◼ Groundhog Day in America - Victor Davis Hanson/National Review
Obama’s win did not really reflect affirmation of his first term, given that the president made only halfhearted efforts to defend Obamacare, the stimulus, huge Keynesian deficits, and his attempts to implement cap-and-trade. So if there is a second-term agenda, even Obama supporters don’t quite know what it will be....
In textbook community-organizing fashion, Obama won the election by brilliantly cobbling together factions with shrill warnings of supposed enemies everywhere. Young women were threatened by sexist Neanderthal males. Minorities were oppressed by neo-Confederate tea partiers. Greens were in danger from greedy smokestack polluters. Gays were bullied by homophobic Evangelicals. Illegal aliens were demonized by xenophobic nativists. And the 47 percent were at the mercy of the grasping 1 percent. Almost any American could fall into the category of either an Obama-aligned victim or a Romney-aligned oppressor.
How, then, can a reelected President Obama put the fractured American Humpty Dumpty together again after it has been shattered by such a nasty campaign? Certainly, it will no longer work for the president merely to wax eloquent on the need for more civility. Instead, his congressional opponents will expect more hardball Chicago politics and will probably reply in kind.
