The Democrats Aren’t Taking It Well

The Obama administration has turned out to be a bitter disappointment, and Democrats aren’t taking it well. Examples could be multiplied endlessly, but one that struck me today was this over-the-top news story, or whatever CBS News may call it, by Robert Hendin. Reading the article, you might assume that Hendin is a far-left blogger, but no: CBS describes him as “senior producer for ‘Face the Nation’ and a CBS News senior political producer.” So if you have ever wondered whether Face the Nation and other CBS News programs are shot through with liberal bias, check this out:

An ardent Obama supporter said yesterday, “why doesn’t he just fight” and that about says it all. The latest kerfuffle over the timing of what is supposed to be a major speech on jobs broke down into a sandbox spat.

The idea that Obama isn’t “fighting” is the current meme on the Left. In fact, he has been furiously jamming a left-wing agenda down the throats of the American people for the last 2 1/2 years, and is now starting to back off only because he hopes to have some chance of being re-elected by an increasingly hostile electorate.

The White House seemed happy to be rebuffed by the House Republicans who after hitting the lowest approval rating ever recorded, should have done anything in their power to get back in the good graces of the public.

What a mystery! Those diabolical Republicans aren’t watching the polls, and instead are trying to do what their constituents sent them to Washington to accomplish! Actually, to be fair, Republicans are looking at the polls, and they figure the Senate is almost certainly theirs, they will pick up seats in the House, and in all likelihood, if something unexpected doesn’t happen in the next 12 months, the next president will be a Republican. Hendin has been reading those same polls, which is why he is writing this sort of hysterical, partisan prose.

It’s clear that the next 15 months will be utterly painful, disgusting and at times distasteful. The election season is nearly in full swing with congressional Republicans and presidential contenders on the warpath and Democrats and the White House on the defensive.

That is a disgusting scenario if, like Hendin and pretty much everyone else at CBS News, you are a Democrat. So, what can we expect over the next few months?

The White House will aim to put together a package of common sense bipartisan jobs proposals, but everyone believes that plan, whatever it is, is apparently dead on arrival. If the House Republicans rebuff a request from the leader of the free world to borrow their office for a major speech on the biggest issue facing the country, why on earth would they support anything he proposes?

What can you do but laugh? President Obama will “put together a package of common sense bipartisan jobs proposals”–sure, this is a straight news story, not a DNC press release. But wait–Obama has been president for 2 1/2 years, so where has his “common sense bipartisan jobs proposal” been until now? Is CBS referring to the stimulus bill? That passed–unfortunately–and did zero good, while driving the taxpayers another trillion dollars into debt. Hence the voters’ skepticism about Obama’s next round of proposals.

And what about Obama’s speech next week? What happened, of course, was that the Republicans had a long-planned debate on the calendar, and the White House, apparently thinking they were doing something politically clever, wanted to schedule Obama’s speech in the House chamber to conflict, precisely, with the Republicans’ television time. The Republicans rebuffed this cheap effort at political gamesmanship by the Democrats. But there is no hint of this history in CBS’s account. As for the question, “why on earth would they support anything he proposes,” the answer is not complicated or obscure: Congressional Republicans would be happy to support any presidential initiative that has a reasonable chance of helping the economy rather than damaging it. The problem is that Obama’s leftist agenda has consistently hurt the American people. So why would Republicans support more of the same?

CBS finishes its account–which, as far as I can tell, it bills as an objective news story rather than a summary of DNC talking points–as follows:

The president could have said no to the speaker’s dismissal of his request for a big speech in front of Congress and just called a press conference instead. He could have said his plan and the economy is too important to wait another day.

But, with half of Congress firmly against him, he has little choice but to use that opposition to paint a picture of Republicans as obstructionists – as if the fate of his re-election could hang in the balance of whether or not he can show some fight.

Is that reporting, or cheerleading? You can judge. But to conclude, let’s just focus on CBS News’s claim that Obama’s new proposals–whatever they may turn out to be–are “too important to wait another day.” If those proposals are so important, where have they been for the last 2 1/2 years? Or, to be more cruel, where were they last week when Obama was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard? “Too important to wait another day?” Tell that to the president.

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