Rowing Back The Acclamation…

Gary Younge in ‘CiF’ on Obama:

A full year after he took office, people have not found a sensible way to talk about him. One minute Jesse Jackson, in an unscripted moment, says he wants to "cut his nuts off"; the next he is crying in Chicago's Grant Park as Obama delivers his victory speech. The same people on the right who insist he is a Muslim fulminated over his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When you point out that Muslims don't have pastors, they just shrug. Europeans who wish he led their country also wish their countries would pull their troops out of Afghanistan – the very war he is escalating.

This is by way of rowing back on all the star-struck rhetoric, now that the glitz has worn off and starry-eyed progressives realise they have elected, not the progressive messiah, but a politician.

And a Chicago politician at that…

Those who misunderstood how Obama came to office are now struggling to understand what has happened in the year since he has been in it for three main reasons.

Ooh, I bet Gazza knows, though.

Sit and listen, dupes, as he tells you how it all came to pass…

First, Obama was never a radical. He won on a decidedly middle-of-the-road Democratic platform. Beyond the Iraq war, which he opposed and she supported, there was little to chose (Ed: sic) between him and Hillary Clinton in terms of their programmes. They had voted the same way in the Senate 90% of the time.

All those hopes and dreams you had? Forget it. You duped yourself.
The con was on…

Those who think they have been let down by a leftwing champion must answer for their own selective hearing.

Get that, dupes? The signs were there, but you ignored them. It wasn’t Obama’s fault, oh dear me no…

What really distinguished Obama's campaign from Clinton's was its grassroots energy. Which brings us to the second point. While it was a grassroots campaign, it was never a movement. That didn't mean there wasn't the possibility that it might have become one. But its sole function was to get him elected.

Stupid sheep! Why did you ever believe anything else?

In a handful of areas, the energy and determination of those days is still evident. But for most of this year the right has been making all the running outside of the electoral politics and forcing the administration on to the back foot.

Look, dummies, that was then, this is now. Sheesh, I bet you believed that the cheque was in the mail, the dog ate our homework, and I wouldn’t come in your mouth too, am I right?

Finally, for all his financial and organisational advantage, the fact that he ran a far better campaign, had a far more impressive running mate, was a far more charismatic candidate, and was campaigning against a party that had overseen a huge economic crisis and two unpopular wars, Obama did not win by much. In terms of the popular vote he won 53% of the vote against John McCain's 47%.

I wonder how Gazza is feeling now?

You know, I’m struck by something here. And that something is how, after the war, all those French people claimed to have been in the resistance.

And also how no-one could seemingly be found who’d voted for Nixon, after his fall from grace…