The Summer of 2010: Obama's Swan Song

When history is written and Obama's place in it is defined, I have no doubt that the summer of 2010 will have been his high-water mark in popularity. We already know that he met his Waterloo, so to speak, last summer, during the run up to the vote on Obamacare. That event galvanized the opposition against him. This summer sees his supporters take flight.

In addition to all this, we see a huge resurgence of Sarah Palin throughout the media, by virtue of her Facebook page. Sarah has now put the Obama administration on the defensive, starting with her initial reference to "death panels", to the most recent emphasis on Obama's appearance in Las Vegas, tweeting: "he's got [the] most disconnected, backasswards plan ever imposed on the country we love". She continues to frame the debate and has been relentless in her castigation of the Obama administration. This also comes via Twitter: "What happens in Vegas shouldn't stay in Vegas;pls circulate this http://bit.ly/ddINDT".

What she references is an article that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal's editorial page following Obama's appearance there. Excerpts follow:

Two years ago, the majority of American voters supported freshman U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for president. Today, neither he nor his party seem that popular. Why?

No one supported candidate Obama based on his achievements ­-- military, legislative, administrative, or creating jobs in the private sector. There weren't any.

What they embraced was his vow to move past race and partisanship, to seek not merely Democratic solutions or Republican solutions, but bi-partisan solutions, multi-partisan solutions, American solutions.

....Mr. Obama was here to raise funds for one of those aforementioned graying partisans of the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid. And Mr. Obama continued to blame all his -- and our -- problems on the mess he inherited two years ago.

Change? While the president did not mention Mr. Reid's front-running Republican challenger Sharron Angle by name, he did comment on her plan to let younger workers invest part of their Social Security withholdings in private accounts they would own, while Washington would continue paying promised benefits to older Americans:

"On a lot of these issues, she favors an approach that's even more extreme than the Republicans in Washington," said the "post-partisan" president, drawing laughter from the hand-picked, closed-door Democratic crowd. "That's saying something. That is saying something. I mean, she wants to phase out and privatize Social Security and Medicare."

Whereupon the president proceeded to set out his own detailed plan -- and Sen. Reid's -- to save a Social Security and Medicare entitlement system that's already spent all the money current retirees ever paid in, and which is thus headed for bankruptcy.

Well, no, of course he didn't do that.

The fact is, President Obama once again left behind a sinking feeling that neither he nor Sen. Reid have a clue how to pull this country out of its current dire economic straits.

President Obama admits government is not the answer -- at the same time he's growing government control over our economy at the fastest rate seen since the wartime emergency of 1942, while bragging how his administration will pick and choose which "startups" are worth taxpayer subsidies.

Problem is, it's not working.

The blinders have now come off Obama's supporters and they are beginning to recoil at his policies and personality. His administration has even admitted that November of 2010 may see massive swings in the leadership of the House and, perhaps, the Senate.

Personally, I don't think they have any idea how much devastation will be wrought on their agenda by this year's elections.

Cross-posted on Generational Dysfunction