"A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they're going to find out what they bought. Obama isn't what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover.
"And four years from now they'll be older and much wiser."
We now get to see what the Left truly believes in. For the last eight years, they have had someone else to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. Come January, there will be no one to blame but themselves. A Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with very little power in the minority. It will be their ideas that govern. They'll be responsible if they fail to protect the American people, if they cannot spark the economy, if chaos ensues in Iraq. No more "Blame Bush," folks. We are going to see the Left unfiltered with no one else to blame. Oh sure, they'll now shift the talk to what a horrible burden they have inherited, and how no one really can save us now. But America won't fall for that. The financial crisis may not have been Bush's fault in its entirety, but he had the mantle when it came. His party took the fall for it. It will be no different now for the Democratic Party. Shannen Coffin
Personally, as dense as the Left is required to be (and as fundamentally dishonest as most are), I'm pessimistic that they'll learn. (And to use Markadelphia's example: No matter how wrong they are, they'll not be honest about it no matter how obvious the proof.)
There are people like Markadelphia who have no capacity to learn, who are dyed-in-the-wool leftists. Forget about them, because there are people currently on the left who have the capacity to learn from failure. My parents were big socialists when they were young, and worked for the RFK campaign. We moved from the U.S. to British Columbia in the early 70s to live under what was then the only socialist government around. It only took three years of actually experiencing socialism to turn things around. My dad became a big proponent of the free market, and my mom eventually became a middle-of-the-road conservative.
A few years of Obama are going to turn a lot of people around. These things always go in cycles. The left gets in power, royally screw everything up, people learn and elect conservatives, which leads to prosperity and complacency, people start to feel like they can afford to entertain stupid leftist ideas again, and then the whole cycle repeats. If you need convincing, look at the electoral maps for 1960 - 1988.
Oh, I understand your general theory, but it's missing a big chunk there - the media, the constant stream of "information" to most of America...
Is so tilted to the left that Bush is seen as "conservative."
The left gets in power, royally screw everything up, people learn and elect conservatives, which leads to prosperity and complacency, people start to feel like they can afford to entertain stupid leftist ideas again, and then the whole cycle repeats. If you need convincing, look at the electoral maps for 1960 - 1988.
Problem is, we keep shifting more and more and more left as as baseline. After 8 years of Clinton, we had 8 of Bush, who wasn't even close to being as conservative as Clinton was liberal. (Though in all fairness, in Clinton's chase of the polls, he ended up mostly towards the center, not as far left as he wanted to be, or had promised to be.)
The only saving grace of Bush's presidency was the superb war efforts and foreign policy successes. (Note how they're portrayed in the media, see above.)
He was not conservative, he was willing to amnesty 20 million illegal immigrants, he made a serious push to enact Kennedy's "No Child Left Behind", he pushed for more and more government spending... He was fine with S-CHIP, he just refused to expand it beyond people with a million dollars in assets. Once it was reduced to the > $1M in assets (due to the Frosts as examples), he readily signed it.
Yet people are talking of him as he was some sort of Arch-Conservative. (When it really is that he's born-again Christian, and as we all know, those are OK to hate.)
Obama owes favors to some of the most leftist Democrats and Communists out there. He's been raised and mentored in a world and job where "conservative" values were always mocked. He's been in a position where being an anti-Bush lever, foreign governments feted him.
We never lurched "right" after the New Deal. We gained enough wealth and economic prosperity due to the industrialization of WWII that we could ignore it. Until now. When the bills are really coming due.
The only place where we've made any progress against the statists is in gun ownership. And you'd better believe they know that, and are expecting to "roll back" those gains in individual liberty.
"And you'd better believe they know that, and are expecting to "roll back" those gains in individual liberty."
I expect they will be disappointed. A surprising number of Dimocrats in Congress are pro-gun, and our silver bullet is their lack of a filibuster-busting majority along party lines, and in particular along gun control lines.
Aren't we fortunate that Heller was decided this year?
"I expect they will be disappointed. A surprising number of Dimocrats in Congress are pro-gun, and our silver bullet is their lack of a filibuster-busting majority along party lines, and in particular along gun control lines.
