Why Obama’s polls will never tank with limousine liberals

**Posted by Phineas

"My will is enough!"
“Ruler of the New Versailles”

Historian Victor Davis Hanson writes at PJ Media about Obama’s poll numbers and why they’re not likely to hit the dismal late-term numbers of, say, George W. Bush or Harry Truman, in spite of the man’s obvious incompetence. While he discusses Obama’s support among minorities and the cover given him by Β a protective media, it’s what he wrote about a third group, wealthy liberals, that I want to share:

Β 3) The well-off are indifferent to the Obama record, interested only in its symbolic resonance. Doctrinaire liberalism resonates mostly with the very wealthy. We see that by the voting patterns of our bluest counties, or the contributions of the very affluent. In contrast, Republicanism is mostly embedded within the middle class and upper middle class, while liberalism is a coalition of the affluent and the poor.

The result is that the Kerrys, Gores, and Pelosis are dittoed by millions of the affluent in Malibu, Silicon Valley, the Upper West Side, the university towns, Chicago, academia, the arts, highest finance, corporate America, foundations, the media, etc. Their income and accumulated wealth exempt them from worries about economic slowdowns, too much regulation, higher taxes, or the price of gas, electricity, or food. That under Obama gasoline has gone from $1.80 a gallon to $4.10 is as irrelevant as it is relevant that he has so far not built the Keystone Pipeline. That the price of meat has skyrocketed or that power bills are way up means little if global warming is at last addressed by more government.

For the liberal grandee, there is a margin of safety to ensure that the California legislature takes up questions like prohibiting the sale of Confederate insignia or ensuring restrooms for the transgendered or shutting down irrigated acreage to please the delta smelt. In their view, Obama representsΒ their utopian dreamsΒ where an anointed technocracy (1), exempt from the messy ramifications of its own ideology, directs from on high a socially just society β€” diverse, green, non-judgmental, neutral abroad, tribal at home β€” in which an equality of result is ensured, albeit with proper exemptions for the better educated and more sophisticated, whose perks are necessary to give them proper downtime for their exhausting work on our behalf.

In other words, unlike the rest of us, the liberal elite can actually afford the society they want to impose on us all. For our own good.

And of such times are populist revolts born.

Footnote:
(1) Seems like VDH and I were thinking along the same lines. As usual, though, he says it a lot better than I.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

Comments are closed.