Home The Democratic Party vs. Barack Obama
Home The Democratic Party vs. Barack Obama

The Democratic Party vs. Barack Obama

When Obama decided to turn his campaign into a permanent Super PAC; he was stabbing the Democratic Party in the back. But he was doing it to them, before they did it to him.

Organizing for America gave him an independent source of power and influence at the expense of the Democratic Party. Obama was carelessly draining money and energy out of his own party because whatever common interests he had with a political party, that for all its leftward swing was still too conservative for his taste, were about to be fractured during his second term.

The Democratic Party might have been satisfied if he had retained his 2008 halo in 2015. But that was never going to happen. No matter how much the media slobbers over a politician, the voting public, at least those parts of it that don't have Hope posters and Obama holograms hanging on their walls, eventually needs a break and someone to blame.

Even vice presidents tend to turn on their own presidents once they begin running for office. George H.W. Bush did it to Reagan and Gore did it to Clinton. It may be hard to remember now in this wave of nostalgia for the 90s when there was actually an economy instead of a shrunken shell of one, but the Democratic Party and the American people had grown sick of Clinton and his scandals.

Gore was running as the antithesis of Bill Clinton. Boring and serious-minded where Bill was the life of the party. An ethical man, aside from all those scandals due to the lack of a controlling authority, who really understood the new internet technology, and wasn't going to be caught with an intern; unless she was working at a massage parlor.

Al Gore was just a less successful and even more hypocritical version of Bill Clinton; but the Democratic Party tried to build him an image as a stiff and serious fellow who spent a lot of time deep in thought and might be awkward at parties; but wouldn't cheat on the entire country. That's what the Macarena jokes and the grotesque public kiss were about.

With Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party already has an Anti-Obama in waiting. Hillary claims to be experienced where Obama was inexperienced. Savvier about the practical details of getting things done in Washington D.C. and capable of going the long distance in governance instead of making abrupt leaps of inspiration.

The "Ready for Hillary" image is as phony as Gore's serious ethical look; but it's also a shot across Obama's bow telling him that the Dems were going to throw him under the bus before the next election. With Organizing for America, Obama, whose allegiance has always been to the left, not to anything as reactionary as an American political party, threw them under the bus first.

It's not a full-fledged civil war. Yet.

Obama's biggest asset is still the media whose younger and more energetic members lean as leftward as he does. Its older members are more skeptical, but still willing to toe the party line. At the end of his term that will change with the media suddenly hurling unexpectedly bitter criticism his way. That happened to Bill Clinton. It's likely to happen to Barack Obama.

The media won't step forward to destroy Obama. But they will pile on him once it helps Hillary. And he knows it.

There's a reason that Obama never trusted his biggest fans, locked them up in closets, avoided conferences, carefully selected loyalist lefty pundits for private meeting and even set up his own photographers.

He knew that the time would come when the media would turn on him. When the halo photos would make way for pictures that make him look old and tired. When the same columnists who were talking him up as the great hope of the nation would turn to writing pieces about how he failed and why Hillary is the right woman to take his place.

His media loyalists have worked hard to stem any defections. The vicious attacks on Bob Woodward and Lara Logan are nasty reminders to keep the rest in line. The media lefties who lead them care less about the Democratic Party than they do about the agenda of the left. That is what they have in common with Barack. But the Democratic Party hacks care less about the left than they do about staying in power.

The ObamaCare crisis killed any hope of an enduring truce. Obama has been politically weakened now and there’s blood in the water.

The media hasn't turned on him. It's still repeating much of his propaganda about substandard plans and insurance companies, but the polls show that the public isn't buying it. And the media has not done everything that it could have to shield him from it. There have been too many negative stories that got past the gatekeepers and too many cracks and leaks in the political wall.

ObamaCare has shown that the Prince of Chicago is mortal and that like all politicians, he will go down sooner or later. There will be no revered transition. He will not remain an undying JFK stepping forward into the pages of history. Instead he will be shoved aside to make way for a successor while the men and women who once lionized him shake their heads. In time he will emerge again, the way that Carter and Clinton have, as an elder statesman. But not in 2016.

The split between the Democratic Party and its leftist hijackers was always bound to happen. The interests that aligned them were nakedly political. The left wanted to push its agenda through and the Democrats would have adopted any tactic at all to win. The Democratic Party is ready to cover its tracks and move on. But the left isn't done pushing through its agenda.

