Can You Feel The End Approaching?

As Winston Wolf's paternal uncle and famed chicken-farmer Walter Wadsworth Wolf observed, "Let's not start plucking eachother's cocks just yet."

But the chickens are come a-roost.

The end hasn’t come yet, not quite. But you can feel it coming, a dull, oppressive presence like the heaviness of the air before a storm or the quickly widening fissures that consumed the House of Usher. Future historians, looking back on the wreck of the Obama administration, will mark with wonder the president’s darkly frivolous assertion of executive privilege this week. It was then, they will say, that his administration, that the President himself, officially entered the Period of Panic and Flailing.

It’s not going to be pretty. Expect a season of recriminations, grandiosities, and sudden reversals. The usual narrative holds that Obama asserted executive privilege, denying Congress the documents it requested in the murderous case of gunwalking called “Fast and Furious” in order to save his Attorney General Eric Holder. Perhaps. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, at the end of the day, this spectacular piece of recklessness wasn’t regarded as the beginning of the end for Eric Holder, who will likely face a Contempt of Congress citation next week.

I don't know if Fast & Furious itself will sink him. I don't think the swing bloc which will decide the election knows much about Fast & Furious, or would even care much if they bothered to inform themselves.

As I've said, I don't think they do their homework.

But this is a dangerous thing for Obama, even among people who don't do their homework. At some point they take a look at all the questions they would have to resolve in Obama's favor in order to vote for him, and decide: The hell with that. That's too much work. I'd have to do an awful lot of homework just to feel comfortable clearing Obama of all this accumulate crap. It's just easier to assume he's halfway guilty on all of it.

And that's how I think people who don't do their homework tend to think. They split the difference.

But even splitting the difference does not look good for Obama. Not when you also have to say (if you're determined to not do your homework, and just split the difference on everything), "Well, he's not really responsible for the depression per se, but he sure doesn't seem to have done much to reverse it." Because the economy is so horrible (and getting worse, not better), "splitting the difference" is a posture that is lethal for Obama's reelection chances. If he's half responsible for a depression, and only credited for half-measures that half-worked, he's halfway out of the White House already.

I often chide people for mistaking independent, disinterested voters for conservatives. You can't mistake them for argument-loving, passionate partisans for your cause -- obviously they're not that, or they would be argument-loving, partisans for your cause.

But that's exactly what Obama needs them to be -- passionate partisans on his side -- in order for him to prevail. All of these independents who don't really follow the news too closely would have to suddenly decide to read a lot of left-wing blogs and stew themselves in left-wing apologias for Obama, before they could feel comfortable clearing Obama of all charges and criticisms.

Just as there is no way in hell they'd do that on behalf of a conservative candidate, there's also no way in hell they're going to do that on behalf of Obama. The amount of homework -- in this case, massive quantities of Kool-Aid drinking -- they'd have to do to find in favor of Obama is just too much.

I was saying two years ago that my Secret Bonus Prediction is that Obama might choose to not actually run for reelection. Although we're into election season now, we're not past the conventions.

I do expect things to get worse for Obama. I do expect the long-predicted preference cascade to show up in polls. And I do expect that the polls will register -- at least a month before the election, if not sooner -- that Obama has no realistic shot at winning the election.

Whether he steps aside or not will depend on when the public's Obama Fever (and associated Obama Hallucinatory Disorder) finally breaks. If he's got time left to bow out, he just might.

And on Fast and Furious in particular-- the press can thank itself for pushing this into campaign season. If they'd done their jobs properly, and pressured Holder to be forthcoming with answers about a massive hostile covert operation against Mexico including 2500 guns and 300 deaths, this issue might be long past. Holder might have either disclosed or resigned, and it all might be a half-remembered scandal.

But they didn't. Once again, they Loved Their Liberal Champions To Death. They loved Obama so much they never even asked "Is this constitutional?" Had they asked, they might have prevented a political, and soon to be legal, catastrophe.

They're his Number One Fans.

But Number One Fans sometimes don't realize how much harm they do.

posted by Ace at 04:06 PM

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