Voters Have A Choice

On Friday Lawrence O’Donnell had a guest from Netroots Nation who was berating Obama for being insufficiently liberal, specifically on gay marriage, and saying he did not deserve to be reelected. As a side note, I would suggest gay rights is the best part of Obama’s record, and is the one reason I would actually support him, but then I am half of a traditional heterosexual marriage, so that’s pretty easy for me to say.

On Monday O’Donnell brought on David Axelrod to “defend” Obama. Axelrod said pretty much what I expected. “Obama has a wonderful record, the president’s view is evolving, and the voters are going to very clear choice in 2012.” Last night yet another Obama defender talked about how voters are “going to have a choice” in the election next year.

So it appears that is going to be Obama’s campaign theme for 2012, replacing “hope and change” with “choice.” Democrats ran on the “we’re not them” theme in 2010, and it got them what Obama referred to as “a shellacking,” so I wonder why he thinks it will work in 2012. Sure, Republicans have gotten a little bit crazier, but are they that much crazier, and will voters elect someone based on “I’m not the other guy” alone?

A couple of years ago we had Democrats pressing for legislation that was a corporatist agenda with a veneer of populism and Republicans were “the party of no” with nothing to offer. Now we have Republicans pressing for legislation which is just batshit insane, and Democrats are the party of “we’re not them” with nothing to offer.

So voters do indeed have a choice. We can choose between the craziness or “we got nothing but at least we’re not crazy.” We can vote for Republicans who call themselves Democrats, or we can vote for crazies who call themselves Republicans. Some choice.