Monday 29th of April 2024

weak right arm...

lefthand

President Barack Obama is losing his strong right arm. Dark days lie ahead, in which the president will lose traction with Congress, needlessly offend key constituencies, lose control of his legislative agenda. Why? His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is quitting the White House, maybe to try and become mayor of Chicago, certainly to cash in and make a bundle on Wall Street.

But wait! Aren't those dark days already here? Isn't the president's approval rating sinking steadily? Doesn't he face the possible loss of both houses of Congress to the Republicans? Aren't Democrats, facing uphill fights in the midterm elections, begging him to stay away and not doom them with his shadow?

All these things are true. If Rahm Emanuel has been his strong right arm and, in the fawning words of a writer for the Daily Beast, "the man with the political grit and muscle to make the president's dreams come true", then perhaps the President will fare better across the next two years fighting with his left hand only, and with a chief advisor at his side endowed with less muscle but more brains and strategic savvy.



Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/69409,news-comment,news-politics,alexander-cockburn-farewell-rahm-emanuel-barack-obamas-dud-svengali#ixzz11CF9D6tM

record of failure

... by the time Obama hired him, Emanuel already had a proven record of failure. He favoured the war in Iraq, and when he was chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 he made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates, backing dismal neo-con candidates who duly plummeted to defeat, losing the Democrats seats they would otherwise have won.

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/69409,news-comment,news-politics,alexander-cockburn-farewell-rahm-emanuel-barack-obamas-dud-svengali#ixzz11CIVyEG8

low end of town prefers the illusion...

Working-class whites are flocking to Republicans ahead of next month's congressional elections, a new poll shows, turning a group long wary of Democrats into an even bigger impediment to the party's drive to keep control of Congress.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll shows whites without four-year college degrees preferring Republican candidates by twice the margin of the last two elections, when Democrats made significant gains in the House and Senate. The poll, conducted last month, found this group favouring Republican hopefuls 58 per cent to 36 per cent - a whopping 22 percentage-point gap.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/workingclass-whites-shun-democrats-20101007-168ap.html

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Gus: Obama is suffering from an electorate that has no spine and is easily fooled (many Americans have been fooled for a long time — sorry US folks)... hasn't had any spine really for sometime... Same process as recently as in Australia in the last election. This is due from several factor in which the slanted media plays a devilish polarising illusionary role — a role mostly in favour of the rich upper class — by dangling the "idea of weath" and "beauty" to the poorest and ugliest...

The anti-Obama media is powerful. It's foxy and clever at psychological manipulation— by crawling at the level of the lowest common denominator — promoting rabid racist gun-totting zealot rednecks... It disseminates porkies.

The major Obama supporters "have also been disappointed" with his "ability/inability" to provide on his promises — in which the system itself is geared not to provide any change... Obama was lucky to get his heath-reforms through... But then after the efforts of his impressive presidential campaign, he went on in making speeches for second grade students — losing the importance of office...

Pity. Obama needs more grip on himself.