• Please read the Announcement concerning missing posts from 10/8/25-10/15/25.
  • This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Obama: 'See, the problem is Americans are stupid'

cpwill

DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
82,880
Reaction score
45,544
Location
USofA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Conservative
So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

...“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

...The most striking aspect of his performance was how unhappy he looked, as if he doesn’t enjoy the job. You can understand why. He ran as something he’s not, and never has been: a post-partisan, centrist, transformative healer. That’d be a difficult trick to pull off even for somebody with any prior executive experience, someone who’d actually run something, like a state, or even a town, or even a commercial fishing operation, like that poor chillbilly boob Sarah Palin. At one point late in the 2008 campaign, when someone suggested that if Governor Palin was “unqualified” then surely he was too, Obama pointed out as evidence to the contrary his ability to run such an effective campaign. In other words, running for president was his main qualification for being president.

That was the story of his life: Wow! Look at this guy! Wouldn’t it be great to have him . . . as community organizer, as state representative, as state senator, as United States senator. He was wafted ever upwards, staying just long enough in each “job” to get another notch on the escutcheon, but never long enough to leave any trace.

The defining moment of his doomed attempt to prop up Martha Coakley was his peculiar obsession with Scott Brown’s five-year-old pickup:

“Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads,” the president told an audience of out-of-state students at a private school. “Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.”

How they laughed! But what was striking was the thinking behind Obama’s line: that anyone can buy a truck for a slick ad, that Brown’s pickup was a prop — like the herd of cows Al Gore rented for a pastoral backdrop when he launched his first presidential campaign.

..Howard Fineman, the increasingly loopy editor of the increasingly doomed Newsweek, took it a step further. The truck wasn’t just any old prop but a very particular kind: “In some places, there are codes, there are images,” he told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “You know, there are pickup trucks, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another.”

Ah, yes. Scott Brown has over 200,000 miles on his odometer. Man, he’s racked up a lot of coded racism on that rig. But that’s easy to do in notorious cross-burning KKK swamps like suburban Massachusetts.

...America is becoming a bilingual society, divided between those who think a pickup is a rugged vehicle useful for transporting heavy-duty items from A to B and those who think a pickup is coded racism.

Unfortunately, the latter group forms most of the Democrat-media one-party state currently running the country. Can you imagine Bill Clinton being so stupid as to put down pickup trucks while standing next to John Kerry?...
 
— like the herd of cows Al Gore rented for a pastoral backdrop when he launched his first presidential campaign.

Gosh, I thought those were his supporters... :rofl

Great find, cp.
 
Ah, CP, you've gotten to the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals don't think you're smart enough to run your own life. And they would love to run it for you.
 
reading too much NRO will make you a stupid. :lol:;)
 
Ah, CP, you've gotten to the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals don't think you're smart enough to run your own life. And they would love to run it for you.

Not really. As Bush proved, some republicans just treat you like you're stupid. And as some let them, they may have a point. :(
 
Not really. As Bush proved, many some republicans just treat you like you're stupid. And as some let them, they may have a point. :(

They didn't misquote him and their interpretation is valid. I don't see what the problem is.
 
They didn't misquote him and their interpretation is valid. I don't see what the problem is.

With what? NRO? No, their interpretation isn't valid. It's partisan drivel. What Obama was saying was that he needed to explain more. He wasn't calling anyone stupid.
 
I think he's right, a lot of people cannot understand a reasonable argument. And by understand I don't mean agree with, I mean understand.
 
I think he's right, a lot of people cannot understand a reasonable argument. And by understand I don't mean agree with, I mean understand.

More, they are used to being treated stupid. They get arguments in sound bites and platitudes, and not well reasoned arguments. It's a lazy habit, not an intellectual one. In other words, people are not really stupid, but busy and sometimes lazy. They don't dig into something, but wait to hear what they are listening for.

This allows some to make them appear fools.
 
Let me go a step further and say I think most people are idiots, but a lot of people think I'm an idiot. Whatcha gonna do
 
Let me go a step further and say I think most people are idiots, but a lot of people think I'm an idiot. Whatcha gonna do

What's the line in Men in Black? Individuals are smart, people are stupid. ;)
 
Well I think most people have a tendency for at least one of these:
1) Mob Mentality
2) Group think
3) over simplification
4) Apathy

I'm all about 4 myself, mostly because people always make a huge deal about whatever is new and exciting before moving on in a few months. Ex. Gitmo's closing order from Obama, which had a one year deadline that just passed. I doubt any even remembers that or the huge fuss that was made over it when he issued the order.
 
