" and launched it with a faux congressional hearing whose star witness was an upper middle class law student whining about the refusal of a Catholic university to pay for her birth control pills. The President then demonstrated his solidarity with this absurd creature by calling her on the telephone and thanking her for speaking out on his manufactured contraception issue. And, as if to erase any doubt that he actually believes such nonsense will win him votes, he recently made a campaign appearance with her in Denver.
Having thus demonstrated his determination to protect well-heeled law students from the necessity of respecting the religious beliefs that animate schools they voluntarily attend, Obama and his minions then embarked on a "scare the seniors" campaign, in which they accused Mitt Romney of choosing a running mate who wants to "end Medicare as we know it." Never mind that Obama and his accomplices siphoned more than $700 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare. Forget about the inconvenient fact that "Medicare as we know it" will begin collapsing under its own weight a mere decade from now, and that Obama has offered no credible plan for preventing this debacle. Just scare the hell out of the oldsters.
Which brings us back to the third horse on the Obama campaign's trifecta -- race baiting. Obama won in 2008 because he was able to turn out a lot of voters who don't always vote. This year, however, there is a noticeable decline in the enthusiasm of these same voters: "Black turnout is traditionally 11% of the total vote. In 2008, it rose to 14%, providing Obama with more than half of his margin of victory. Current polls suggest a reversion to the pre-2008 turnout level." This decline, combined with the disaffection of many independents who voted for him last time, will cost Obama the election. So, he has to scare these voters so badly that their fear drives them to the polls in November to vote against Romney and Ryan.
And that's where good old Joe comes in. Obama can't indulge in too much race-baiting himself without further damaging his personal favorability ratings. So, he sent Biden to Virginia to suggest to African Americans that a GOP victory will be the first step in their long march back to the cotton fields. This led Governor Wilder to ask, "Did he feel that these people were so dumb that he had to appeal to them with something like that?" The answer is obviously "yes," and the President clearly shares that view. They both believe that blacks, women, and seniors are so many cattle who can be stampeded with ridiculous lies about the evil genius Mitt Romney and his demonic running mate. No one this cynical should be rewarded with reelection.
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To read more about Joe Biden and chains, click here.
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To read another article by David Catron, click here.
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