Column: Liberals jump ship and abandon Obama

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | USATODAY

Last week, I speculated that we may be seeing a "preference cascade," as people who previously supported Obama now feel safe about publicly changing their minds. It seems that we're seeing more of that this week as word of the Benghazi debacle spreads. The Obama campaign no doubt hopes you'll be distracted from this by hurricane news, but that's probably a vain hope on its part.

On the left, the defections are mounting. Last week, I spoke to Camille Paglia about her new book on art history, but she also stopped to explain why she wasn't voting for Obama this time: basically, disappointment. She said he ran as a moderate, but has been "one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races."

She was also unhappy with the Libya intervention -- which admittedly hasn't turned out well -- and with the ongoing drone attacks, as well as the way ObamaCare turned out. She says she'll vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, whom I interviewed here a while back, instead.

Others on the "progressive" side are coming out, too. In Salon.com, longtime netroots activist Matt Stoller makes "the progressive case against Obama." Stoller's case is largely economic. He writes of the new ordering created by the Obama administration's interventions: "The bailouts and the associated Federal Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors were immune from challenge or market forces." He's right, and there are some Chrysler bondholders, and non-UAW pensionholders who can attest to that firsthand.

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf writes "Why I Refuse To Vote For Barack Obama." "I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers." Well, lefties complained more under Bush, but some are unhappy.

For more moderate voters, the problem is simpler: Obama just hasn't delivered. We spent about a trillion dollars in borrowed money on a "stimulus" that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8% -- and got unemployment above 8% for almost every month of Obama's presidency. Much of that money seems to have gone to ill-conceived "green" energy projects like Solyndra or Abound Solar that were, conveniently, run or owned by major Obama contributors. None seems to have produced much in the way of jobs.

Then there's the other promise: That our Ivy League-educated President would bring us a more competent administration than that dumb cowboy Bush.

But competence hasn't been much on display, and the revelations involving the seizure of our consulate in Benghazi and the death of our ambassador look awful. Repeated calls for increased security were ignored before the attack, and once the attack was underway, no aid was sent. As I write, the Administration denies this and is trying, squid-like, to escape amid a cloud of ink. But with Obama's approval suddenly dropping in the polls, it seems that the story is leaking out, as the father of one of the slain asks who gave the order not to save his son.

Now some 2008 Obama voters are moving away from Obama, while McCain voters aren't moving toward him. And people of all political persuasions seem to be more comfortable criticizing Obama. Jimmy Carter -- who looked on-track to beat Ronald Reagan for most of 1980 -- experienced a similar last-minute collapse borne of combined domestic and foreign-affairs ineptitude.

Is it a preference cascade yet? We'll know next week.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

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