Aren't we fortunate that Heller was decided this year?"
I agree. Oh, Schumer & Co. will try for a new AWB, harsher and with no sunset clause. That will motivate a LOT of people and won't, IMHO, pass.
Re: Heller - we are, indeed, fortunate. I would like to see what the SC says about incorporation. Heller seems to hint at it, and the Court won't change so fast as to unhinge the Heller majority. Stevens and Ginsberg are first and second in line to go, IMHO, and replacing them with anti-gun liberals won't change the balance for ANY case.
"I take solace knowing that, no matter how disappointed I am at the outcome of this election, I can't be as disappointed as Hillary Clinton."
Ding, dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead!!!
Nope, she'll never be POTUS. Unless Obambi puts her on the SC, I think that she'll retire from politics.
I take further solace from the fact that Al Franken won't be in the Senate.
The SOBs will have to perform, they've got all the tools and no excuses. "Bush's fault" will only work so long, then it will get real old, real fast (like inside of a week, once it starts in about 6 months or so).
Racism as a crutch is gone. Forever. Maybe the excuse for Affirmative Action has been removed, and we can actually be a color-blind society? Republicans should put a LOT of rhetorical pressure on the Dems to outlaw it.
"In an interview aired Tuesday on "Fox & Friends" on the Fox News Channel, Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked the chances, on a scale of 1 to 10, that she would be the next majority leader in the Senate.
"Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be."
"Being nominated to the Supreme Court?
"Zero," Clinton said. "I have no interest in doing that."
The contrast is striking and the statement is unequivocal. So, let's (ahem) hope that she wasn't lying.
No further explanation of McCain's defeat could be better than the "McCain bumpersticker" on your left sidebar.
The GOP accepted without question the media premise that Bush has been an unmitigated disaster, and fielded the most "Democrat-like" candidate of the entire primary slate,(with the possible exception of Giuliani).
The Electorate, given the choice between a REAL Liberal and an ersatz one, chose the genuine article.
And those of us with memories looked at McCain and said:
"Fuck It!"
(I voted for Barr, personally. He impressed me back at the Waco FBI/ATF hearings in '95).
Unix and DJ, you both have a good point, which is that it's possible for Obama to screw things up so completely that the cycle goes off the rails. It's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen. The thing I'm most concerned about is no new gun legislation, but that's something we can all actively engage.
I'll concede that there's a certain amount of irrepairable damage that's done every time we get a leftist in office. Not much we can do about that, and if we insist that we have to roll things back to 1776 or there's no point to life, then we're going to be as disappointed and useless as every socialist who keeps looking for utopia. Until freedom-minded people find some other frontier-refuge, like outer-space, we have to accept what we've got and make the most of it. I think we can get back to the point of mostly-free. Obama is going to be such a huge disappointment, that it's very likely a genuine conservative like Bobby Jindal will sweep into office in 2012 Reagan-style.
...the media, the constant stream of "information" to most of America...
That was my concern, too. My dad reminded me last night that the media was totally in the tank for LBJ, but in the next election it didn't matter. It didn't matter in 1980 or 1984 either. At some point reality hits people so hard that everything the media say is just background noise.
Well, guys, regarding Hillary, one must parse her words most carefully, at least as carefully as she crafts them. She is always careful to leave room to "change her mind" in the future, so what she says is usually quite vague and/or intentionally misleading.
Consider, for example, the first part of what I quoted:
"Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be."
Let's parse it, shall we?
"Probably zero" ain't "zero." "Probably" means "I haven't decided."
"I'm not seeking" is a contraction for "I am not seeking", which is in the present tense. It says nothing about the future, when she just might be seeking a different job. She and Slick Willie are absolute masters at using this trick, in which she says one thing and people hear another. People, on the whole are absolute masters at missing the trick.
Summary: This is a typical Clintonese statement. It means nothing, and she can do as she pleases later without contradicting herself.
Now, lets's parse the second part of what I quoted:
"Zero," Clinton said. "I have no interest in doing that."
