Eugene Robinson and Joan Walsh were on Ed Schultz's show tonight and the three of them commiserated about Obama's need to "fire up the base." While I didn't find their exhortation flawed in any specific way, I did find it generally depressing.
Why would any reasonably well informed, reasonably "progressive" base require external motivation to get to the polls November 6 to prevent, if nothing else, another political Pearl Harbor?
To even have to ask ... The latent apathy and adolescent fastidiousness that are chronically at the ready to swamp the collective mind of the modern left is nothing short of appalling.
It's not motivation enough that Mitt Romney is threatening to militarily molest half the globe and potentially commit all but five young American men to their neoconservative deaths? It's not enough motivation that Romney & Sidekick are plotting the vastest upward concentration of ungodly wealth in the history of this already grossly plutocratic America? It's not enough that this evil little clown of a far-right Huey Long would doom the uninsured to years more of sporadic, wildly expensive care--if any?
In short it's not enough that all the depraved, wretched obscenities of the contemporary GOP could be back in the White House? That singularly horrifying spectre isn't sufficient motivation for the left, all by itself?
I don't disagree with Eugene, Joan and Ed. But Mr. President, if you really do need to "fire up the base" to save itself from an easily foreseen national catastrophe of the first order, you've got to wonder about their fundamental smarts, no?
Instead of moaning about how Obama needs to fire up the base - and have they seen the rallies lately, the base looks pretty fired up - perhaps they should be firing up the base themselves.
Talk not only about would happen in case of a Romney win, but also what the "base" stands to lose that Obama has already accomplished and what he can accomplish that will never happen if Obama doesn't win.
I am sick and tired of all those who sit on the sidelines as if it is all on Obama's shoulders. Literally, not figuratively, they make me sick.
Posted by: japa21 | October 09, 2012 at 08:23 PM
ABsolutely, Japa21. If We feel like that, one would wonder How the president feels. Couldn't blame him if he packed up his family and flipped us all the bird.
Ed is particularly sickening. He is an instigator, not a supporter, and I do not trust him. (I will never forget how he actually told people not to vote back in 2010.) And now he's all riled up about voter suppression? Puh-leez.
The base is fired up; why can they not see that?
Posted by: Eveingeorgia | October 09, 2012 at 10:04 PM
Obama needs to make the case at the debates, no doubt. But I agree with japa21. People like Eugene Robinson, who I do like quite a bit, and Joan Walsh (less so), who want Obama to succeed and have a platform to reach people, should be helping make the case at this critical juncture rather than going all emo about Obama having a bad night.
Posted by: Turgidson | October 09, 2012 at 10:09 PM