The Ignorant, The Pets, & The Dead: That’s The Plan

Obama is, at least, not treating all voters as fools; he is treating only some voters as fools.

“This is a dead-even race for the presidency … Pretty much people have made up their minds,” Candy Crowley of CNN observed on July 22nd’s State of the Union. On PBS’s News Hour, David Brooks seemed to agree, and warned: “Voters shouldn’t expect President Barack Obama to add any more depth or nuance to his attacks on rival Mitt Romney, even though the upcoming election raises fundamental questions about the role of government and the direction of the economy[.] … There is the makings [sic] of a serious discussion of what sort of role of government, what sort of society, what sort of capitalism we want to have[.] … Will we actually have that discussion? I’m extremely doubtful, in part because what they’re targeting are people who don’t pay attention to politics. Everybody who pays attention has already decided. And so they want a very simple message [for the rest].”

The sentient among us seem, indeed, already to have made their decision. Conservatives, Libertarians, Reagan and Bushie Republicans; entrepreneurs; Tea Partiers; limited government, generational equity, and property rights-types; small business owners; deficit hawks; many physicians; married women; and non-college-educated white males are lined up behind Romney. Obama, it seems, can count on newly swollen armies of bureaucrats; the vast majority of black voters; frightened people who perceive themselves principally as clients and beneficiaries of government; crony capitalists; sleazy investment advisers who cross their fingers for more quantitative easing to keep the game going; non-married women; ObamaCare bitter-enders; distributive, social, and environmental justice-hustlers and their marks; Prius and Volt owners; public-employee union bosses; and anybody with whom Anna Wintour would not mind breaking arugula, or who experiences a delicious frisson of anticipation upon hearing the words, “You know, Fareed, the Americans’ problem is…”