The President Gets a Spanking!

The promise of change is but a blurred memory!
by Charlie Leck

A number of friends have written, asking me why (Why?) I have not yet expressed myself about the Massachusetts senatorial election. Frankly, in all truthfulness, I am stunned by the events in Teddy K’s state and I haven yet recovered from the thrashing

The extraordinary defeat in a state where Democrats usually reign is enlightening. It portends troubled waters ahead for the Party in November. Unless the economy makes a surprising and unexpectedly strong recovery in the next six months, there will be doom and gloom among Democrats in November. I am not predicting that the Republicans will take control of either congressional body, but they will seriously weaken the Democrat’s majority.

Why the turning against Democrats?
I see two basic reasons why the voter is dissatisfied enough to move toward the Republican Party even in a state so solidly and traditionally Democratic as Massachusetts.

The Democrats and the economy!
The voters are bright enough not to blame Democrats for the original plunge of the American economy. Those causes lie elsewhere. However, the voters want to know why the Democrats haven’t done more to help the nation recover. They don’t like it that the job market remains so weak. They don’t like it that big banks have been coddled, romanced, kissed and gifted so vigorously by this administration and this Democrat controlled Congress. While that little affair has been going on right before our eyes, the little guy has been ignored and refused any affection whatsoever.

You may argue, if you wish, that this is perception only and not really factual. Let me tell you, in politics perception is 99.91 percent of the game.

And, here’s the other perception among the voters and the second reason why they voted so harshly against the Democratic Party in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

Change? What change?
The American voter is not a fool. They know what the President’s most basic promise was in the 2008 election. He promised us change and there has been no change. For that, both the President and his party will be punished.

President Barack H. Obama is conducting himself and the affairs of his office in the same old way Bush-Reagan-Clinton-Bush conducted themselves. Obama is an ordinary, and not an extraordinary, President. Deal making is one of the primary tools of his office – along with glad-handing, backslapping, favor-dealing and ass-kissing.

The President may have very innocently thought that this was the way to promote his programs and get them slid through Congress. If so, he was dead-wrong.

Those of us who voted for him wanted a different approach. We would have preferred to see a number of his proposals crash and burn in Congress rather than watch him compromise on his promises to the American people. He should have stood fast on real health care reform. When it failed, he could have taken his case to the American people and shown them the real culprits who destroyed America’s dream.

Instead, the President was willing to dilute and dilute his health care proposal to win over every single vote he could possibly get. Those to whom he made his promise that things would be different were not impressed.

The President shows every sign that he will conduct himself in this manner on all the great issues of his campaign platform.

Yes we can! Sorry, the chant has now become: “Sorry, we thought we could!”

The President, because of his compromises, is deeply and personally embedded in each defeat he suffers and will suffer in Congress. He failed to stay above the fray and became an integral part of it.

The people want to know how there can be change when the President carries on with all the good-old boys over there in Congress who are doing things the same, same-old way.

The American people are about to spank the President for his failure to really change the way things are done in Washington. The people of Massachusetts already have.

Watch how voters in Pennsylvania will do the same thing in November. Say good-bye to Arlan Spector!