It's not 'luck'

Yesterday, former governor Ed Rendell, in all his inimitable, savage affability, repeated an oft-heard sentiment:

The president's going to be in great shape — I think this Republican primary season has been a godsend ... The Republican race for president, so far, has resembled a clown show.

No doubt about that. Indeed, before long, the cliche might flip. Really funny Big Tent clown shows will be said to resemble a Republican race for president. The currently running one is so marvelously bad, so splendidly painful, so hilariously depressing it's setting new lows for groveling politics and new highs for slapstick comedy.

It's true as well that this primary season has been a "godsend" for President Obama. Until the look-alike clowns sprang from their plastic car in fright wigs and floppy shoes, the gathering consensus was that the president was in immense political trouble. I myself subscribed not to this Doomsday issue, nonetheless its theme permeated virtually every political conversation: Election Day will be a squeaker; advantage, Obama's opponent. That cliche, too, is now flipping.

I would, however, quibble with the epithet "godsend," in that it conveys an otherworldly sense of blind luck on Obama's part. To a nearly dismissible extent, this also is true. Yes, he's been lucky in drawing an unprecedented goofiness from among the available cast of clowns. Yet we mustn't neglect the far more significant premise that President Obama is facing this particular batch of clowns largely because the GOP's powerhouses (Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Haley Barbour -- once) stopped before starting. They surveyed their 2012 prospects against an admittedly beleaguered but vastly popular president, and said No thanks; they appreciated long ago that unseating Obama would essentially be an impossible task.

And that fatalistic appreciation wasn't generated by Obama's "luck." In the president they recognized the administration's accumulated -- and accumulating -- hard-fought successes, which the cranky, incorrigible GOP, to its credibility detriment, insists on either maliciously denying or adolescently disparaging in toto.

In short, the Wise Idlers appreciated that November, 2012 would look much better to the electorate than did November, 2011, just as 2011 looked better than 2010. And all that hasn't come about through presidential luck.

Comments

[Peter G]

I spent some considerable time yesterday waiting in a restaurant on Merriman Rd for a delayed flight due to arrive in Detroit. On the way to that restaurant, a Big Boy, I was forced to pass my unusual turn around because it had a large tent over it with many gabardined men and numerous police officers and cars around the area. Ah thinks I, a crime scene. When I got to the restaurant and ordered I asked about what had happened I was told that nothing had happened but that President Obama was staying next door at the Sheraton. Cool thinks I. Now this is a mundane enough story but what was truly interesting I thought was what happened when the President's motorcade actually arrived a few moments later. I had a view of the whole room and every single employee of that restaurant and all but three of the patrons were at the windows waving to a man who could not possibly see them through the dark and rain. Who did not? Two elderly plump white gentleman and one presumptive wife. All three looked quite put out and the husband and wife demanded their check. They left immediately. The excitement in that room was palpable and it crossed lines of sex and race and age. It was something to see.

[Alex]

Rendell? That DLC Clintonian blowhard? He's the assh*le who disparagingly compared Barack Obama to Adlai Stevenson at the 2008 Democratic Convention and left such a bad taste in Pennsylvanians' psyches that the state legislature went all in for Republicans after he left.

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"the cranky, incorrigible GOP, to its credibility detriment, insists on either maliciously denying or adolescently disparaging in toto"

This same MO that applies to former Hillary supporters aka. PUMAs who now consider themselves of "the left" such as former Republicans FDL's Jane Hamsher (whose media company advises Republican clientele), Salon's Glenn Greenwald (who adores Ron Paul now) and Current's Cenk Uyger as well as rank-and-file PUMAs who are still bitter about Obama's beating Hillary.

[AnneJ]

I have often wondered that if Obama was such a bad predident then why was the field running against him so terribly weak? Even though I am an Obama voter, I see nothing funny at all about this "clown car" of a republican field. It is bad for America to have such fools, such lowest common denominator panderers so close to running against the sitting president, especially in such serious times. Could this be a reflection of how UN-serious at least half of the electorate has become? Do these guys even realize that they are being compared to a "clown show"? If so, then why do they keep insisting on acting this way? And isn't this an insult to actual clowns who perform real clown shows? I know I am not the brightest commenter on this blog, but even though this has nothing to do with luck, does it at least not have a "too good to be true" element to it? I for one, still stubbornly refuse to take anything for granted.

[Bruce]

Luck has nothing to do with the campaign machinery that President Obama has assembled, either. No doubt the working politicians (you know, the people that actually run for elected office) on the Republican side have seen it from afar. And consequently have no desire to go up against an organization that assembled more campaign offices across Iowa than any of the Republican candidates could manage.