Water From The Well

Unattached
“It’s going to be a close election. Everybody’s worried,” said Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee. “We’ve already floored the accelerator. We’ve already gripped the steering wheel. I’m not sure they’re attached to anything anymore.” (NYT, 6/1/2012)


The thing to watch, of course, is the number of Dems who will NOT invite Obama to campaign with them. Our guess is that this will include anyone in a tight race.


Narrowed
Democrats are clearly worried. Senate and House Democratic strategists say many of their candidates in tough races cannot win if the president loses, and they said Mr. Obama’s message had drifted too often away from the economy toward issues intended to appeal to narrow groups, like the Violence Against Women Act, student loan subsidies and gay marriage. (NYT, 6/1/2012)


This is an existential problem for the modern Democrat party. When you have defined the party as "all things to all fringes" you become hostage to them and you alienate any remaining core constituency. The gay donor boycott of Obama was a perfect example of this. 


Explicitly Significant
It seems unlikely that one month of jobs data will be sufficient to cause him to shift on such an explicit judgment, but the news on Friday was worse than one month of bad numbers. The government also significantly reduced its estimate of job creation over the last few months, creating an impression of a longer-term trend of slowing growth. (NYT, 6/1/2012)


For us, the bigger news is not the low jobs number, but the admission that the previous months' numbers were juiced. 


Third Blame
On Friday the White House blamed the third slowdown of its four-year term on Republicans for blocking the President's policies, but what policies are they talking about? In his first two years in office, Democrats gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, save for cap and trade and union card-check, which would have done even more harm to job creation. They passed stimulus, ObamaCare, multiple housing bailouts, Dodd-Frank and more. Even after Republicans took the House, they gave Mr. Obama the payroll tax holiday he demanded first for 2011 and again for 2012. (WSJ, 6/1/2012)


RedStateVT has made this point repeatedly.  The best argument against Obama's policies and against his criticisms of Republicans is: You had absolute control for two years.


Run Run Runaway
Yes, we're still a long way from tyranny in America. The right to smoke in a bar; the right to snarf a transfat-soaked french fry; the right to lug a 32 oz. tub of Grape Nehi into the movie theater—these are not precious rights. But it's also true that nobody thought of taking them away until the government itself became responsible for our runaway health-care spending. (Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, 6/1/2012)


Killer point by Jenkins: Liberals claim that banning (fill in the blank: soda, candy bars, Happy Meals) will help to lower medical costs borne by society. Yes, but Liberals are the ones who have expanded the welfare state so that more and more people are getting their health care from the government. And that government health care is paid for by fewer and fewer people!


Long Way Home
All President Barack Obama wanted to do was go home. No, not to the fancy government house in Washington. He wanted the familiar bed at his Kenwood/Hyde Park house in Chicago. The comfy chair. Maybe watch some ESPN. Chill.  "Still works!" he declared as he strolled through his leafy neighborhood around noon on a splendid spring Saturday on his way to visit old Chicago pal Marty Nesbitt. It had been more than a year since he had spent a night at his home, and he was determined to do so Friday after a long day on the road. (MSNBC.com, 6/1/2012)


In other headline news from MSNBC: Shocking New Revelations That Bain Capital Laid Off Workers And Generated Huge Profits!