Obama-Supporting Moderates

by Little Miss Attila on March 5, 2009

. . . cope with their buyer’s remorse; Jennifer Rubin suggests a support group.

I don’t know which is more dramatic: the fact that Andrew Sullivan is starting to make sense for the first time in five years, or Maureen Dowd’s newfound commitment to fiscal sanity. David Brooks summarizes the problem:

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs.

Welcome back, Kotter.

I have personally resigned myself to a ten-year depression that will rival or surpass that of the 1930s if we do not (1) get more Republicans/Serious Blue-Dog Dems into the House and Senate next year, and (2) depose Obama in 2012. And I mean everything that implies: an increase in suicide; starvation among some groups while food molds in silos and crops are burned or maldistributed by a government that “knows best.”

The big question mark remains whether Obama will mess up foreign policy to the same degree that Jimmy Carter did, or worse. Rubin again:

Marty Peretz, who attested to candidate Obama’s pro-Israel and tough foreign policy bona fides during the campaign, now is incensed the president has put into a high level national security post Chas Freeman, the Israel-bashing toady of the Saudis who assigned responsibility “both ways” for 9/11 and bemoaned the Chinese didn’t crack down on the Tiananmen Square protesters quick enough. He pleads with the president to dump Freeman.

Me, too. And I’m sure Obama will listen to me on this as well.

We already know that Iran and Russia feel emboldened by this guy; we do not know to what degree Israel will be endangered by this administration, aside from the obvious fact that Obama appears sanguine about the Iranians developing nuclear weapons—and they have stated quite baldly an intention to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Not every American Jew supports Israel, but many do. I hope that many of these are beginning to cope with the disconnect between Obama’s promises and his actions. I do know that a lot of middle-class people depend on stocks, bonds, and real estate to secure their retirements—and as the Dow continues to slide downward in the wake of the non-stimulus bill, they are looking at their 401(k)s, mutual funds, and lost home equity with alarm. My stepmother and my mother have each lost nearly a million dollars on paper, but they are not the ones I’m worried about, since each will get by until the market rebounds, when they will be rich old ladies in their eighties. There are people to whom the small nest eggs they have been able to put aside are a make-or-break issue in terms of quality of life during retirement.

And although my father enjoys working in his seventies, not everyone wants to—and few want to be forced into it by the incompetence of this Administration.

Many people who may agree with Obama’s goals are suddenly realizing that the cost of meeting these goals may be too high—and hit too close to home.

Tea, anyone?

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Pat March 5, 2009 at 7:29 pm

Hmph. I know what you mean; my mom has lost half of her nest egg. And she’s 84.

Scary, indeed.

We’ll need more gin, please.

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Virginia Bob March 6, 2009 at 5:45 pm

Great post. Note not every Jew was taken in by Mr. Hope and Change. This one lived in Israel for a number of years and is married to a former Argentine who remembers Juan Peron’s methods. I have to disagree with you on the comparison with Jimmy Carter, Obama has far exceeded his incompetence in a mere six weeks, India-Kashmir, involvement in the insolvable Palestine problem, groveling for tyrants on Al-Arabiya, Durban II, Freeman, the letter to Russia, selling out the east Europeans in the process, groveling in front of Iran. All within six weeks, this has to be some sort of record.

He will probably be re-elected.

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Little Miss Attila March 7, 2009 at 6:33 pm

I dunno about that re-election: “There are more of us than you think.” A lot of people voted for Big O because they actually believed the promises he made. The disconnect between what he says and what he does is getting harder for a lot of people to deny.

Harder by the day.

As for Jews: well, I know a bunch of ’em who blog, and they are generally right-of-center. And then I know a bunch who are apolitical, or kind of get their politics “off the rack.” I even know a few who think that Israel must be the bad guy in the Middle East, since it’s successful.

And then, you know: there are a handful of ’em who listen to entirely too much NPR.

Ever since someone accused Mark Steyn of being Jewish, I’ve liked the idea of us goyim going around implying to the anti-Semites and Israel-bashers out there that we might be “a bit Jewish.” There is a whole set of rules on how to do this, but I may start wearing a Star of David, just to fuck with their minds.

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