This is the saga of a love affair gone awry between the liberals and their true love, President Obama. One only has to gaze at the furor in Obama's eyes on television to glimpse the depth of emotions, while listening to the liberals wail. Liberals wanted him to be their perfect spouse, and forgot that good relationships take hard work from all parties (no pun intended). As the honeymoon crashed and burned, liberals began abandoning their beloved. There is no forgiveness in their hearts, or room for mistakes. Patience has vanished.
Oh woe is me; it's bad enough that Obama is getting battered from the right, but now his latte friends that loved and cherished him are turning away. He has ceased to be the "cool" kid that shoots hoops; rather he is the clumsy nerd that no one picks or wants for their team. It's like watching rats dive overboard, and leaving no life vest for their best buddy. And so it goes according to plan from the opposition that is wreaking havoc, distrust and suspicion. They knew this would happen because we liberals are so predictable. When the going gets tough, we don't want marriage counseling. Ick! We pick up our toys in a huff and expel a harrumph. Yes, it's a harrumph because we're having a tantrum. Is this any way to treat your beloved? Obama told us it would take a partnership, and we've forgotten. We're mad and watched him skin his knees. No lollipops for these folks. Sadly, the traps were so predictable that Carl and Frank must be dancing a jig together right now.
Just look at the result of the duplicity of bombastic right wing blogger, Andrew Breitbart. He tinkered with a video of Shirley Sherrod, and drove it into the liberals' weak spot -- racism. Breitbart admittedly isn't the brightest bulb, but he had expert coaching and the fallout is a bad dream. Duh, that was a no-brainer. It was like dangling a young, zaftig thing in front of former President Clinton, and waiting for him to take the bait. We (liberals) should be mad as hell at the opposition, not Obama or his administration that fell over one another. As Ari Shapiro on NPR's "All Things Considered" finds, "there has been a pattern of conservative activists blurring the line between journalism and advocacy, and doing it with striking success." I'd go further, and call it what it is: pathetic, hate mongering journalism, libel, slander and all those bad things. Shirley should sue Breitbart, and if she wants to -- go back to work (please). We should stop tripping over ourselves, stop over analyzing and get over it. Anderson Cooper, we all embrace you, but enough is enough. Move on, there's so much work to be done in rebuilding this relationship between the Obama and the liberals.
And you know what? The opposition plan just keeps giving us indigestion that is constipating the Congress' ability to get things done. This is the right graphic word to describe the impasse and filibusters that are filling those grand halls. Yep, and we all know that these folks in Congress are not exactly rabble-rousers. But now Harry has kicked climate legislation to the curb because he cannot gather the votes to pass it. We keep fighting among ourselves. And it took four weeks just to get unemployment benefits extended to millions of out of work Americans during a Recession. It's like pushing a rock uphill. Dave Johnson has got it correct in his piece "Republican Plan Working So Far" -- "Block everything Congress does, then run against Democrats as ineffective."
Surprisingly, the opposition seems to understand the 24/7 news cycle, and social media that we invented much better than we do. They use Sarah Palinesque techniques (Breitbart), and opportunistic surrogates. Then they make a good batter by mixing in race, unemployment, environmental disaster, chicanery by the right wing bloggers -- and we have a formula for success which is unprecedented in this country. Our message machine must get much more sophisticated with rapid responses. We goofed on the Sherrod fiasco and now are buried in the avalanche. We know that these are difficult times, and we need to figure out how to weather the storm while the opposition continues to manipulate our greatest hopes, wishes and dreams. I say save this love affair. Relationships are a lot of work -- particularly when there is constant, insidious interference from nasty in-laws. Just remember the picture of Hillary standing by Bill through it all. It takes guts. No one promised a rose garden.
Note, references for this article are listed below in my pearltree.