That is unequivocal. There is zero probability that she will be nominated to the Supreme Court.
Summary: She cannot do otherwise later without contradicting herself. She is seldom ever that explicit, and therefore I think it's likely that she means it.
All that being said, I would never, ever trust her about anything. Time will tell.
There was a bit of a riot....well maybe it was more like a demonstration...well....
Basically, they took to the the streets here in Richmond. It was basically hilarious. A bunch of socialist college students, who live their whole lives off of Mom and Dad, yelling that now, the whole world would be perfect.
Oh, best thing that happened today was that one of the kids in my day care goes "Obama won, so now we won't have any SOLs (standardized tests)"
"Democrats now have at least 56 Senate seats - not 60 (also thankfully), but not far off."
When you count in the RINOs like my own (may I spite on his grave soon!) Arlan Specter and John "Seriously considered joining the Democrats" McCain, I don't think the Democrats will have too much trouble getting what they want.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/11/obamanation.html (25 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Well, I did my part. Oklahoma went 66% to 34% against Obama, which was the biggest margin in all fifty states.
Steven den Beste has a level-headed view of this election. RTWT. Here is a highlight:
"A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they're going to find out what they bought. Obama isn't what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover.
"And four years from now they'll be older and much wiser."
Maybe they will. Maybe.
We now get to see what the Left truly believes in. For the last eight years, they have had someone else to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. Come January, there will be no one to blame but themselves. A Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with very little power in the minority. It will be their ideas that govern. They'll be responsible if they fail to protect the American people, if they cannot spark the economy, if chaos ensues in Iraq. No more "Blame Bush," folks. We are going to see the Left unfiltered with no one else to blame. Oh sure, they'll now shift the talk to what a horrible burden they have inherited, and how no one really can save us now. But America won't fall for that. The financial crisis may not have been Bush's fault in its entirety, but he had the mantle when it came. His party took the fall for it. It will be no different now for the Democratic Party.
Shannen Coffin
Personally, as dense as the Left is required to be (and as fundamentally dishonest as most are), I'm pessimistic that they'll learn. (And to use Markadelphia's example: No matter how wrong they are, they'll not be honest about it no matter how obvious the proof.)
Unix,
There are people like Markadelphia who have no capacity to learn, who are dyed-in-the-wool leftists. Forget about them, because there are people currently on the left who have the capacity to learn from failure. My parents were big socialists when they were young, and worked for the RFK campaign. We moved from the U.S. to British Columbia in the early 70s to live under what was then the only socialist government around. It only took three years of actually experiencing socialism to turn things around. My dad became a big proponent of the free market, and my mom eventually became a middle-of-the-road conservative.
A few years of Obama are going to turn a lot of people around. These things always go in cycles. The left gets in power, royally screw everything up, people learn and elect conservatives, which leads to prosperity and complacency, people start to feel like they can afford to entertain stupid leftist ideas again, and then the whole cycle repeats. If you need convincing, look at the electoral maps for 1960 - 1988.
Well put, Sarah. In engineering terms, let's hope this oscillation doesn't hit the rails, because things can break when that happens.
Sarah:
Oh, I understand your general theory, but it's missing a big chunk there - the media, the constant stream of "information" to most of America...
Is so tilted to the left that Bush is seen as "conservative."
The left gets in power, royally screw everything up, people learn and elect conservatives, which leads to prosperity and complacency, people start to feel like they can afford to entertain stupid leftist ideas again, and then the whole cycle repeats. If you need convincing, look at the electoral maps for 1960 - 1988.
Problem is, we keep shifting more and more and more left as as baseline. After 8 years of Clinton, we had 8 of Bush, who wasn't even close to being as conservative as Clinton was liberal. (Though in all fairness, in Clinton's chase of the polls, he ended up mostly towards the center, not as far left as he wanted to be, or had promised to be.)
The only saving grace of Bush's presidency was the superb war efforts and foreign policy successes. (Note how they're portrayed in the media, see above.)
