New York 9 is all over but the whining. Weprin delivers. He is not too hard on Obama personally but he makes the conventional assertions that shift culpability for losing Weiner and Schumer’s seat to the heretofore invisible Republicans. You see, Weprin tried to make the election about himself and/or Turner but Turner, events and the electorate colluded to make it a national referendum on the Obama Presidency which is lately in deep ordure. Weprin played his part by basically pretending that there was no such thing as an Obama or a President or even a Democratic Party.  It is easy to see the poll-dancers’ art and philosophy here. Obama’s numbers are not good, sir. No, not even here. The pukes and punks who counseled every mother’s son to hang on tight to the speeding Obama Train right up until the Great Shellacking was dry, suddenly whisper; just let go and be sure to bend your knees. In their biz, electoral theory runs on mere tropisms like an insect drawn to a light or repelled by a sound. When the numbers are UP, draw near. When the numbers are DOWN, flee! Why such predictable and cliched advice is so richly rewarded is mysterious. What is not mysterious is the fate of these gunslinging genii. They have left the crumpled hulk of the Weprin Express, dusted off their jackets and wiped off their fingerprints as they limp to their new gig. As remunerative as the last gig.

No one weeps for Weprin except Weprin himself. Fine. The Republicans who have dwelt in New York only in secret hovels and secret nooks in citizens’ hearts for centuries now dance a merry jig out in the bright light of day. The Limbaughs gloat. The Carvilles shriek. The Axelrods sulk and contest with Weprin in absentia, rebuking the notion that this election was national with the ancient wisdom that all politics is local. This old saw has about as much content as a mantric chant but lets give Axe all due respect and take these assertions seriously. The most telling issue on the local scene was the one that dare not speak its name. Can you guess? I bet you can’t as any addressing of this issue in stark electoral and public opinion terms has been shunted to obscurity by both sides. Luckily, in the days of the internets even those without a side can be read. If this truly was a fundamentally local election the issue that cost it to the Democrats was gay marriage.

Yes, gay marriage. Weprin was one of those Assemblymen who passed gay marriage in New York to hosannas and hallelujahs from the local papers which double as our national papers. This was a great step forward for everyone involved. The Republicans who voted in support ceremonially had their knuckles shaved as they shook hands with Democrats who said, see, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Hirsute gents in tuxedos, and a few in white dresses snogged enthusiastically on the public square but few observed that this was a change only of wardrobe and in many instances not even that. Weprin was especially prominent here as an Orthodox Jew. Certainly if a devout fellow whose god, by some interpretations, did not care for homosexuality, (much less its dressing up in the garb of sacrament) could see the light it was only a matter of time before everyone did. Weprin sought out the opportunistically vacant seat on the wave of flattery he enjoyed from his triumph. But all orthodoxy is not created equal. The Orthodox rabbanim not only failed to get on board for our future of all female wedding parties, they stated that Weprin had broken kosher with his vote. More, that voting for Weprin was likewise not kosher! This somewhat dulled the otherwise genius demographic play of having a yarmulke as part of your candidate’s wardrobe.

So where is the “strategist” who says that Weprin’s gay marriage stance should be avoided by other candidates? This explicitly amoral scrum should follow their habits of embracing that which takes off like a rocket and abandoning that which blows up in their faces but somehow on this topic such realpolitik is nowhere adhered to. Perhaps Weprin could have latched onto Obama in this one regard. After all, as Candidate Obama reminded us often, his position on gay marriage is the same as the President’s, meaning W, which was and is civil unions. No one on Weprin’s payroll suggested this or if they did they found themselves among the burgeoning unemployed. Why? It is the same reason that while Solyndra breaches threatening to swamp Obama’s bark there is almost no one even among the Republicans who will say that the whole idea of solar power (and wind, too) is hopelessly erroneous. It is because these policies are not governing choices in the conventional sense; they are an orthodoxy held far, far more holy than mundane old marriage, baptism or even electoral success by a segment of the nation given a fine appelation by Robert Gibbs: The Professional Left.

