American Elephants

Obama and the media have been telling us that this election is all about the economy. It must be so, because in every speech Obama has been telling Americans how miserable they are, (made so, of course, by eight terrible years of the Bush Administration), in what terrible shape the country is, (made so, of course, by eight terrible years of the Bush Administration) and how much we are hated in the world, (yes, eight terrible years).

No one is going to deny that the economy is in bad shape right now, after the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.  That is not, however,  what Obama has been on about.  He has been practicing “agitation“.

After his graduation from Columbia University in 1983, Obama spotted a help-wanted ad in the New York Times from a group that aimed to convert the black churches of Chicago’s South Side into agents of social change.  They were looking for a community organizer to run the group’s inner-city arm.  Obama moved to Chicago where he became a community organizer.  In 1985 veteran organizer Jerry Kellman hired Obama to run the Developing Communities Project.  The three who hired him were disciples of Saul Alinsky’s methods of organizing.  And Obama got a thorough grounding in the Alinsky method.

Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), Chicago native, has been called the father of community organizing.  “Agitation“ was a tactic he prescribed for organizing called “rubbing raw the sores of discontent“.  A tactic of searching out the source of pain in people’s lives, tearing down their egos just enough so that you can dangle an enticing bit of “hope” and “change” to make them believe that together you can make things better.

So Obama and the Democrats have been telling us that we were in a recession, long before there was one in actuality.  With unemployment at historic lows, he sought out the factory towns where a plant has closed, railed about businesses that outsource or move overseas.  He played the class warfare game, condemning “the rich”, CEOs, Exxon Mobil, and corporations in general; sure that people had little understanding of the economy and would be easy to “agitate“, if he just told them how badly off they really were.

Randall Hoven at American Thinker has gathered together a snapshot of what our economy looked like in December 2006, after six years of Bush and the last month before the Democrats took over both houses of the national legislature:

♦ Unemployment stood at 4.4%.
♦ Real GDP growth over the previous four years (under a Republican President, House and Senate) averaged 3% per year.
♦ A gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.30.
♦ Even the S&P 500 stock index stood at 1418, or 84% above its post-9/11 low and more than 7% higher than when Bush took office.
♦Every year of Bush’s Presidency, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable income per person went up.  By the end of 2006, the average person was making 9% more in real terms than before Bush became President.

But the last election in 2006 was considered a referendum on Iraq.  The war was not going well.  64% of Americans said the country was on the wrong track, but 55% of Americans said the economy was in good shape.

So the Democrats have been in charge for the last two years.  Harry Reid said that the Iraq war was lost and “the surge” was not going to accomplish anything.  Senator Obama introduced legislation to prevent the surge and to remove all troops from Iraq by March 2008 — seven months ago.

As the surge succeeded, and the news from Iraq became better and better, the Democrat Congress’s approval ratings plummeted to unprecedented depths, now 12% according to the most recent New York Times poll. The Democrat Congress’s accomplishments are almost non-existent, but include mostly efforts to investigate Republicans and prove some of the scandals that they had imagined.  Although they were begged to investigate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, nothing came of that either.  They fought hard against any attempt to look into the soundness of the two institutions.

Apparently a large percentage of voters are unaware that the Democrats are fully in charge of Congress. The attempt to “rub raw the sores of discontent“ and talk the economy down proceeds apace.  The vast majority of Americans continue to pay their mortgages on time, and although unemployment has risen sharply, most Americans are still employed.  Most banks have not failed.  But it is important to the Democrat campaign effort to see that Americans are deeply unhappy and want to elect Democrats.  You are being agitated.

If you can find a speech of Obama’s that does not tell you what pathetic shape the country is in, of the desolation and joblessness and with pathetic stories of people who lost their health insurance,  or their homes, please call it to my attention.  Personally, I don’t like being “agitated“ all that much.