Democrats should rethink Clinton after Arkansas

Many registered Democratic Party voters could see through the hypocrisy of their candidates for governor, Senate and House. With one hand, they gladly accepted President Obama’s assistance in raising millions in campaign funds. Yet, with the other, these same candidates refused to be seen in public shaking hands with the president or campaigning with him side by side. Worse were Democrats such as Kentucky’s Alison Lundergran Grimes who could not even come out of the closet and publicly admit that they voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. 

{mosads}The Republican candidates’ margin of victory could have been different had many Obama supporters, both Democrats and independents, come out to vote instead of sitting on their hands and staying home. Other Democrats counting on the star power of both former President Clinton and former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as substitutes for President Obama in many cases also lost. The Clintons could not even deliver their home state of Arkansas for incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor. Time may have taken away some of the former influence of the Clintons. Democrats counting on Hillary Clinton as the best candidate for president in 2016 may want to rethink this strategy.

From Larry Penner, Great Neck, N.Y.

Biden and Schultz need to tell America the truth

What a difference a year makes. After shutting down the government in October 2013, the Republican brand was so tarnished there was talk of political extinction. Today, after numerous unanticipated crises — from the border exploding with immigrant children to the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., or from ISIS to Ebola — it’s the Democrats who are on the ropes. 

Americans want the truth. We are a forgiving and resilient lot. But when Vice President Biden said on Election Day Democrats would hold the Senate, people truly were shocked. Ditto when national party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the same thing a day or two before Tuesday’s vote. 

I know marijuana is legal in some states, but what exactly have the vice president and Schultz been smoking? As far as this left of center voter is concerned, their political forecasting skills need some serious polishing. Either that, or it’s time each of them buys a new crystal ball. The last time I looked, a GOP red Congress didn’t look anything like a Democratic blue one. I’m pretty sure the American electorate would say the same thing.

From Denny Freidenrich, Laguna Beach, Calif.

Obama takes hard knock

For all his smarts, President Obama fails in the world of hard knocks, the real world outside the academy. When contesting for the presidency in 2008, Obama excoriated George W. Bush for engaging in cowboy diplomacy, going it alone, swaggering. Notwithstanding all the United Nations resolutions on Iraq, the international coalition fielded against Iraq and the congressional vote on the 2003 invasion, Obama painted a false picture of a lone gunman who diminished American prestige. And people believed his naive musings about human nature and international relations, and Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize pickers were first in line to reward him — for what exactly? Apparently for nothing more than promising to do things differently, for promising to engage with allies (which Bush had done all along, but never mind) in a more, what exactly, a more earnest manner? 

His denial of American exceptionalism carried the day with our global interlocutors. They liked hearing the young president anoint them with equal standing while blaming his predecessor for all manner of ills in the world, absolving the weak-kneed Europeans, the misunderstood Russians, the expansionist Chinese, the Iranian nuclear-questers, the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadists for their roles in global turmoil. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld made handy scapegoats. Most of the Fourth Estate joined in and helped propagate the propaganda. 

Obama promised nuance and the world rejoiced. He promised resets and the gullible, forgetting 20th century history and the nature of human nature, cried out with relief. But something happened on the way to global nirvana, for self-aggrandizing dictators were not shamed by the Nobel laureate but rather were emboldened by his myopic vision of reality. And they have taken advantage of his passivity and his reluctance to acknowledge our exceptional global position and his narcissistic inability to admit that his approach is wrong.

In short, there is no joy on our planet and Bush is no longer to blame.

From Paul Bloustein, Cincinnati