Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Obama as Greek Bank 

Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 23 May 2012

At least inside my own head, whenever I do forecaster punditry, I feel like I always qualify what I say. Our lives are a mist, we know not what cometh, I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, etc. But then some years down the road somebody chortles at me in the comments, saying, "Yeah? well, you said . . ." or something along those lines. And yeah, I said that, but I thought I qualified it, and I am not motivated enough to go hunting in the archives to see if I qualified it adequately, and what's the use anymore, I think to myself.

But then my inner dogmatism bubbles to the surface once more, and I find it is time to pop off again. But not without qualifications.


That said, it seems to me that Obama is in serious trouble. But let me state this in terms of a flipped around thought experiment. Suppose there were a hard left president whose policies were deeply unpopular with the people, but who who had a mainline media that was completely in the tank for him. What would that look like?

It seems that it would look something like what we have now -- clear and undeniable signs of major trouble, with those clear and undeniable signs not getting any major media play at all. That's what it would look like.

Think about it. In the Democratic primary in West Virginia a few weeks back, a felon sitting in chokey in Texas got 42% of the vote against Obama. In Arkansas, a no-name opponent garnered 41% against Obama. In Kentucky, with no opponent whatever, "uncommitted" got 42% of the vote. This is among Democrats, and it is way worse than just soft support. Moreover, these are elections, not polls, and they are spontaneous, not orchestrated.

I am not writing any of this as a Romney cheerleader, obviously. But it seems to me that Obama is officially perceived as being about 10-15% above where he actually is, and he is being held up there by the sheer cussedness of a leftist media.

Obama's support is like the solvency of a Greek bank. By all accounts, there should have been run on the banks months ago. And . . . maybe there was, and nobody is telling us about it.