Things haven’t been going well for Democrats lately. President Obama’s poll numbers are tanking. They’re at risk of losing control of the House and Senate. Their policies are unpopular. And they’re so jittery that last week they threw an African-American Department of Agriculture employee, Shirley Sherrod, under the bus before they had all the facts because they’re afraid of Fox News. Some people say this is all Barack Obama’s fault. He’s too ideological, too inexperienced, and too self-centered, and he’s led the Democratic Party astray. I disagree. I think Democrats have just lost their groove.
The basic Democratic game plan—their groove—is well worn. With the liberal media and a host of organizations representing Democratic constituency groups covering their back, they stay on the offensive through thick and thin. They use focus-group-tested talking points to drive home their established truths: Republicans only care about the rich. Big government is good. Whatever’s wrong, it’s all George Bush’s fault. The Tea Party movement is racist. And Sarah Palin is an idiot.
You have to hand it to them; they’ve been pretty successful with this approach. All they’ve had to do was stay in their groove. In 2006, they won back control of Congress. In 2008, they won the White House, a large majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. They passed historic healthcare and financial reform legislation. They closed Guantanamo, won the hearts and mind of the Muslim world, repaired all those damaged relationships with our allies, stopped illegal immigration, and halted nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea. Well, they’re still working on the last few things, but they’re almost there—just read their talking points.
Still, Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, at least temporarily, have lost their groove. The problem started last July when the President jumped the gun without all the facts and said the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department acted stupidly when it arrested an African-American Harvard professor in his own home, suggesting Obama might not be that “post-racial” after all. He got back in the groove, for a while, with the infamous “beer summit.”
Then there are those two- and three-thousand page bills he let Democrats in Congress write without adult supervision and then pass without popular support. Americans will love them when bureaucrats are finished writing eighty- or ninety-thousand more pages of implementing regulations and everything goes into effect. They’re just unpopular now because the President lost his groove and didn’t explain them well enough.
That war on Fox News, when the White House declared they weren’t a legitimate news organization and no one should pay any attention to them, was classic Democratic groove. Unfortunately, the White House lost it and came across like Kremlin apparatchiks. Fox’s viewers increased and the White House had to send up the white flag.
And there’s that pesky oil spill Obama thought BP would quickly plug and he didn’t give his full attention to until a few million barrels of oil were sloshing around the Gulf of Mexico. He was just off his groove and distracted with vacation planning.
Whether it was the president or other Democrats who lost their groove first is unclear; but the problem is apparently contagious.
Attorney General Eric Holder said America was a nation of cowards when it came to race. He decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York, had the Christmas Day underwear bomber read his Miranda rights, and dropped voter intimidation charges against members of the New Black Panther Party. All this is just what you would expect from a liberal-Democrat attorney general. He just lost his groove and failed to notice that the liberal media wasn’t alone out there anymore to convince Americans how brilliant all this was.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “jumped the gun” and ordered Sherrod’s resignation over a video clip that made her sound like a racist before he heard the full story. He knew that Glenn Beck would give Sherrod the Van Jones treatment and she had to go before that happened. Unfortunately, he had to offer to rehire Sherrod when the truth came out, and he put the President in a position where he had to apologize to her. Apparently, Vilsack just let the evil Glenn Beck, who actually sided with Sherrod, scare him out of his groove and force him to make a rash decision.
The NAACP, a loyal Democratic Party constituent group, passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement. It was intended to help rally the Democrat’s African-American base and get then to the polls in November. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous simply lost his groove and forgot that millions of patriotic Americans, who aren’t racist and who care about their country and its future, don’t appreciate the NAACP suggesting that they are racist, giving them one more reason to go to the polls in November and vote against Democrats.
And then there are those 400 Journolist subscribers, a forum of liberal-Democrat journalists, bloggers, and professors who conspired to support Barack Obama and denigrate his opposition. When their conversations were exposed in The Daily Caller, it finally confirmed the vast left-wing-media conspiracy. They were doing what liberals like them always do, they just lost their groove and forgot that anything you write online lives forever and sooner or later it will come back to haunt you.
Not to worry, Democrats. Like Tiger Woods, you’ve just lost your groove. Take some time off this summer, get some rest, eat well, and you’ll be back in the fall feeling and acting like your old selves, just in time for the November election.
Ed Ross is the President and Chief Executive Officer of EWRoss International LLC, a company that provides global consulting services to clients in the international defense marketplace. He publishes commentary at EWRoss.com.