The Dems came out swinging in January, with massive legislative reforms and policy demands that had been blocked in the previous eight years. They passed some of those without noticing that, since February, the tide has slowly been turning against them, starting with widespread unhappiness with the stimulus package. When the public saw how the stimulus was crafted and passed, and air began leaking from the Obama balloon.
Much of that deflation involves independent voters who thought Obama would at least try to live up to his promises of a different kind of Washington (less partisanship, more dialogue, less corruption and special-interest influence).
“It is no surprise to me how quickly the public, especially disaffected Dems and independents, have turned,” Brown said. “They learned from Bush and the Republicans that if you give politicians the benefit of the doubt, they will take advantage of that good will.”
Main Street keeps trying to send a message to the political class with their presidential votes, and the political class keeps reading these votes as affirmations rather than negations.
People voted against Democrats in 2004 and against Republicans in 2008 – not for the other party.
Politicians’ inability to read those votes correctly may be symptomatic of our narcissistic age, in which everyone thinks everything is about them but no one is accountable for anything, according to Brown.
The Tea Party phenomenon has moved Americans to mobilize and protest as never before, which makes you wonder why the media and elected officials downplay it so much.
As for racism, the majority of the electorate is white, and a majority of it voted for Obama – and people are now demonstrating because they think our country is going off a cliff, not because our president is black.
As one Democrat strategist said: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker when I was in college in the ’60s that said, ‘The majority is not silent – the government is deaf.’ Well, that could not be more true today.”
No wonder Thomas Jefferson once said he was all for revolutions every so often.