Team Obama is looking more desperate these days. The signs of desperation are clearly visible—Obama playing to a half-packed house in Miami, Obama using increasingly shrill arguments that his job creation efforts are working, Geithner’s threats regarding the debt ceiling and the Democrat-influenced mainstream media’s increasing criticisms of the Republican slate of presidential primary candidates. If Obama’s policies are so successful and if the country is doing so well, why do Americans see this growing desperation in Team Obama?
Team Obama’s desperation seems to stem from a fear of the unknown—how will it be possible for them to win congressional seats and keep the Presidency in 2012 when many Americans are seeing through the Obama Administration’s promises and the illusions of “hope and change”.
The five hundred promises made by Obama during his first presidential campaign have not been implemented. The economic philosophies of Democrat-led states, that high taxes and increased government spending will create prosperity, have proven to be a failure. Just look at states such as California, Michigan and Illinois. And, the state that most clearly implemented a Republican, capitalist, free market approach to governing, Texas, is thriving and growing.
Yet, even this failure of ideology is not what is creating the growing desperation among Democrats. These ideological failures are just emblematic of much larger issues, and the root cause of Team Obama’s growing desperation.
It may well be that Democrats are growing more desperate because they no longer have ACORN to ensure success at the polls in November 2012.
Think about it. In recent elections, Democrat party success has depended, in a large part, upon an uninformed electorate and an entitlement-heavy electorate showing up at the polls to vote. Any, but the most die-hard sycophants now realize that Obama’s ideological policies have been failures, so Democrats need to ensure that the message of failure doesn’t reach voters and that more and more of those beholden to the entitlement-rich policies of Obama show up to vote.
In the past, ACORN seems to have performed a valuable function for the Democrat party. They helped to swell the ranks with anyone willing to vote for Democrat candidates. ACORN was hugely successful too and was able to register millions of new voters, some living, some not. Moreover, when even ACORN ran short of new voters to register, it seems they made up fictitious names (the starting line-up for the Dallas Cowboys for example) to further pad the voting rolls for loyal Democrat votes.
But that jig is up and the question now is where will Democrats go to recruit, or invent, a new crop voters?
Clearly, modern economic demographics give Democrats a huge edge. A 2009 and 2010 “Index of Dependence Government” survey of voters that voted in the last presidential election shows that almost 50% were dependent upon the federal, state or local government. In addition, studies have now show that almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes, so they have no incentive to vote to lower taxes and every incentive to vote for candidates promising increased entitlements. Not too surprisingly, these folks make up the core of support for Obama. The obvious problem here is the folks actually paying for the government are now outnumbered by the folks that do not.
Democrats have thus learned that the trick to eternal electoral success in congress is to keep promising more entitlements and expansion of government services, safe in the knowledge that fewer and fewer of their supporters will ever be required to pay the added taxes that an expanding welfare state requires. And that is why ACORN served Democrats so faithfully by expanding the rolls even more to include more and more “voters” that are dependent upon the continued expansion of government.
With ACORN exposed, Democrats and Team Obama are going to have a more difficult time cobbling together an electoral mass. It is obvious to nearly everyone (save the ACORN Voters) that Obama’s economic policies are making the nation less competitive, more indebted, and less prosperous.
But the stakes are high so expect Democrats to find innovative ways to push as many ill-informed and dodgy voters to the polls as possible, even without ACORN. After all, federal, state and local government are big business—accounting for almost $7 trillion dollars spent annually. With a GDP just a bit over $14 Trillion, it is clear that the government controls or indirectly influences almost 50% of the nation’s economy, either directly, through its spending or its regulatory overreach.
ACORN was an easy vehicle to which Democrats could funnel funds that could be distributed as get-out-the-vote money and other incentives to advance the Democrat agenda. Now that ACORN is gone, the void is vast, the stakes are high, and Democrats have no guarantee that they can induce an uninformed electorate to vote in November 2012.
What Democrats have fallen back on is paltry in comparison—the three Ds—decry, demagogue and divert.
First, Democrats decry—using the blame game (blaming George Bush for all ills) despite Obama’s 29 months in office. Second, Democrats resort to demagoguery—portraying honest efforts at reining in out-of-control spending, such as Paul Ryan’s budget cutting proposal, as insensitive and un-American. Third, Democrats divert attention from their failed policies by fear-mongering among an uninformed electorate—whether the end of the world unless “green policies and jobs” are implemented or whether it’s the end of the nation unless the debt ceiling is raised and entitlement spending is increased, or whether it is scaring elderly citizens about Medicare/Medicaid entitlements.
Decrying GOP efforts, demagoguing GOP efforts and diverting attention via fear-mongering is designed to divert attention away from the failure of the Obama Administration to grow the economy, their failure to create the jobs promised and the Administration’s failure to bring the hope and change promised.
FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, which is why Republicans need to be very careful about what Democrat-led desperation will resort to next.