Circle The Band Wagons

First off, I’d like to apologize to all five of my devoted readers for neglecting my responsibilities as a blogger this month. I don’t want to make excuses but March truly came in like the proverbial lion for me not just in the weather but at work as well so I’ve been trying to relax as much as possible. In any event, I’m sorry, and I will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now on with the show.

Today I’d like to layout the four distinct groups of citizens who voted for Barak Obama. I understand that writing on this topic may come off as too late to be relevant, but I promise my overall point is a current one.

I really want to address this subject for two reasons. One reason is to show how diverse this voting bloc was, and the other is to point out the one faction within that I have nothing but disdain for and is still causing me grief to this day. Now please don’t let that last remark dissuade you from reading on, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by those I let off the hook. I will attempt to describe each group via an interpretation of the “Hope and Change” slogan that was so readily swallowed by the masses. And without further ado, here’s the list:

1) Radical Leftists: This is the group that defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope Obama dismantles every capitalist or free market aspect of our economy in the name of fairness or wealth redistribution (socialism).” They also thought of this motto in terms of “The hope that every conservative or Judeo-Christian value left in our society is quelled by policies that embrace a sense of moral relativism where no one is truly accountable for their wrong doings (except for capitalist swine of course).” The far left of this country banked on these “hopes and changes” in addition to many more that can be found in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and just about any Noam Chomsky book. They found themselves drunk on the notion that the tide had finally turned. Now you might think that this is the group of Obama supporters whom I detest. You are dead wrong. I can no more faults these individuals for supporting Barak Obama then I could condemn geese from replacing every picturesque grassy surface they find with a thick layer of green, black, and white shit. The support of the radical left should’ve been fully expected, and if anything, given his sometimes moderate campaign rhetoric, one should praise the far left for sustaining their fervor for a candidate that some misguided individuals actually thought was more of a centrist (see group 3 for details on this bunch of schmucks).

2) Run of the Mill Liberals: This group defined “Hope and Change” as “The hope that a President Obama would undo the previous administrations policies and replace them with ones that were more in tune with the basic liberal mindset. This is not as severe as the radical leftists’ desire to invoke socialism, moral relativism, and the national denouncement of any God immediately and permanently. The standard liberal is content to have a “sensible” mix of the Carter and Clinton years. They’re down with welfare, a weak national defense, plenty of government spending, and sky high taxes. That being said, they draw the line at the nationalization of banks and other corporations. They also shun the idea that capitalism and the free market needs to be completely abandoned in the interest of the common good. These folks should not be held to task for feeling this way or for voting the way they did. Again, it was completely expected that these citizens would vote this way just as it was with the far leftists. They are liberal in their values and politics so it makes perfect sense that they would vote for the most liberal candidate in history, even if they thought that some of his ideas and or policies would be a little further left then they’d normally be comfortable with.

3) Moderate Suckers: These people had good intentions. They kept up with the election and the issues and picked what they most likely considered the lesser of two evils. Their “hope” was that they would truly see an end to “politics as usual.” Their “change” was that we might actually move away from the all the partisan nonsense and become a land of the people again. Unfortunately, they were duped and that’s why I’m referring to them as suckers. Their eyes must still be itching furiously from all the wool that was pulled over them. I mean we’re talking bushels and bushels of wool here. There’s probably a sheep farmer out there somewhere that thanks to the Obama campaign and its surrogates (CNN, NBC, The New York Times, etc.) will be the last one impacted by this economy. In truth one would have to be drinking the Kool-Aid hard to believe that Barak Obama is more moderate than John McCain. According to the National Journal, Barak Obama was literally the most liberal senator in 2007 based on his voting record. Now in the interest of fairness I would like to point out that McCain missed more than half the votes that were rated by the National Journal in 2007 so he wasn’t even ranked that year. But, I must also point out that John McCain wasn’t even in the top 40 of the most conservative senators in 2006 while Obama still ranked 10th overall that year. And in 2005, when McCain had also not reached the top 40 most conservative senators, Obama was rated the 16th most liberal senator. Now I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure that going from 16th place to the top 10 in one year, and then becoming the most liberal senator is certainly not the path that of a moderate. So did anyone with any level of credibility have any business describing Barak Obama as a moderate Democrat? Of course not. Should it have been crystal sparkling clear that John McCain was a considerably more moderate as a Republican? You bet your sweet ass it should have. And anyone who was convinced otherwise and then voted accordingly is, unfortunately, a sucker.

