Back in March of 2008, the growing phenomemen that became Barack Obama was described by one of his soon-to-be followers, Glynnis MacNicol, with a prescient sense of foreboding:
Here’s the thing. I like Barack Obama. What I’m increasingly liking less, however, is the evangelical nature with which his supporters are trying to convert me to the cause. Lately it’s begun to feel a tad abusive and on more than one occasion I’ve felt like some sort of atheist at a Pentecostal service, or a meat-eater at table of vegetarians. Recently it’s been my experience that it’s not enough to say that I like Obama, the sense I get is that I must LOVE him. I must fully and completely believe that he is the biggest and greatest gift to American political life ever. There are no shades of grey where Obama is concerned.
Even before that, one black columnist, MIchael Fauntroy, at Huffington Post lamented:
It’s hard out here for Black pundits/analysts/commentators who haven’t come around to drinking the Democratic presidential nomination front-runner Barack Obama is the best-thing-since-sliced-bread-how-did-we-ever-exist-as-a-nation-without-him-this-is-our-last- best-chance-to-elect-a-Black-president-so-we-better-support-him-see-I-told-you-racism-is-dead Kool-Aid. In too many segments of the country — black and white — to express any skepticism about Barack Obama is considered political heresy. I’m blown away by this discovery, because it suggests a dangerous group think: Obama is the only agent of change and to not praise him at every opportunity is to support the status quo.
Now, just two scant years later, the hopium seems to be wearing thin, if not out.
Independents – that ever-so-deeply-rooted-in-jello (politically speaking) group of voters – who slurped the Obama Kool-Aid like wanderers lost in Death Valley for 40 days and 40 nights are now madder-than-hell and demanding their money votes back. Republicans who never much liked The One, but who thought “teaching that RINO McCain a lesson” seemed like a great idea at the time, have re-evaluated that brilliant move and have come back from the dark side. And, in what may be considered most surprising of all, Democrats – the Professional Left as well as the Rank Amateurs – are losing their enthusiasm for the object of their former affection too.
I suspect that Obumbles wasn’t quite thinking along the lines of this kind of recovery when he wound Joe (the Gaffmeister) Biden up and turned him loose banging his little drum and tooting his trumpet about the “Recovery Summer”. Turns out, that’s exactly what we’re experiencing, though.
The American people are no longer drunk on the empty promises of a new kind of politics, and all the other folderal and fiddlefaddle that was wrapped up and sold as the Elixir of Hope ‘n Change by the snake oil peddler-in-chief.
All it took was: Continued high unemployment; a falling stock market; a couple of trillion dollar stimulus bills; a bunch of bank bail-outs; nationalizing General Motors and billions of tax dollars in union hush money; propping up Freddie and Fannie; a 2,500 page health care bill complete with all sorts of bureaucratic red tape, higher costs, and death panels; an ill-conceived legal attack on a sovereign state trying to control rampant illegal immigration, drug smuggling, kidnapping, and murderous Mexican gangs; astronomical federal deficits and out-of-control Washington spending; bowing and scraping to foreign kings; friends like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charlie Rangle, Barney Franks, and Maxine Waters; and, now, a Victory Mosque at Ground Zero.
Amazing what a good 12-step program will do to sober up a bunch of Kool-Aid drunks, isn’t it?