The collapse of ObamaCare may be a disaster for the Democratic Party in the short term, but it's also an opportunity in the long term.

There's not much else that Hillary Clinton can run on in 2016 except health care. Foreign policy interest is at an all time low which takes her time as Secretary of State off the table. That just leaves the economy; an unpredictable topic to build an election campaign around for a race years into the future.

The rebirth of HillaryCare demands the destruction of ObamaCare. For Hillary to be able to return to her core issue in 2016, she has to take away Obama's biggest legislative achievement. And so the problems with ObamaCare may be a nuclear bomb for the Democrats in 2014, but a gift-wrapped package for Hillary in 2016.

If Obama were a team player, he might grit his teeth and take one for the team. But he isn't. OFA was just the latest demonstration that he owes no allegiance to the Democratic Party and that the awkward marriage of Chicago community organizers, liberal billionaires and the turgid ranks of the jackass party swollen with living fossils like Harry Reid was bound to end sometime.

The big dream of Republican campaign professionals is to force the Democrats into the same circular firing squad that its own people keep collapsing into. That hasn't happened yet, but there are signs that a stampede may be building.

The Democrats swallowed their losses in 2010 instead of turning on ObamaCare because they still had the Senate and the White House. If they lose the Senate in 2014, suddenly having a lame duck in the White House and a program that everyone hates at the top of the news hour won't seem like such a bargain.

Obama knows all this and doesn't care. He's counting on the left to have his back while sacrificing the political fortunes of the Democratic Party for the sake of the progressive agenda. The Democrats might have held on to Congress, but Obama traded their political successes for his own success; weakening the Democratic Party while building his own image and power.

Now the Democratic Party is beginning to bite back. If it's going to get into shape for 2014 and 2016, it has to claw back donors from his OFA and undermine his political infrastructure. And then it has to turn ObamaCare's problems into a HillaryCare opportunity. All this is going to mean an ugly political civil war with the left turning on the Democratic Party and the media caught in the middle.

Obama carved up the Democratic Party for political spare parts. Now the Democratic Party is about to return the favor.

Comments

  1. Anonymous2/12/13

    How do the Dems load up their failures onto Obama without pissing off the Black vote? Claim that his white half was oppressing his black half?

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  2. Anonymous2/12/13

    So if Obama is building himself at the expense of the Democrat party...what is his end game? What does he hope to achieve after his term ends?

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  3. Anon 1. Who else are they going to vote for?

    Anon 2. The agenda of the left... and his own ego

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  4. Having destroyed the GOP as a functional opposition party, what need has he of the Democrats as a functioning base? And having established the principle of ruling by decree/executive order and by bureaucratic administration, what need has he for a Congress at all? Under an anointed "charismatic" autocrat, what need of political parties? All they can do is suck away resources, attention, and adoration from The One. A new model of politics may be taking form, defined more by Codevilla's Government and Country parties. If the Country Party is not suppressed. After all, thee is no political party in Heaven ... or in hell.

    -Rurik

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  5. Am I a bad person for anxiously awaiting the pulling of the long knives?

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  6. TheOldMan2/12/13

    Just grab a box of popcorn and enjoy the show!

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  7. Anonymous2/12/13

    F'it. Long knife them all.

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  8. Anonymous2/12/13

    It isn't simply whether or not Hillary will be the next president or whether or not the Dems keep control of the Senate. (I believe both will happen.) The importance of judicial appointments cannot be overstated. They have had and will have a devastating effect on our lives and on the future of this country. With old Harry paving the way for decades of ultra-leftwing judges, the courts will, in the long run, complete the social engineering and transformation of America that Obama has longed for. The U.S. Supreme Court has already proven throughout our history that it is a second legislative body as well as a social engineering body and will turn to international laws as a basis for their decisions over and above the Constitution which is becoming a dead letter for even some conservative judges.

    Elaine

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  9. Anonymous2/12/13

    Hillary is a weak candidate but if the GOP runs a RINO like Jeb, Christie, Rubio, Ryan then the base will stay home. Obama has destroyed America and teh Dems can steal elections at will. Anyone hear who thinks we have two party rule is delusional. It is all kabuki. The USA would be better off with a very hard reboot.

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  10. "There's a reason that Obama never trusted his biggest fans" The media is fortunate, generally speaking in the 20th century those who helped a dictator to power were the first ones up against the wall.

