{"id":7982,"date":"2014-11-06T07:49:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T15:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7982"},"modified":"2014-11-06T08:00:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T16:00:12","slug":"losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/losers\/","title":{"rendered":"Losers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"downloadby Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO-The Corner<\/a><\/p>\n

1. Barack Obama is now a toxic brand. Arrogance and incompetence are a fatal brew. If once his problem was his failed policies, now it is also his persona, especially the blame-gaming and sense of boredom on the job that borders on public petulance, as if\u00a0he came into the presidency to save us, and we did not appreciate his godhead. \u201cMake no mistake about it\u201d and \u201cLet me be perfectly clear\u201d have become something like Sominex for most Americans. Let us hope that our enemies abroad in the next two years are confused by his erratic governance and at least find him as exasperating as we do.
\n
\n2. Race\/class\/and gender baiting lost out to the dismal recovery, a foreign policy in shambles, a ruined health-care system, an alphabet soup of government corruption, and an Islamic State\/Ebola\/open border miasma of incompetence. The bankrupt idea that an amoral Al Sharpton was to be consulted on matters of race, while someone like a Senator Tim Scott would not be was always surreal. And the idea that a Wendy Davis or a Sandra Fluke was a model of feminist achievement in a way Joni Ernst was not was equally absurd. Character and achievement still matter. The problem with trying to get out the base with mythographies like Ferguson and winking and nodding at a blanket amnesty to come is not just the proverbial turned-off white male voter, but that minorities too either were not energized over these shrill appeals or themselves were not sure 160,000 children streaming across the border was a good thing, or that Ferguson was a clear-cut case of police brutality. All the demagoguing in the world could not change that.<\/p>\n

3. Some polls seem to have transmogrified into pre-election partisan tools, given that a few Senate races and lots of governorships weren\u2019t even close to supposedly scientific predictions. For example, what happened to the Rasmussen Poll? It seems not just unreliable, but predictably so in one direction, especially in terms of presidential popularity. A president supposedly always down only 5 to 8 percent in the polls would not have the cataclysmic ripple effect that we saw last night.<\/p>\n

4. Fairly or not, the face of the Democratic party has been Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. Not only were these three unappealing personalities prone to gratuitous slurs and strange outbursts, but their politics were demagogic and far out of the mainstream. They should and will soon disappear from the American political landscape and recede back into the mediocrity from which they somehow emerged.<\/p>\n

5. The personalities and backgrounds of candidates matter. This time around there was an inspired screening of Republican candidates not so much on their ideological purity, but on their own biographies and sense of decorum in the manner they campaigned, especially on the Senate side. In contrast, the Democrats fielded (both incumbent and not) mostly loud nonentities picked for their dynastic names or past five minutes of notoriety, who assumed their loud identity politics would suffice in lieu of character, common sense, and past achievement. Superficial bumper-sticker identities and progressive catch-phrases finally ran out of gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO-The Corner 1. Barack Obama is now a toxic brand. Arrogance and incompetence are a fatal brew. If once his problem was his failed policies, now it is also his persona, especially the blame-gaming and sense of boredom on the job that borders on public petulance, as if\u00a0he came into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[844,977],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s466Sb-losers","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8266,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/riding-the-pollercoaster\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":0},"title":"Riding the Pollercoaster","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ NRO- The Corner Though polls employ different scientific methodologies, as a whole they are more often right than wrong. Everyone assumes that sampling public opinion remains an art, and is not immune from the biases of the pollster. Still, how does one explain not just discrepancies,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6480,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/populism-lives-at-nro\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":1},"title":"Populism Lives at NRO","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"We depend on thousands of small contributors. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 National Review Online\u00a0imposes no litmus test on its contributors. The result each day \u2014 to take the most recent hot-button issue \u2014 is that columnists both support and oppose the proposed Syrian intervention, though usually from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11643,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-02-04-2019\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":2},"title":"Angry Reader 02-04-2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Are your fake-right fellows at NRO going to issue a grovelling apology to the CHILDREN they attacked at Covington Catholic High School? They were so eager to attack white children that they didn't even bother watching the video before condemning them. This is why we hate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7796,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/all-fall-down-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":3},"title":"All Fall Down","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO-The Corner Consider our dog days of August: An American journalist savagely beheaded on tape, with more promised to come. The Islamic State rampage. The Gaza war and Hamas\u2019s serial truce violations \u2014 and the new neutral U.S. stance with implied disruptions in military support\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Page by Antonio Branco - Obama Constitutional Crisis","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Wrong-590-LI.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8443,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-home-of-intellectual-populism-could-use-your-help\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":4},"title":"The Home of Intellectual Populism Could Use Your Help","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 29, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ NRO- The Corner I have written for National Review since the third bleak day after September 11, 2001, and have not missed a column since. I live and work on the West Coast, but the editors and writers at NR in New York over the years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8667,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-utterly-hypocritical-response-to-trumps-criticisms-of-his-record\/","url_meta":{"origin":7982,"position":5},"title":"Obama\u2019s Utterly Hypocritical Response to Trump\u2019s Criticisms of His Record","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO - The Corner President Obama just said this about Donald Trump\u2019s disparagement of the last seven years: \u201cIn the echo chamber that is presidential politics, everything is dark and everything is terrible.\u201d Presidential candidates \u201cdon\u2019t seem to offer many solutions for the disasters that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "NRO The Corner"","block_context":{"text":"NRO The Corner","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/nro-the-corner\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Obama-Budget-Plan-jpg-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7988,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions\/7988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}