He was not conservative, he was willing to amnesty 20 million illegal immigrants, he made a serious push to enact Kennedy's "No Child Left Behind", he pushed for more and more government spending... He was fine with S-CHIP, he just refused to expand it beyond people with a million dollars in assets. Once it was reduced to the > $1M in assets (due to the Frosts as examples), he readily signed it.
Yet people are talking of him as he was some sort of Arch-Conservative. (When it really is that he's born-again Christian, and as we all know, those are OK to hate.)
Obama owes favors to some of the most leftist Democrats and Communists out there. He's been raised and mentored in a world and job where "conservative" values were always mocked. He's been in a position where being an anti-Bush lever, foreign governments feted him.
We never lurched "right" after the New Deal. We gained enough wealth and economic prosperity due to the industrialization of WWII that we could ignore it. Until now. When the bills are really coming due.
The only place where we've made any progress against the statists is in gun ownership. And you'd better believe they know that, and are expecting to "roll back" those gains in individual liberty.
"And you'd better believe they know that, and are expecting to "roll back" those gains in individual liberty."
I expect they will be disappointed. A surprising number of Dimocrats in Congress are pro-gun, and our silver bullet is their lack of a filibuster-busting majority along party lines, and in particular along gun control lines.
Aren't we fortunate that Heller was decided this year?
I take solace knowing that, no matter how disappointed I am at the outcome of this election, I can't be as disappointed as Hillary Clinton.
"I expect they will be disappointed. A surprising number of Dimocrats in Congress are pro-gun, and our silver bullet is their lack of a filibuster-busting majority along party lines, and in particular along gun control lines.
Aren't we fortunate that Heller was decided this year?"
I agree. Oh, Schumer & Co. will try for a new AWB, harsher and with no sunset clause. That will motivate a LOT of people and won't, IMHO, pass.
Re: Heller - we are, indeed, fortunate. I would like to see what the SC says about incorporation. Heller seems to hint at it, and the Court won't change so fast as to unhinge the Heller majority. Stevens and Ginsberg are first and second in line to go, IMHO, and replacing them with anti-gun liberals won't change the balance for ANY case.
"I take solace knowing that, no matter how disappointed I am at the outcome of this election, I can't be as disappointed as Hillary Clinton."
Ding, dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead!!!
Nope, she'll never be POTUS. Unless Obambi puts her on the SC, I think that she'll retire from politics.
I take further solace from the fact that Al Franken won't be in the Senate.
The SOBs will have to perform, they've got all the tools and no excuses. "Bush's fault" will only work so long, then it will get real old, real fast (like inside of a week, once it starts in about 6 months or so).
Racism as a crutch is gone. Forever. Maybe the excuse for Affirmative Action has been removed, and we can actually be a color-blind society? Republicans should put a LOT of rhetorical pressure on the Dems to outlaw it.
"Nope, she'll never be POTUS. Unless Obambi puts her on the SC, I think that she'll retire from politics."
Methinks we are safe from that:
"In an interview aired Tuesday on "Fox & Friends" on the Fox News Channel, Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked the chances, on a scale of 1 to 10, that she would be the next majority leader in the Senate.
"Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be."
"Being nominated to the Supreme Court?
"Zero," Clinton said. "I have no interest in doing that."
The contrast is striking and the statement is unequivocal. So, let's (ahem) hope that she wasn't lying.
Well, we can always hope for a loud comment in DC by Al-Quida on January 20th. Except that they would never mistreat their new best friend.
Kevin:
No further explanation of McCain's defeat could be better than the "McCain bumpersticker" on your left sidebar.
The GOP accepted without question the media premise that Bush has been an unmitigated disaster, and fielded the most "Democrat-like" candidate of the entire primary slate,(with the possible exception of Giuliani).
The Electorate, given the choice between a REAL Liberal and an ersatz one, chose the genuine article.
And those of us with memories looked at McCain and said:
"Fuck It!"
(I voted for Barr, personally. He impressed me back at the Waco FBI/ATF hearings in '95).
Unix and DJ, you both have a good point, which is that it's possible for Obama to screw things up so completely that the cycle goes off the rails. It's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen. The thing I'm most concerned about is no new gun legislation, but that's something we can all actively engage.
