Horse Race

I have been coming into work a little late and have been listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR.

Horse race talk for the last couple of days. Today it was some folks, Mark Helprin was one, who were talking about the campaign and discussing ways for the democrats and Obama to pull out of the very bad hole they are in. They were commenting on how surprised the White House has been that people hate so much of what they've done. I think that there is no better definition of living in a bubble, if these people really are surprised that most people don't like most of HCR,
TARP, the stimulus and other things (I know that the bank bailout happened under Bush, but Obama completely supported it and supported the way it happened). I thought that these people (that is the people who got Obama in) were supposed to be brilliant political operatives, and say what you will about Obama's opponents all being weak sisters (and I have) still he is Black and he is president.

I was thinking that there might be some explanation as to why the White House so miss-read the electorate, but there wasn't. Just the bland statement that the people in power had no idea that those who vote would be so pissed. Since, that conclusion (the the White House had no clue) is fairly obvious to anyone with a TV or a computer or radio or I-Phone, I'm not sure what the purpose of the discussion was.

A thought I had was that when Clinton managed to screw up Health Care and force through NAFTA and GATT it was a disaster for America and for the democrats, but the people in charge never got hurt at all. Rham is once again in power and Clinton is incredibly popular. I suspect that if Obama gets reelected and Rham becomes mayor of Chicago both he and Rham will be congratulating themselves on their brilliance, and wondering who could possibly think that they are not the most brilliant of politicians.

So Obama is more or less out and more or less exciting the base. Apparently, cutting back on their former tack of insulting the base, although time will tell. The commentators seemed to be surprised that he waited until so late in the game, but isn't this his modus operandi? Coming in late with a couple of pretty good speeches, I think so.