(Note: This is meant as a funny to show that the diary in question is about as productive as this one. As such, it is self-parody as much as it is parody. As Bob Johnson might say, "This helps.")
I was just going to write about how we should rally the troops to fight for country in this election, when a pundit dragged me back into the fight between self-dubbed "real progressives" and the Obama administration. As Al Pacino said in Godfather III, every time I think I'm done with it, he keeps pulling me back in.
I don't want to bore you with the details of why they don't stand behind the President and don't understand that changing Washington and its underlying structures and assumptions requires a mammoth effort of all progressives. We've been over it a million times. No, today the interesting part is why they brought up this old fight in the first place.
This was not a gaffe. It was not a slip by the "professional left" from someone who had grown frustrated. This is a coordinated strategy. Many other pundits even used the same talking points. They encourage their base to complain 5 weeks before Election Day and then rail against the Obama administration when the plead with the base to "buck up" and GOTV. That's not an accident; that's planned.
One possibility is that they think yelling at the President before an election is smart electoral politics. Accuse him of not doing enough. Treat him like a child and maybe he'll comply? This the President we're talking about so maybe they thought he'll respond well to abuse. It is after all what they've been doing to him since he was sworn in, and it seems to be working well.
But I don't think that's it. That strategy is hardly inspiring and honestly I don't think I've ever seen a group of people supposedly on the same side as their President yell at their President like this right before an election. It's bizarre.
There is one other explanation. They think we're going to lose and they're setting up the President as scapegoat. It wasn't the ungrateful voters and the professional left - it that he ran a bad campaign and didn't deliver on his promises (or something). Actually, the professional left pundits will love this. There is nothing they enjoy more than beating up on the President and Democratic elected officials. This strategy is tailored made for them. They're going to eat it up!
But to what effect? The pundits are so immersed in their ratings and celebrity that they have forgotten the end goal. They are under the delusion that if they can just get the Democratic base to like them as opposed to the President everything will be fine. But, then again, may that IS the end goal, as opposed to winning elections. As a pundit, you are supposed to get people like media jerks, not politicians like the President.
I think they still believe that they are good proxy for the mood of the country. That is a stunning and inexcusable error. But they're so deep in, they can't even see that losing the election is a gigantic loss, period. Do they think making themselves happy will win the 2012 election?
Scapegoating the President might send the professional left pundits into orgasmic seizures, but what does it do to win the country over? What does it do about unemployment? What does do about our rising insurance premiums? Or winning the election?
In a recent polls, the President is still viewed quite favorably, the generic Congressional ballot is narrowing, and the enthusiasm gap is shrinking. That isn't the professional left, that's America. The Democratic base is so much larger than the pundits claim it is. Remember, those are the same Democratic base who got the President elected in the first place, and could give a fig about the pundit class.
So, you can pillory the President all you like but it isn't going to change the message. You don't do any of the hard work of governing, you sit back and play the critic. Too little to protect the Democratic majority, too little to defend the President when he's right, too little to see all the progress we actually have made in two short years.
Almost everyone in the pundit class is there because they blare the loudest, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum. If you make them happy, you've probably done the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do. Because it gives America a sad face. Hence why over 160,000 will attend Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity.
What gets you the headlines is the promise that you will always find a way to see the negative and deflate the President every step of the way. But if you like, you can take another cheap shot at the President and the Democratic base trying to help America. My guess is it won't. But if we do fail this election, you blame the President again, and the only people who will be happy will be, well, you.