When Democrats Attack…
Obama’s Own Begin to Turn on Him
Peter Wehner – 02.12.2010 – 4:23 PMWhen a presidency and an agenda are collapsing at the rate that President Obama’s are, it isn’t long before his party begins to distance itself from him. We’ve seen plenty of signs of this lately. Politico.com has a story today titled “Family feud: Nancy Pelosi at odds with President Obama.” According to the story:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s increasingly public disagreements with President Barack Obama are a reflection of something deeper: the seething resentment some Democrats feel over what they see as cavalier treatment from a wounded White House.
Then there are the comments by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who said, “He [Obama] says ‘I’m for clean coal,’ and then he says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it in here. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”
Much of what President Obama has said hasn’t been believable to many of us for quite some time now. But when influential figures in a president’s own party begin to make statements such as these — especially when you’re only 13 months into a presidency — it’s clear that things are beginning to become a bit unglued. Party discipline is tossed aside; the intra-party sniping makes the situation even worse. And the vicious cycle Democrats are caught in merely accelerates.
It has dawned on many Democrats that in hitching their fortunes to Obama and Obamaism, they have put themselves at enormous political risk. They are all complicit in this; Obama himself outsourced much of his agenda to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The entire Democratic establishment is the architect of what is shaping up as an epic political failure. But Mr. Obama is head of the Democratic party, and so the responsibility lies with him more than with anyone else. He is primus inter pares. And he is now, with every passing week, the target of their unhappiness. More is sure to follow.
This isn’t going to end well for them
There are more and more signals that Obama’s failed leadership is splitting Democrats apart.
We can add to the list Democrat Senator Evan Bayh:
“[I]f I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”
We can add to the list Democrat Senator Al Franken:
Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.
Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.
The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.
“There was a lot of frustration in there,” said a Democratic senator who declined to be identified.
“People were hot,” another Democratic senator said.
We can add to that list bigtime liberal donor and media owner Mortimer Zuckerman who wrote an article entitled, “He’s Done Everything Wrong.” In bullet points, Zuckerman says:
* Obama punted on the economy
* He reversed the fortunes of the Democrats in 365 days.
* He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach.
* He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda.
* He didn’t address the main issue.
* His health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country.
* He said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was.
* We’ve seen the kind of buying off of politicians like never before.
* This revolting political corruption started at the top.
* Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting.
* The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics.
* It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery.
* Obama is trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much.
* This is not leadership.
* Obama has failed to connect with the voters since he’s been in office.
* He’s had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him.
* He’s done everything wrong.
* Liberal Mort Zuckerman don’t consider this a triumph. He considers it a disaster.
* Quote: “In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center,and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines.”
* Mort Zuckerman is very disappointed: “We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.”
* He’s already laid in huge problems for the country.
* The fiscal program was a disaster.
* Zuckerman concludes: “It’s very sad. It’s really sad.”
* A major leader told Zuckerman, “We are convinced that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned that he is not strong to support his friends.”
* The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around.
* The Democrats are going to get killed in this election.
* His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works… That’s why he’s plunging in the polls.
* I can’t predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won’t be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic.
We conservatives need to keep pouring on the fire. We dare not relax and let up.
But we can take little mini-breaks between battles, prepare a batch of popcorn, and then sit back and watch the Democrats tear into each other as their party sinks like the Titanic.
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