With what? NRO? No, their interpretation isn't valid. It's partisan drivel. What Obama was saying was that he needed to explain more. He wasn't calling anyone stupid.

Not really, he's making it pretty clear that he thinks people don't understand what a rational policy decision is. His head is too far up his own ass to realize that people might disagree with him for valid reasons.
 
Not really, he's making it pretty clear that he thinks people don't understand what a rational policy decision is. His head is too far up his own ass to realize that people might disagree with him for valid reasons.

No. That's the partisan interpretation.
 
Not really, he's making it pretty clear that he thinks people don't understand what a rational policy decision is. His head is too far up his own ass to realize that people might disagree with him for valid reasons.

You're number 3, congrats
 
Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

They weren't voting for Republicans in '08.
 
Ah, CP, you've gotten to the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals don't think you're smart enough to run your own life. And they would love to run it for you.

Social and Religious Conservatives seem to have a problem with letting people run their own lives as well.
 
No. That's the partisan interpretation.

That's the literal interpretation of his words. Trying to construe it any other way would be partisan.

This is what gets me. Just because you don't try to varnish everything with some kind of moderating brush doesn't make you a partisan. I don't have to apologize for his comments or offer counterbalancing examples from the other party to qualify any point I make. He said what he said. If it hurts his image, so be it. It's not my fault for pointing it out.
 
So, why didn't the Republicans harp on Obama's demonstrated lack of experience instead of his being an "illegal alien from Kenya", a "Muslim", a "terrorist", and all of that nonsense when he was running for president?

It seems to me that Obama is not the only one who thinks the American people aren't very smart, and maybe all of them are right.

Or, maybe not. Most of us were smart enough not to buy into the illegal alien and AntiChrist nonsense.

Back when Bush was president, the argument was made that his poor decisions were the fault of the Democrats for not running a viable candidate against him. Today, the same argument could be made for the Republicans.


Will we once again be forced to vote for the lesser of the evils next time around? Will we once again be told outrageous lies instead of debating honest differences in philosophy?

Yes, I expect we will.

Then, will we once again have a Republican president who doesn't have a clue, while the national debt continues to soar and health care costs continue to eat us alive?

Why, yes, I expect we will do that, also.
 
So, why didn't the Republicans harp on Obama's demonstrated lack of experience instead of his being an "illegal alien from Kenya", a "Muslim", a "terrorist", and all of that nonsense when he was running for president?

What were YOU paying attention to during the campaign? Only left-wing sites trumpeting Birfer crap?

His lack of experience was hammered. He and his supporters laughed it off. The bulk of the media made excuse after excuse.
 
What's the line in Men in Black? Individuals are smart, people are stupid. ;)

So, you guys are all frothy over NRO for saying Obama thinks people are stupid, and then you go on a little exchange saying people are stupid?

Got it.
 
So, why didn't the Republicans harp on Obama's demonstrated lack of experience instead of his being an "illegal alien from Kenya", a "Muslim", a "terrorist", and all of that nonsense when he was running for president?

Wait...what? :confused:

His lack of experience was a central issue to the campaign and the media pretty much just let it slide, instead making out like the issues raised by the McCain/Palin campaign were all those you listed. No one kept spouting that nonsense except minor fringe elements like Worldnut Daily, but you wouldn't know that by perusing the media. Hell, those nuts got more legitimate exposure than McCain and Palin did. And then when Obama sat down to an interview, they all but got him a pillow and a warm cup of cocoa.
 
So, you guys are all frothy over NRO for saying Obama thinks people are stupid, and then you go on a little exchange saying people are stupid?

Got it.

Exactly what I was thinking. You gotta love it when that type proves your point for you...
 
What were YOU paying attention to during the campaign? Only left-wing sites trumpeting Birfer crap?

His lack of experience was hammered. He and his supporters laughed it off. The bulk of the media made excuse after excuse.

It wasn't the "left wing" sites that were trumpeting the "birfer crap." Yes, I was paying attention, and what I read was mostly how he was a Marxist and was going to ruin America, how he was a Muslim, how he associated with "terrorists", and so on. Sure, his lack of experience was mentioned, but it was hardly central to the campaign.

Meanwhile, McCain's main qualification was that he was a "maverick" i.e., not Bush. No one believed that, either.

Then there was Caribou Barbie. She didn't help the Republican campaign much.
 
Back
Top Bottom