90 Reasons to Vote for Obama

[Geee]

Front Page Magazine:

A new website designed to light the fire under unenthusiastic Democrats shows just how panicky the left is becoming about their Messiah’s chances in this November’s presidential election.

“90 Days, 90 Reasons” is the uninspired name of a site created by overrated novelist Dave Eggers and music manager Jordan Kurland (it is unaffiliated with the Obama campaign). They write on the site that they recently “looked around and saw that many of Obama’s voters and donors from 2008 needed to be reminded of all he has accomplished, and all he will do if given another term.”

It’s quite telling that they sensed that previous Obama voters need reminders of what Obama has “accomplished.” It suggests that those voters are more focused on what he hasn’t done right (his broken promises, e.g., to close Guantanamo, to cut the deficit in half, to round up conservatives into internment camps) and/or what he has done wrong (e.g., the havoc he has wreaked on the economy, his complicity in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism at home and abroad, his exacerbation of the racial divide in this country), which the few remaining independent thinkers on the left are finding difficult to ignore or rationalize.

 

“This time the bumper stickers are few,” write Eggars and Kurland. “The HOPE posters are hard to find. There are no songs by will.i.am. We are three months away from the presidential election, and there is a stunning lack of energy displayed by likely Obama voters.” They proceed to regurgitate tired talking points about Obama inheriting and cleaning up Bush’s mess, such as “removing the threat of Osama bin Laden” (um, bin Laden was never the threat; the threat was and remains Islamic fundamentalism, which Obama has actually facilitated by embracing the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House itself). Eggars and Kurland note with a touch of panic that “if this doesn’t become an all-hands-on-deck movement to re-elect President Obama, he will lose. And Mitt Romney, who has campaigned as the most conservative Republican candidate in history, will become president.”

Romney is campaigning as the most conservative Republican candidate in history? There’s some desperate progressive hysteria for you. In any case, alarmed by this widespread apathy and disaffection among former Obama voters, Eggars and Kurland decided to ask “a wide range of cultural figures to explain why they’re voting for Obama in 2012, in the hopes that this might re-inspire the grassroots army that got Obama elected in the first place.” The goal is to post on their website a reason a day to vote for Obama, for the 90 days remaining until the election. “Let’s restart the fire,” the site’s banner says. “Let’s give President Obama four more years. Here are 90 reasons why.” Three of those reasons have been posted at the time of this writing.

First up is “cultural figure” Ben Gibbard, singer/songwriter for a band that Jordan Kurland’s management company just happens to represent, Death Cab for Cutie (cultural figures with at least a modicum of name recognition apparently weren’t available). Gibbard’s reason to re-support Obama is that he “is the first president in U.S. history to acknowledge the right of gay couples to marry and enjoy the full benefits of marriage in the eyes of the law.” That’s the lead-off reason? Gay marriage? The left insists on making this issue, of marginal or no importance to the vast majority of Americans (fewer than 5 percent of Americans self-identify as gay), more pressing than, say, rising unemployment or crushing national debt. Gibbard doesn’t mention the inconvenient fact that Obama was opposed to gay marriage until he kicked off his reelection campaign and it became politically expedient to claim that he had “evolved.” That blatant cynicism should be reason to denounce him, not support him; but since the end justifies the means for progressives, it’s not a sticking point.