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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (91732)	9/28/2010 11:45:26 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224696

Days Of Malaise, Full Of Contempt Posted 07:00 PM ET Elitists: As Democrats hurtle toward an electoral nightmare in November, the best explanation they can offer for popular discontent is to call voters ignorant. Call it Carteresque cluelessness. In the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave the most incompetent address in the history of the presidency — his infamous "malaise speech." Incredibly, Democrats today are imitating Carter's disastrous moaning and groaning: The people don't know what's good for them, and they should just be silent and trust their betters. "I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy," Carter said 31 years ago — referring to what was actually a threat to his being re-elected president. Carter called it "a crisis of confidence ... that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." Last week, Carter's "White House Diary" was published — coming, inexplicably, nearly 30 years after the end of his presidency. In it, he defends the speech as "one of the most dramatic and memorable events of my administration." According to him, it merely "pointed out some of our nation's problems and discussed the challenges that could and would be overcome by bold and direct action on my energy proposals." The former president suggested that history had judged it, all these years later, as "prescient" and an "honest analysis of the troubled mood of our nation." We mention this because, three decades later, in what is obviously a concerted campaign strategy, both President Obama and Vice President Biden this week called on voters to "buck up!" — as if some Carteresque malaise is at the root of the nation's economic problems. It seems to have afflicted other Democrats, too. Speaking to reporters at a Boston medical facility on Friday, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., claimed, "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." The 2004 Democratic nominee for president added, "I think a lot of the anger today — while it's appropriate because Washington is broken — is not directed at the right people." According to Kerry, "when people hear the facts and they see what we're doing, it frankly makes sense." Let's analyze: Washington is broken, but the anger that has spawned a historic Tea Party movement across the country is misdirected — because the American people don't "pay that much attention to what's going on." Truth is, what's going on — like spending us into ruin with trillions of taxpayer dollars on jobs programs that don't provide jobs — is so bad the people can't afford not to pay attention anymore. And who can be blamed for Washington being broken other than the liberal Democrats who control the White House and enjoy big majorities in both houses of Congress? We have no "doubt about the meaning of our own lives"; there is no "loss of a unity of purpose for our nation," as Jimmy Carter claimed. Playing the malaise card will be about as effective with the electorate as the Democrats' disastrous publicity stunt last week of having a comedian testify to Congress.