4) Know Nothing Band Wagoneers: To this group “hope” was simply the desire to not be left out of the in-crowd. The only “change” that was necessary for these nitwits, was for them to appear to be informed for once. These are the individuals who voted for Obama for every reason under the sun other than his experience, his associations (good or bad), and his stated policy plans. These folks have almost no concept of history, economics, or politics to help them shape any valid opinions on policies and candidates so they had to hop on one of many band wagons and be told what to think about Barak Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. These citizens had never or infrequently voted before due to disinterest or apathy, that was until they were convinced that it was their duty to vote regardless of the aforementioned fact that they had little to no honest knowledge of the issues. Now this convincing was not done by ACORN or the like trying to get every possible voter (regardless of their knowledge or eligibility) to register and pull the lever for Obama. No, these morons convinced themselves that they had to take a ride on the Obama express because they saw so many O’s all around them on people's chests and car bumpers that at first they thought they were having that dream again where all the Cheerios they ate as a child were coming back to get them, but then they soon realized that it wasn’t a recurring nightmare that was unfolding around them. It was instead the greatest opportunity ever to appear to be involved, informed, and dare I say, cool. These are the same schmucks that buy Che Guevara shirts at Hot Topic for $25.00 because members of Rage Against the Machine and the coolest kid in eighth grade did the same. Meanwhile, they have no idea who the man was, what he stood for, and what he did (groups 1 and 2 probably think he’s great, but at least they read up on the guy). Now as I was saying, the band wagons were numerous and as a result parking was often limited at Obama rallies. The lamest of the band wagons that were eagerly booking passage throughout the campaign had to be the college students. Despite their so called “education” they tend to know next to nothing about history, economics, or current events. Their liberal indoctrinating professors and naïve indoctrinated peers see to that. Meanwhile, they had no qualms with telling every individual with an open ear and an empty mind how the world should be and how their anointed one was going to, in the words of Jean-Luc Piccard, “make it so.” These people bought bumper stickers, shirts, hats, plates, coins, socks, beer cozies, shower curtains, lingerie, toilet seat covers, bird feeders, venetian blinds, and even dragon repellant so long as it had the visage of Barak Obama on it. These overly enthusiastic sycophants made up a large portion of the Barak Obama voting bloc. Now I guess a win is a win, but I sure would prefer a President who actually persuaded every individual who voted for him or her rather than President who won thanks to a bunch of fools wearing “yes we can” tee shirts tipping the scales. I don’t know about you, but my polling place looked more like the line outside a Guns-N-Roses concert than a bunch of informed citizens waiting to elect a President. At one point I wasn’t sure if the woman in front of me was there to vote or get Slash to sign her left breast. In an effort to wrap it up on this group I’d just like to say that it’s really sad if you’d cherish the candidate's autograph on your hat more than you’d appreciate the substance of any of his or hers policy positions.

So it should it be clear now which group I have contempt for and which groups I let slide. To bring this to the present and add a dash of that relevance I promised you I’d like to address Obama’s approval rating. President Obama currently enjoys a 61% approval rating according to Gallup which is not far off from Bush’s approval rating at approximately the same time in his Presidency. What that really breaks down to in my opinion is the following.

The extremists on either side of the aisle tend to give high marks to the person they wanted in office regardless of his or her performance forever because they’re simply in too deep.
The tamer party affiliated individuals will probably give high marks regardless of actual results for at least the first the 100 days, but more like the entire first year or two.

The moderates and independents will do their best to be objective and not overly judgmental for the first 100 days and perhaps a bit beyond, but will sour quickly when they realize that they’re a member of group 3 and have zero chance of seeing the actualization of what they were promised. Group 3 (Moderate Suckers) is truly the most tragic in that they continue to believe in candidate after candidate when they promise to govern from the center and are systematically let down almost every time. The only time they’re happy is when they’re duped yet again into thinking they’ve been enjoying centrism (see Bill Clinton) when they really haven’t. I suppose these people are just too optimistic.

My concern is that for the first time ever we seem to have a massive amount of people that are part of group 4 (Know Nothing Band Wagoneers). These people will pollute the polling data as they continue to pretend they know what’s going on when they actually retreated right back to the vacuum from whence they came the second the inauguration was over like the many Red Sox fans that magically materialized outside of New England when they finally broke the “curse” and won the World Series again. I don’t want these ignoramuses padding the polls as Obama’s Presidency meanders on. Call me crazy, but I don’t have a problem with political disinterest or apathy if it’s only replaced by citizens who end up blindly accepting and adhering to whatever they’ve been spoon fed by radicals and ideologues no matter what side they prop up.

Sometimes I wonder if I should punt all of my politics and beliefs and just break down and buy a “yes we did” bumper sticker so everyone stuck behind me in rush hour traffic will think that I played a part in saving the world. Then I wonder how many Nazis were recruited in Hitler’s Germany because they thought the same thing. Now before you go bananas on me, I’m not saying that Obama is Hitler or that his under informed supporters are Nazis. All I’m suggesting is that when people decide to just go with the flow without figuring things out on their own when it pertains to something as important as their elected officials it can have disastrous effects.