Fantasy Election

Even five days after the presidential debate, supporters of the president in the media (and that means the vast majority of MSM "reporters" and commentators) express surprise at the outcome. But with shock in their eyes and disappointment in their voices, they continue to suppress news of important domestic and international events with the hope that it will not exacerbate Obama's self-inflicted damage. They try out daily excuses or try to change the subject, but the bitterness remains.

Andrew Klavin captures discusses the reasons for this bitterness when he writes:

The Obama of the imagination is the media’s Obama. Out of their fascination with the color of his skin and their mindless awe at his windy teleprompted rhetoric, they constructed a man of stature and accomplishment. Now, with the White House on the line, they’re waging an ongoing battle against the undeniable evidence that he has never been, in fact, that man. The result in these quadrennial autumn days has been media coverage of a fantasy election, an election in the news that may bear no relation whatsoever to the election as it is. Polls consistently skewed to favor Democrats in percentages beyond any reasonable construct of reality have left us virtually ignorant of the state of the race. Orchestrated frenzies over alleged gaffes by Mitt Romney have camouflaged an imploding Obama foreign policy, an Obama economy threatened by a new recession, and an Obama campaign filled with vicious personal attacks and lies.

Governor Romney’s unprecedented dismantling of the president in their first debate—an encounter so one-sided it reminded me of the famous cartoon in which Godzilla meets Bambi, with predictable results—was surprising only for Romney’s warmth and clarity. Obama’s hapless fumbling, bad temper, and inarticulate inability to defend his record were actually thoroughly predictable. They were simply facets of the man as he truly is, unfiltered by the imagination of his media supporters: a man who has succeeded, really, at almost nothing but the winning of elections; a man who cannot distinguish between his ideology and life; a man who does not seem to know how the machinery of the world actually works.

Fantasy is a powerful thing, but reality will out. Perhaps by Election Day, the public will have awakened from the media’s dream.

Perhaps, but fantasy is a very strong driver, and far too many people prefer the fantasy of Barack Obama to the unpleasant reality of a long string of economic, domestic, and international failures. They prefer the fantasy that Obama "cares" about the middle class to the reality that any caring politician would have modified his ineffective approach to economic recovery, worked with his opponents, and established programs/policies that would get middle class people back to work. They prefer the fantasy that Obama the "great orator" could use his mellifluous words to bring peace to the Middle East and reset our relations with Arab nations to the reality of violence and an imploding foreign policy.

To many in the United States, the allegiance to the fantasy Barack Obama is akin to a religious experience. I just hope there will be enough heretics to defeat him at the polls.