The Obama Levee Breaks
Election 2012: President Obama might think sagging polls are his biggest post-debate problem. But it's really people like Buzz Bissinger, Stacey Dash and Bill Maher showing it's now acceptable in polite society to attack The One.
In an eye-opening piece Monday on the Daily Beast, "Friday Night Lights" author and lifelong Democrat Buzz Bissinger announced he was voting for Romney.
The tipping point, he wrote, "was last week's debate in Denver," which showed Obama out of energy and out of ideas. Obama is "no longer the chosen one. He is just too cool for school in a country desperate for the infectiousness of rejuvenation."
The day before, Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza wrote that Obama's debate performance "raised a bigger question: Is he overrated as a candidate?" Before the debate, Cillizza admits, such a question "would have been unimaginable."
Also Sunday, black actress Stacey Dash decided to tell her quarter-million Twitter followers they should "Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future."
And Bill Maher, once so enamored of Obama he wrote a $1 million check to his Super PAC, now wonders if Obama "took my million and spent it all on weed."
For four years, such comments were entirely off-limits. It's not that Democrats, centrists or other thoughtful people didn't have legitimate gripes. They just couldn't air them without being labeled a racist, a hater or a traitor to the liberal cause.
Now, suddenly, it's OK to say you're disappointed in Obama's leadership. It's OK to wonder if he's overrated. It's OK to blame him for the ongoing lousy economy and foreign policy fiascoes. And, after years avoiding Obama altogether, comedians are willing to make him the butt of jokes.
For any other politician, this wouldn't mean much. But now that the massive dam protecting Obama from criticism all these years has cracked, the results could be catastrophic. Who knows? Maybe the mainstream press will even decide to cover Obama fairly.
They might report how wages have declined the last four years, while food stamps and poverty climbed.
Or tell them how Obama has driven the debt above the entire GDP.
Or write about Obama's green energy fiascoes, Fast and Furious, and the burgeoning Benghazi scandal.
Well, let's not get too carried away. |