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  11. Anonymous3/12/13

    I really don't see much hope in the Republican party unless they manage to walk that fine line between fiscal conservancy and compassion for the poor. It will take a while for the poor who have been spoon fed for generations it seems to force them to pull themselves up by their boot straps.

    Keliata

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  12. Anonymous3/12/13

    To Anonymous: You ask "What does he hope to achieve after his term ends?" What if his end game is that his term is not to end, but to continue sans Constitution? He has already shown his disdain for it and the Congress. That is why he was a constitutional lawyer ... in order to understand how he could work around it, not within it. I do not think there will be a 2016 election. That is his end game.

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  13. Anonymous3/12/13

    My huge fear is that Michelle Obama will run. Since we already have such a large cult of personality, I can envision a Peron-style candidacy.

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  14. Anonymous3/12/13

    Am afraid concentrating on Washington is like playing the Bolsheviks (Dems) against the Mensheviks (The Reps). They both want the same (socialism) albeit by different means - revolution vs evolution. IMO Washington is incapable of reforming itself and it is irrelevant who will be the next POTUS. I believe that the country needs to be refounded as a federation of independent states with a limitation on the federal power much stronger than the 10th Amendment. A Constitutional Convention is called for to tackle that and other issues such as the Supreme Court, completely owned by the left.

    janusz

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  15. Anonymous3/12/13

    Pet peeve, Sultan. Could you please stop joining obama and Chicago. He's no more a true Chicagoan than my neighbor's dog (in Florida). I'm a proud born and raised Chicagoan. Wherever he's from, whatever place helped form his values, it wasn't the great city of Chicago.

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  16. Anonymous3/12/13

    Mr Greenfield,
    I love your website and have been reading everyday for almost two years, but I notice that you have recently fallen in love with the semicolon. Please reconsider your heavy use of this punctuation. It is used to separate two complete but related thoughts.
    "When Obama decided to turn his campaign into a permanent Super PAC; he was stabbing the Democratic Party in the back." The one in this sentence, for example (but most of your others as well), should be a comma. Incorrect punctuation distracts from an otherwise excellent article.

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  17. "The big dream of Republican campaign professionals is to force the Democrats into the same circular firing squad that its own people keep collapsing into."

    That this is the big dream of the RINOs is one of the reasons the Reps will continue to lose. They never argue from principle, never support freedom and individual rights against big government, and never ever proclaim the immorality of the socialist poison, including Obamacare, which the Demos dump into the law books.

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  18. Anonymous3/12/13

    "And the media has not done everything that it could have to shield him from it. There have been too many negative stories that got past the gatekeepers and too many cracks and leaks in the political wall."


    The media informants can't handle all these slip ups. There's only so much twist you can get away with.

    Keliata

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  19. Anonymous3/12/13

    We need good men and women to join together to save the last great hope for mankind - America. A veritable “Band of Brothers”. People who put mankind first. Honest, decent, discerning and thinking men and women who can visualize and anticipate and can craft ideas, palatable to and understood by, “we the people”. The reasons and causes free people still covet the American dream still churn in the breasts of freedom loving intelligent humans. Those that cannot live under totalitarian rule
    I offer the Irish revolutionaries who marched into Dublin on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, as example. Members of the Irish Volunteers — led by schoolteacher and barrister Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly, along with 200 members of Cumann na mBan (Association of Women) — seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic independent of the United Kingdom. The Proclamation of the Republic was based on the American Declaration of Independence.
    These people led by an intelligent, thinking schoolteacher and including 200 women (primarily to care for the casualties) knew they had no chance. Fighting ships of the almighty British navy were docked less than a mile from the General Post Office (GPO) which Pearse chose as his Alamo. They knew they would die.
    In a series of courts martial beginning on 2 May, 1916, 90 people were sentenced to death. Fifteen of those (including all seven signatories of the Proclamation) were executed at Kilmainham Gaol by firing squad between 3 and 12 May (among them the seriously wounded Connolly, shot while tied to a chair due to a shattered ankle).
    James Connolly (II)
    Unknown
    A great crowd had gathered Outside of Kilmainhaim,
    With their heads uncovered they knelt on the ground,
    For inside that grim prison lay a brave Irish Soldier,
    His life for his Country about to lay down,

    He Went to his death like a true son of Ireland,
    The firing party he bravely did face,
    Then the order rang out: "Present arms, fire,"
    James Connolly fell into a ready made grave.

