Where did it all go wrong for President Obama and the Democrats? Or did it? According to columnist Jorge Camil of Mexico’s La Jornada, Obama has taken on too many battles in too short a time, all while confronting Republican and right-wing media opposition that has sought his defeat from the day he was elected.
For La Jornada in our neighbor to the south, Jorge Camil writes in part:
As Obama struggled with the economic crisis, against the banks and the generals who were reluctant to abandon Iraq, the recalcitrant Right had, from his first day in office, mounted a battle to the death to prevent his reelection. Bill O’Reilly, advisor to Felipe Calderon Dick Morris, Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove, and Sarah Palin, now a political commentator (all oracles of Fox News), decided that Obama would be a one-term president. We will see the results of that war with the legislative elections on November 2. (All forecasts suggest that many Democratic candidates will be defeated).
As the saying goes, you shouldn’t bite off more than you can chew. And in Obama’s case, the president decided all at once to end the economic crisis (hasn’t happened yet), fight the lords of Wall Street (who are winning the game), defeat the Taliban (a task that the great powers have failed to achieve), punish British Petroleum and pass a health care reform law, which sapped his popularity only halfway through his term. As a consequence, the man that seemed so invincible on the day of his election is now struggling to win the midterm elections. He needs a win to carry out his program and lend credibility to his government in in order to launch his re-election bid in 2011.
It’s true that in many ways, the Right has helped undermine Obama’s popularity. But none more than those who began to imply sotto voce that the United States wasn’t ready for an African-American leader. Others started to repeat a hackneyed argument that did considerably damage to him during his campaign: the thesis is that his successful experience as a community leader in the slums of Chicago failed to prepare him for assuming the U.S. presidency. That argument is particularly compelling now that U.S. supremacy is being challenged by the emergence of China and the Asian powers. All predictions say sustained economic growth over the next ten years will be in Asia.
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