These are not the gunslingers with a D after their name. Rather these are mostly ordinary Americans who have made their politics into their most sacred vocation. They may work as bond traders or in car washes. Many, many work in academia. But like Barack in the one real job of his life, they consider themselves to be concealed agents behind enemy lines. That enemy is often called capitalism and oh, in their imaginings, is THAT ever an evil beast! It corrupts. It destroys. It pollutes the minds of otherwise potential soulmates with its siren songs of self-dealing and extravagance. Most worryingly, it could even infect their precious selves turning them from dedicated revolutionaries into nameless drones in Docker pants. And this is their truest horror: to discover themselves to be ordinary. But what does capitalism have to do with gay marriage or the light of the sun? You must understand, capitalism is merely a name invoked to locate and fix a mostly nameless evil at work not just in business but in all precincts of humanity. Some of our Professional Lefties are religious folks, believe it or not, and they will sometimes frankly tell you that capitalism is but another name for The Devil and his works.

Understanding the actions of the Professional Left as a crusade, a holy war, a jihad is the most important leap to make if one hopes to ever stop being astonished and mystified by their capers. It explains why the rift between Obama and his ardent supporters of yesterday is so bitter and so deep. Whether the issue is gay marriage, “green” energy, nationalized industries or anything else their preferences carry the weight of a Holy Writ. If the policies fail it can only be through a lack of zeal in their implementation. Holy Writ has no flaw or will admit to none which is just as good. It is curious and humorous that while the Professional Lefties in the White House denounce Republicans’ failure to submit pre-emptively to the vaguest of proposals the Professional Lefties in the hinterlands condemn Obama as a weak sister, having compromised his stated principles which, of course they believed, were the same as theirs. And they are. Yes, to this day they are but Obama is no longer merely engaging in bong-powered denunciations of the status quo. He has to apply these daft principles to the nation and the world. In real time. With real consequences. The decision of a couple weeks back is exemplary. You may recall that new CO2 and ozone standards, vastly more restrictive needless to say, were about to be applied to power plants. Experts within and without government informed Obama and anyone who would listen that these would result in rolling blackouts across much of the country. Why? Well, because walls do not generate electricity. Power plants do. The regs would have shut down a huge fraction of our generating capacity at least for a while. Obama conceded, at the last minute, to the rigors of physics. The Professional Left has no such necessity or desire. They denounce Obama on this as they do on all occasions when facts trump their fantasies with Obama standing in the gap.

And now the feeding frenzy begins in earnest. Reports from that old, ubiquitous gasbag, Anonymous fill the pages and waves. Obama is depressed, comes the claim. Well, what the hell? Aren’t YOU depressed? It shouldn’t be surprising that the man at the fulcrum of the world’s problems suffers something more than a mental recession. Alarmingly no one states the obvious rejoinder that Winston Churchill was notoriously depressive as were many great leaders of history. Those who know this on the Right have no interest in coming to the man’s rescue. Those on the Left, more demoralizing for Obama, are the ones on the attack. This is not unprecedented but it leaves Obama as today’s Johnson rather than Reagan or FDR with the promise of nothing but more and more of worse and worse. Such a dreadful state of affairs for one man has only biblical antecedents.

Are the Democrats or anyone else now ready to admit, on the evidence, that government without limit is Unconstitutional, Unamerican and doomed to failure? Not likely, not when even the hellhounds of the Republican Right whirl the axe of Social Security and Mediscare against each and another. The Entitlement State and its presumptions are our true enemies but its allies are bipartisan, entrenched and as enraged as ever. Romney, Perry, Bachman or whomever you could name will find it thus as well. The one exception is Ron Paul who today draws Hollyweird supporters like Charlie Sheen draws whores! But this is utterly vapid. These high-profile beauties and studs are as faddist in their philosophies as they are in their industry. Their presumptive Messiah has proven to be a mere mortal. Off to the next! This with no recognition that Obama makes his compromises, such as they are, not with unwashed Republicans but with unvarnished Reality. And we all must do the same; consistently and without rancorous I-told-you-sos (right, Stephen?). If ever you see an R after my name, you can be certain Reality is the affiliation it marks and no other.

 

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