    The black flag they hoisted, the cruel deed was over,
    Gone was a man who loved Ireland so well,
    There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning,
    When they murdered James Connolly, the Irish Rebel.

    God's curse on you England, you cruel-hearted monster
    Your deeds they would shame all the devils in Hell
    There are no flowers blooming but the shamrock is growing
    On the grave of James Connolly, the Irish Rebel,

    Many years have rolled by since that Irish rebellion,
    When the guns of Britannia they loudly did speak.
    The bold IRA they stood shoulder to shoulder
    And the blood from their bodies flowed down Sackville Street

    The Four Courts of Dublin the English bombarded,
    The spirit of freedom they tried hard to quell,
    But above all the din rose the cry "No Surrender",
    'Twas the voice of James Connolly, the Irish Rebel.

    http://goo.gl/wmWUoO (‘Twill wring tears from the hoariest of hearts)

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  20. Anonymous3/12/13

    Pt. 2

    The most prominent leader to escape execution was Éamon de Valera, Commandant of the 3rd Battalion, who did so partly due to his American birth. He became Ireland’s most prominent head of state (His grandson of the same name was a classmate of mine and a LinkedIn connection).

    Our Rebellion was close followed by a horrible civil war from 1922-23 that still has a living legacy. Father fought son and brother killed brother. My own maternal grandfather never truly accepted my own father. I remember my grandfather recounting the time he was sheltering 5 ambush survivors and his house was searched by the other side. He was lucky that time (my mother verified her terror as she was made to stand outside the house for 4 hours as the search was conducted, all the while aware of the 5 fugitives hidden in a secret room). I lived in a house with a “priest hideaway” legacy of the time it was forbidden by the British for a catholic Irishman to go to school, speak Irish (Gaelic) or attend mass.
    Anyway, we need men and women cut from the same cloth to do what is needed. They have to be of the right age (old enough to have accrued wisdom yet young enough to appeal to those even younger, and with infinite energy). They are in short supply. Political courage is more difficult than battlefield courage. We need great writers like Daniel and Mark Steyn. I look around and I see Bill Whittle. Reganesque is how he strikes me. We need clean money to get patriots in office rather than ideological politicians.

    I see Michael Coren and Ezra Levant in Canada and then I see the execrable and Obamalike Justin Trudeau. We need to be able to provide mechanisms to ensure an Obama or a DB ‘Dodging Bullets’ Clinton or a Lurch Kerry never stains the reputation of America and decent Americans, ever again.

    The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. The Irish did it. It is past time in America. Max.

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  21. Chicago anon, I'm from new york myself so I know how you feel

    Punctuation anon, you're right about the semi-colon abuse but sometimes I just can't help myself

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous3/12/13

    Semi-colon Anonymous; for the habitual abuser.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous3/12/13

    All of you, collectively, reference Chicago Style Politics. Most of us Americans are hard working, come home, cook dinner, help with homework, take grandchildren to dance, piano, basketball, etc and have never been to Chicago! So, HOW do we, the normal (typical) American take on the Chicago/Roosevelt machine and win?

    Vote, that has become a joke. As we hear in the South from years of Demo rule, "Vote Early and Vote Often." Who is counting and watching? HELP!

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  24. Not to be confused with the Society for Creative Anachronism.

    The Chicago machine has become more of an issue as cities play a more defining role in politics. But the machine is just community organizing and voter fraud. It can be beaten.

    The real contest comes down to making it clear to voters that they are going to lose their way of life if the Dems stay in power. It's not an easy task, but it is doable.

    1. Accentuate their failures

    2. Find something about the Dems or libs they dislike and harp on it

    3. Get them to actually vote the right way, even if it's once. The habit sinks it.

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  25. Anonymous3/12/13

    Obama's weak spot is Holder. So far, Holder has been holding the rear like the loyal syncophant that he is. If I were a ruthless Obama opponent, I would go for his jugular. Get him to resign and the floodgates would open up.

    Just sayin'.

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  26. Assistant Room Monitor3/12/13

    It may well be that Pres. Obama will have a third term.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous4/12/13

    Can we assume Daniel Greenfield is a registered Republican?

    ReplyDelete

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