I'll concede that there's a certain amount of irrepairable damage that's done every time we get a leftist in office. Not much we can do about that, and if we insist that we have to roll things back to 1776 or there's no point to life, then we're going to be as disappointed and useless as every socialist who keeps looking for utopia. Until freedom-minded people find some other frontier-refuge, like outer-space, we have to accept what we've got and make the most of it. I think we can get back to the point of mostly-free. Obama is going to be such a huge disappointment, that it's very likely a genuine conservative like Bobby Jindal will sweep into office in 2012 Reagan-style.
...the media, the constant stream of "information" to most of America...
That was my concern, too. My dad reminded me last night that the media was totally in the tank for LBJ, but in the next election it didn't matter. It didn't matter in 1980 or 1984 either. At some point reality hits people so hard that everything the media say is just background noise.
So what if the Democrats have 56 seats in the Senate? Now that Obama is president-elect, there are 57 states.
"The contrast is striking and the statement is unequivocal. So, let's (ahem) hope that she wasn't lying."
DJ, Re: Hillary. Were her lips moving?
I seem to recall Hillary stating she never planned to run for president as well.
DJ --
Hillary also had "zero" interest in running for office (Senate), then "no plans" to run for President.
Her stating unequivocally that she isn't interested is the surest sign yet that she's going to go for it.
Well, guys, regarding Hillary, one must parse her words most carefully, at least as carefully as she crafts them. She is always careful to leave room to "change her mind" in the future, so what she says is usually quite vague and/or intentionally misleading.
Consider, for example, the first part of what I quoted:
"Oh, probably zero," she said. "I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be."
Let's parse it, shall we?
"Probably zero" ain't "zero." "Probably" means "I haven't decided."
"I'm not seeking" is a contraction for "I am not seeking", which is in the present tense. It says nothing about the future, when she just might be seeking a different job. She and Slick Willie are absolute masters at using this trick, in which she says one thing and people hear another. People, on the whole are absolute masters at missing the trick.
Summary: This is a typical Clintonese statement. It means nothing, and she can do as she pleases later without contradicting herself.
Now, lets's parse the second part of what I quoted:
"Zero," Clinton said. "I have no interest in doing that."
That is unequivocal. There is zero probability that she will be nominated to the Supreme Court.
Summary: She cannot do otherwise later without contradicting herself. She is seldom ever that explicit, and therefore I think it's likely that she means it.
All that being said, I would never, ever trust her about anything. Time will tell.
Well, we can always hope for a loud comment in DC by Al-Quida on January 20th.
Really? You actually gonna wish for that? That strikes me as an exceptionally stupid thing, even as a throw-away comment on a blog.
If I'm going to wish for something, it's that the left overbids their hand and gets slapped sideways in the midterm election.
Except that they would never mistreat their new best friend.
Care to elaborate on what evidence leads you to this? Or are you just being stupid for the hell of it?
Well, we can always hope for a loud comment in DC by Al-Quida on January 20th. Except that they would never mistreat their new best friend.
I see ODS has started already.
There was a bit of a riot....well maybe it was more like a demonstration...well....
Basically, they took to the the streets here in Richmond. It was basically hilarious. A bunch of socialist college students, who live their whole lives off of Mom and Dad, yelling that now, the whole world would be perfect.
Oh, best thing that happened today was that one of the kids in my day care goes "Obama won, so now we won't have any SOLs (standardized tests)"
He really is all things to all people.
"He really is all things to all people."
Lots of people are gonna be disappointed when he doesn't deliver the fluffy bunnies and pink unicorns they projected onto him.
He really is all things to all people.
And therefore, by definition, nothing. At least for the moment. I figure about 2-6 months before the disappointment really starts setting in.
"Democrats now have at least 56 Senate seats - not 60 (also thankfully), but not far off."
When you count in the RINOs like my own (may I spite on his grave soon!) Arlan Specter and John "Seriously considered joining the Democrats" McCain, I don't think the Democrats will have too much trouble getting what they want.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>