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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Guns, God, Gays, Pickup Trucks and RACISM

It's the man with the truck:
This clip of Olbermann bringing up the possiblity of "truck codes" and racism as a potential explanation for the MA massacre is about the funniest thing I've seen in years, and it is accentuated by Obama's exhortations not to get in the truck when he hit Mass last weekend. While it is true that over 20% of Democrats did get in the truck, I doubt it was due to racism.

Among the facts which would tend to bely the truck-racist-code theory are that the current governor of Massachusetts is black and the strong support for Obama in the presidential election. I doubt the citizens of Massachusetts were too dumb to notice that both of these dudes were not whites. The rallying cry of "Fuck The South, Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts!" does not seem like a winning meme fir the Democrats and should be abandoned ASAP. The topic of angry white guys and Massachusetts also came up on Andrew Sullivan's blog a few days ago. There must be an implicit "straight" in between the angry and white, because Sullivan's been about the angriest white dude out there for some time. Hat tip The Anchoress.

Today was a better day for me. I woke up feeling less exhausted, I finished the last of the worse on SuperDoc's computers this morning, and then I got home and found a "The Wizard of Id" cover on Shrinkwrapped's blog. There is no greater joy than to find a cartoon about the Wizard of Id on a shrink's blog. Two of my favorite Wiz strips from the last year are here and here. A pickup truck may be lurking in the background.

I have been following Ace for the political squirming and realignments going on in DC. I was deeply amused to find Obama emerging as the defender of states rights:
President Obama warned Democrats in Congress today not to "jam" a health care reform bill through now that they've lost their commanding majority in the Senate, and said they must wait for newly elected Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to be sworn into office.
This is a big change from just a week ago. Obama is still polling far better than his policies, and if he does exhume himself from the Pelosi political grave (aka The Peasants Are Revolting) his presidency could succeed. He needs to hire a few of Clinton's people - Clinton knew how to tack in political storms. It is always a heck of a lot easier to lead to a place where people want to go, which is going to a be a a place in which they perceive potential success.

There is a hysterically funny Chris "Mr. Tingle" Matthews interview with Howard Dean posted at Ace. Mr. Tingle just cannot believe his ears when Howard Dean claims that MA voters wanted health reform and a public option so badly that they voted against the candidate who supported healh reform with a public option.

Mary Katherine Ham points out that the press is going to have to back off the "domestic terrorists" explanation for the teabag movement:
Perhaps Coakley's loss would not have snuck up on national Democrats and Coakley herself if they hadn't spent the last year minimizing and denigrating administration critics. It's easy to think you've got an election in the bag when you assume your only opposition is a tiny clan of noisy, redneck racists (and, how many of those could there by in Massachusetts, anyway?).

It's easy to do a mediocre job selling one's sweeping health-care overhaul when you assume anyone against it just lives to hate poor people and/or do violence to President Obama.

Democrats fooled themselves into believing the town-hall/Tea Party caricature and ignored the feelings of real Americans.
The public's fiscal concerns have been in political play since the 1990s. It was one of the Democratic criticisms of Bush, although it played a little oddly during Bush's drive to get Medicare Part D (some prescription coverage) through. But it resonated then with voters (especially conservatives) and it has been an official plank of the Democratic party for some time. The rising deficits under Bush were a real problem for many voters on the left and right. It is not surprising that there are many voters of widely different political backgrounds still concerned. The Democratic leadership switched position on this, not the voters, and this was screamingly obvious to anyone who wasn't all tingly.

But the press was all tingly, and completely dropped the ball on their reporting of the entire teabag movement. In many ways over the last year, journalists cooperated with a very few leaders in DC to create a climate that allowed DC denizens to ignore reality. Voters were trying to get through to their elected representatives, and the press ought to assign more blame for the MA election to itself than to pickup trucks. But the press rarely accepts responsibility for anything. Mort Zuckerman lambastes Obama fiercely, and a read of Zuckerman's articles show that he has been more realistic than most on what the public is being asked to swallow. However someone needed to take on congressional leadership over the last year - it was, after all, the spin taken from Pelosi et al that ignored the fact that the citizens were concerned about fiscal realities. The press created a DC womb in which the voters concerns were not addressed, first by spouting accusations of racism against critics, and then by deriding them all as a tiny group of extremists.

PS: The funniest blogging line of the day comes from Betsy Newmark:
I don't think that the House Democrats have quite the suicidal fervor of Ataturk's soldiers.


Comments:
Got a chuckle out of this one. "I wonder if Chris Mathews no longer feels the tingle running up his leg, but rather something drizzling down it?"

Olbermann is a cretin. His rant against Brown was downright ugly and when people demanded he aplogize, he upped the ante by adding a couple more insults. He then said something to the effect that I don't apologize and I'll continue to call Brown whatever I want to because he has to prove me wrong. Such an Alinsky disciple. Fortunately, his audience is laughably small.

As a Tea Party regular, I'm glad they are tone deaf. We may even get a couple of Repubs elected up here in the People's Republic of Puget Sound come November.
 
...if he does exhume himself from the Pelosi political grave (aka The Peasants Are Revolting) his presidency could succeed. He needs to hire a few of Clinton's people....

Just so, M_O_M. I'll believe he's changed course when I see Obama can the Chicago crowd, and not a minute before. I doubt it's going to happen, though. He's a Progressive to the core, and really does believe that we'll all learn to live with his enlightened policies once we see the results.

Not to mention that to whatever extent he manages to create these gigantic patronage armies inherent in his policies, he'll share in the spoils for some time to come.
 
Hey Mama, I'm the angriest white dude out there...not Sullivan! :)

The MSM is in shock! Olbertool and Tingles just cannot believe that the uneducated cretins in the flyover states don't agree with their socialist ideology. There just has to be something wrong with us! I'd say Hopenchange just got run over by a pickup in Massachusetts! And we have lots of pick ups in flyover country!

Great blog and keep up the great writing!

Angry White Dude
http://angrywhitedude.com
 
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