The Politics of Identity & the Dividing of America !

Barack Obama should not have been re-elected President. That he was....tells us elections in America are now decided less by heads than hearts. Obama, who four years ago egotistically promised such a transformative presidency that ''this was the moment when the rise in the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.''  has plainly and dismally failed. It seems there were a lot more jackass voters that I hadn't originally been aware of. Yet he's back in the White House and Mitt Romney, the successful businessman and governor is not.

Romney was a picture perfect, moderate conservative candidate with a squeaky clean, highly credentialed and successful background. His only sin was that he was wealthy. Yet he still got pummelled by an incumbent who built a campaign, not on a record of success or of any particular strong idea or any other such noble cause, but fracturing his nation into specific target groups which he then ruthlessly exploited with fear and demagoguery and a billion dollars worth of print and electronic marketing straight out of a slop bucket. Obviously, the recent much-heralded documentary exposing Obama's background and indoctrination into the art of Marxism entitled  2 0 1 6  (above), shown across the U.S., didn't sink into many ossified brains.

When it comes to the leftist media class, Obama's support was strong, united and deeply partisan. Reviewing the 2012 campaign I found five examples how the media elite tipped the public relations scales in favour of Commie-loving Obama and against the rational challenger Romney.

1. The Washington Post's ''Obama can do no Wrong'' edition:  The Sept 26th edition carried 3 stories casting the president in a positive light. Those headlines were telling: ''Ohio, Florida Give Obama an Edge'' and ''At UN Obama Issues a Challenge'' and ''For Obama the Buckeye State May Be a Bulls-Eye.'' All to indicate the election race was generally over.
2. Downplaying al-Qaida's attack in Libya:  Outrage from the media was oddly muted following the administration's initial spin that the Benghazi attacks, which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, had nothing to do with terrorism. It is disturbing and curious that the media hasn't pursued this in a serious way. As a cascade of truthful information came out and erased the portrait of Obama as a heroic commander, the broadcast networks shunted the Benghazi-gate story to the sidelines.
3. Burying the Bad Economy:  Pundits agreed that Obama's weakness was the failure of the US economy to revive after his expensive stimulus and four years of trillion dollar deficits. But the media failed to offer the sustained aggressive coverage of the economy that George W. Bush faced in 2004. In 2004, the economy was far better it is today -- higher growth, lower unemployment, smaller deficits and cheaper gasoline -- yet network coverage was twice as hostile to Bush than it was towards Obama this year.
4. Media Biased ''Gaffe Patrol'' Hammered Romney:  When Romney was recorded telling supporters a shocking truth, that 47% of voters would cast their ballots for Obama because of their dependence on government aid, the media jumped on it as major gaffe. Yet Obama was caught on tape advocating an unAmerican (read Marxist) redistribution of income, plus establishment of a coalition made up of welfare recipients and the poor, as well as when he infamously declared, ''You didn't build that," the networks didn't report it until Romney brought it up in a speech four days later.
5. New York Times slams Ann Romney's horses:  In a May expose, an article devoted nearly 2,500 words to Ann Romney's equine endeavors -- a hobby she took up as part of her treatment for multiple sclerosis. To these low-life scumbags this just happened to play into the narrative that the Romneys are out of touch with the concerns of everyday Americans. Jackie Kennedy's love of horseback riding somehow went unmentioned. The politics of Envy was riding high.

The underlying racial division grows deeper. Obama won more than 90% of black voters and three-quarters of Latinos. Obama managed to polarize the American people and won again, securing only 39% of white voters -- who still represent the nation's largest voting block at 72%, signalling the rise of a new kind of politics that could leave the US weaker. Given Obama's record, the Romney campaign could have overcome much of this media favoritism and still prevailed...indeed, they almost did. This year, networks didn't spotlight economic ''victims'' -- the homeless family living in a van, the unemployed worker, the woman reduced to part-time work, the senior citizen who has to choose between medicine and food. Those sympathetic anecdotes vanished from the airwaves -- a huge favour to Obama and the Democrats.

The Way I See It....this election confirms the suspicion that the politics of seeming is trumping that of achieving. That what counts most in today's politicians is how voters ''identify'' with them, rather that what they do. It also suggests that a culture of Entitlement is eating at a culture of Achievement. I would like to remind you what that French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1840 book, Democracy in America (Volume 2);

                    ''A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.''

                     ''When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education....the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint....It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold....they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.''

Obama had a lucky campaign. America will be not so lucky.