Man Up? More Like Man (and Party) Overboard

October 20th, 2010 8:03 PM

Elections bring out the best and worst in politics. For the left, looking ahead at the possible loss of both houses of Congress, they’ve gone from the best of times to the worst of times in record time. The Democratic Election Attackers/Defenders (DEAD for short) are desperate. And that desperation has reached the highest office in the land.


President Barack Obama left with only one option – reaching out to the only audience left, people who want to laugh at him. According to recent polls, that’s a significant piece of the electorate. So Obama’s last-ditch get-out-the-vote push involves appearing on “The Jon Stewart Show.” Obama will be taped Oct. 27 just days before Stewart joins fellow lefty funnyman Stephen Colbert for the newly renamed “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”


It’s a move reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s “Laugh In” spot where he wowed the nation by saying “sock it to me.” Or perhaps, it’s like presidential candidate Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on “The Aresnio Hall Show.” This time, however, it’s the president of the United States demeaning the office, instead of those aspiring to it.


It’s a desperate outreach to snare some of the youth vote that Obama captured during the 2008 race. Nice strategy that. Promote to the people who laugh at you or who are so young they might not realize how badly your administration has screwed up.


It’s a sad day for the Democrats when Jimmy McMillan, of the “Rent Is Too Damn High” party, makes more sense than they do. But hey, there’s still two weeks in this election. There’s plenty of time for any one of Obama, Biden and Pelosi to declare as a “karate expert” and excite a crowd.


That’s the kind of desperation worthy of a punchline and liberals are just the ones to deliver it. The left is trying to hold the line while most Americans want to foreclose on the Obama administration, shut them down and kick them out like some classic deadbeat.


To stop the conservative surge, the left has called in its best brains – comedians, talk show hosts and other hypocrites. They pinning their hopes on a Glenn Beck-esque rally sponsored by Comedy Central as yet another TV network openly declares for the Democratic Party.


Joining Colbert and Stewart in the left’s last-ditch starting line-up are Arianna Huffington, who used to be conservative until being liberal made her more money; the born-on-third-base Meghan McCain, today’s voice of ignorance and immaturity; and fading talk show legend Oprah Winfrey. In his or her own pathetic way, every one of them was out there stumping for Team Obama.


If elections were decided on ego alone, the left would win for generations.


That’s appropriate since that’s what they thought happened when Obama and his ego were swept into office. Liberals and their journalistic fellow travelers felt society had shifted to the left permanently and it was up to the rest of us to just get with their program or get out of the way.


That permanent shift lasted only a few months. Control turned into peaceful insurrection. And Obama and the media have been scrambling ever since.


Huffington is a great example of the liberal elite clawing desperately for power. She has been actively drumming up support for Democrats, and her own book “Third World America.” The woman who runs the most successful left-wing website somehow thinks she can connect with the working class and turn that into class warfare. But the only working she does is going from working with liberal comedian and future Sen. Al Franken on Comedy Central (when she was conservative) to working with Jon Stewart (now that she’s liberal).


In a blatantly political act of noblesse oblige, her site is providing transportation to “14,000 people who've signed up for the buses,” she told one radio show. That’s 250 buses provided by a site that as recently as Oct. 15 complained about the Tea Parties being a combination of “grass roots” and “a corporate AstroTurf phenomenon.”


In the words of Huffington Post columnist Stephen Ducat, “the Tea Party represents the meeting of fascism from above with fascism from below.”


Wonder how he feels about his own site’s corporate sponsorship (from above) of lefty grassroots (from below)? I bet he thinks it’s pretty cheeky for a site that runs a headline declaring: “CONSERVATIVE ULTRA-RICH PLOT THEIR TAKEOVER.” When Arianna has wine and brie with her friends, is that the “liberal ultra-rich” plotting a takeover?


And will she eventually invite pretend-Republican boob (singular please) Meghan McCain to join her? The 26-year-old silver spoon author of “Dirty Sexy Politics” actually has the audacity to attack someone else’s sanity. The ego-centric author bashed Deleware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell claiming she’s “seen as a nut job.” The young McCain has previously said she aspires to be a “young, cool Republican woman.” By her writings and “pro-sex” antics, she’s certainly right about being young. Until she grows up, she’s merely a tool and a fool for the left.


Even Oprah is sullying her credibility by hanging out with this crowd, proclaiming “I think we need a little bit more sanity in the world.” As a long-time admirer, who am I to disagree? But Oprah’s quest for sanity has her hitching her politics to … professional comedians. Perhaps after nearly two years of Obama, that’s an improvement.


Ironically, when Obama is done with “Jon Stewart,” he’s going to appear on the TV show “Mythbusters.” Perhaps they’ll explore the bipartisan Obama.



Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.