It is not by accident that President Obama is campaigning hard among youth and black voters these days, the two voting blocs that made possible his victory (53-46 million in popular votes) over Senator McCain in 2008. The 7 million vote difference was made possible by huge turnouts from these two groups on election day. For the upcoming November elections, Obama is counting on them once again.
No one could fault African-Americans for supporting Obama wholeheartedly in 2008 because they took pride in having a black candidate vie for the highest political office in the land and win it. By supporting him, they were, in a big way, telling the world that in America, regardless of one’s background, anyone could make it.
No one could also fault the young for casting their vote for Obama with vigor and enthusiasm. With a fresh outlook on the political world they were about to inhabit, they did believe in his message of hope. Their idealism convinced them that indeed change is possible.
But has Obama delivered for them during the past two years? Has he made good on his message of change? If unemployment is any indicator of his inability to deliver, it is most evident in these two groups, hardest hit by the current economic crisis.
For Obama to go back to them and solicit their votes once again despite empty promises could only mean one thing: he is just using them. It seems he has no respect for their ability to make intelligent and good decisions for themselves. It seems he is viewing them as these unenlightened, naive, and gullible voting blocs that could be persuaded by any message he presents to them.
During the 2008 campaign, there were nagging suspicions that perhaps the black community had been dealt the racial card, while the youth were viewed as malleable and naive. The way Mr. Obama is pandering to them these days, perrhaps both suspicions are true after all.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Voting in California
Even the Los Angeles Times admits that the Democratic candidates it is endorsing are not that great. In its endorsement page last week, it had this to say about Jerry Brown Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor who is running against the Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay:
We don’t see him as California’s savior but instead as a kind of experienced mechanic who will know how to get a few more miles out of the state’s falling machinery. . . No longer the fresh young candidate of new ideas whom Californians first elected governor in 1974, Brown is now older and, The Times believes, wiser leader. . . Republican Meg Whitman’s solution for the state too often seem based on popular but wildly inaccurate clichés about how the state got into its current fix and how to get it out.
What these inaccurate clichés are, it does not say. Meg Whitman did not run a successful billion-dollar corporation on clichés, for sure.
And about Barbara Boxer, incumbent Democratic candidate who is running for the US Senate against Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the Times went on to say:
The Times sometimes is exasperated with Boxer but in the end backs her over Carly Fiorina because issues matter, and we find Boxer on the right side of issues ranging from healthcare reform to the environment to transportation.
As if the current problems of California revolve around healthcare, environment, and transportation! And what is it to be on the right side of these issues, anyway?
With 14.2 % unemployment and a $20 billion deficit, California needs leaders who can run the state on sound principles of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free enterprise and who can exhibit level-headedness, decisiveness, and innovativeness. As former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Whitman and Fiorina are formidable and effective (see today’s Fox News Sunday's interview). They are fresh blood with new ideas on one hand. Boxer and Brown, on the other, come across as tired, old politicians who have made a career out of politics. Perhaps what California needs is a CEO for a governor who can steer the ship of state away from “politics as usual” to something that will work right for the state and for every Californian.
The stakes in these elections are indeed high. The only thing that Californians need to do to make the most out of it is to vote intelligently, make wise choices, despite promptings from their political and media elites to vote along partisan lines.
We don’t see him as California’s savior but instead as a kind of experienced mechanic who will know how to get a few more miles out of the state’s falling machinery. . . No longer the fresh young candidate of new ideas whom Californians first elected governor in 1974, Brown is now older and, The Times believes, wiser leader. . . Republican Meg Whitman’s solution for the state too often seem based on popular but wildly inaccurate clichés about how the state got into its current fix and how to get it out.
What these inaccurate clichés are, it does not say. Meg Whitman did not run a successful billion-dollar corporation on clichés, for sure.
And about Barbara Boxer, incumbent Democratic candidate who is running for the US Senate against Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the Times went on to say:
The Times sometimes is exasperated with Boxer but in the end backs her over Carly Fiorina because issues matter, and we find Boxer on the right side of issues ranging from healthcare reform to the environment to transportation.
As if the current problems of California revolve around healthcare, environment, and transportation! And what is it to be on the right side of these issues, anyway?
With 14.2 % unemployment and a $20 billion deficit, California needs leaders who can run the state on sound principles of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free enterprise and who can exhibit level-headedness, decisiveness, and innovativeness. As former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Whitman and Fiorina are formidable and effective (see today’s Fox News Sunday's interview). They are fresh blood with new ideas on one hand. Boxer and Brown, on the other, come across as tired, old politicians who have made a career out of politics. Perhaps what California needs is a CEO for a governor who can steer the ship of state away from “politics as usual” to something that will work right for the state and for every Californian.
The stakes in these elections are indeed high. The only thing that Californians need to do to make the most out of it is to vote intelligently, make wise choices, despite promptings from their political and media elites to vote along partisan lines.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)