Saturday, September 08, 2012

Today is Peggy Joseph Day




You all do remember …. ‘Obama’s going to pay for my gas and mortgage’. What Ms Joseph captured that day in 2008 is the PERCEPTION of fools that Obama not only actually cares about them past their vote, but that he will do something about their fate. But let’s be charitable … maybe he wants to do something about their fate but lacks the ability and common sense to find that path.
Today we awake to find out that Obama has ‘bumped’ his way to a 4% lead in Gallup with a 2% margin of error. Well, it’s a tracking poll, but we have to acknowledge what one of the two most judicious purveyors of common sense in the land, Charles Krauthammer (the other being Victor Davis Hanson), recognizes.
Given the state of the economy, by any historical standard, Barack Obama should be 15 points behind Mitt Romney. Why is he tied? The empathy gap. On “caring about average people,” Obama wins by 22 points. Maintaining that gap was a principal goal of the Democratic convention. It’s the party’s only hope of winning in November.
George H.W. Bush, Romney-like in aloofness, was once famously handed a staff cue card that read: “Message: I care.” That was supposed to be speech guidance. Bush read the card. Out loud.Not surprisingly, he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who lives to care, who feels your pain better than you do – or at least makes you think so. In politics, that’s a trivial distinction.
We are now in the money phase of this campaign, and Mr. Romney we are all depending on you to establish both the bullshit of this gap, and why DOING SOMETHING demonstrates more care than being able to yap about how you do care.
That lack so far is why the polls are close.
That these polls can be close a day after calamitous jobs numbers ( Those Jobless Numbers Are Even Worse Than They Look..WSJ ) testifies to the danger Obama and the democrats pose to the nation’s well being via their ability to act out their empathetic gazes.
Nothing but the growth of business will help.
Obama has 2 years with COMPLETE CONTROL to establish a path. He did not. He could not.
He is not up to the job in these days.
Maybe Romney is. I believe it’s a better bet. But if he fails, we should be just as rigid in seeing to it that he is fired as well.
What choice is there?
Empathy?

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