U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, Democrat of Kentucky, was ridiculed when a video of her refusing to admit she voted for President Barack Obama went viral. You can watch it here, but it’s basically just a very painful clip of her attempting to distance herself from the election-year toxicity of Obama. Unless you have some kind of weird obfuscation fetish, I wouldn’t waste your time.
In the video, she tries to avoid the issue of how she (almost certainly and on multiple occasions) voted for Obama by pointing out that she’s more of a Clinton Democrat. She mentions she was a Hillary Clinton delegate in 2008. She somehow forgets to mention she was an Obama delegate in 2012. It’s such a bizarre approach that some are wondering if maybe she forgot to vote in the last two presidential elections and doesn’t want to admit it.
Somewhat surprisingly, Grimes doubled down on this approach during a debate on Monday night. She once again refused to admit who she voted for and then explained that she was overcomplicating the issue because she believes in the privacy of the ballot box. Or something. It was very hard to understand her response. Particularly since she’s admitted to voting for Clinton at one point.
But let’s put that aside. I come to defend her.
Here’s the thing. It wasn’t just Grimes who voted for Obama multiple times. It was literally (literally “literally,” not Joe Biden “literally”) tens of millions of other people in this country. They really did it. For real. They put up bumper stickers. They put up yard signs. They called him a light-worker and an enlightened being. They said “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.” He was given a Nobel Freaking Peace Prize. The award citation reads like satire. Seriously, it’s hi-larious. If you’re ever having a bad day, just recall that President Obama once won a Nobel Peace Prize. If you’re having a really bad day, read the citation. I guarantee your mood will improve.
The media fawned over him. They got thrills up their legs. By any metric, the mainstream media was obsequious in its coverage of the president, only pulling back marginally, quite recently, and in the tiniest few quarters as the crush of scandal and incompetence has continued and grown.
Celebrities didn’t just vote for him and work to get him elected, as Grimes (refuses to say she) did, they produced culty videos like this and this:
Someone should go back through that video and determine what percentage of the pledges these celebrities made to Obama were kept.
Anyway, point being that it’s not just Grimes who is trying to avoid the uncomfortably truth that she played a role in electing and re-electing Obama.
Pretty much everyone who voted for Obama is looking to change the topic if it comes up. Even the crazy person who lives down my street in a house that looks haunted finally took down his Obama sign. It had been up for years. My Obama-bumper-sticker-saturated neighborhood is nearly Obama bumper sticker free these days. My Democratic friends are all talking more about Obama’s incompetence than the role they played in inflicting our country with his presidency. Yours are, too. Heck, you are, too, if you were one of the majority of voters who voted for Obama. (Or you’re shifting blame desperately in a comment thread as we speak.) Listen, I know the options weren’t great, but that’s still no defense for picking the guy who is bad at everything.
I mean, at this point, we’re down to, like, Ezra Klein and the Vox Crew when we’re counting people who are reluctantly admitting that they were in that group of people.
We’re at 2006 levels of people trying to avoid talking about voting for the guy who they made president. Maybe worse. Think about that. We are in the middle of a presidency that is making the Bush administration seem like it was chock full of managerial geniuses and strategic masterminds. Of course you’re going to deny having had anything to do with the presidency that is making the predecessor look competent by comparison.
I don’t blame Grimes one bit for denying she helped elect the guy whose top hits include Solyndra, Obamacare health premiums, the assault on religious liberty, Joe Biden, ISIS sprawl, and a growing list of scandals that make Nixon, Warren G. Harding and Ulysses S Grant look like choir boys.
So let’s lay off her. She did what she had to do. So are tons of the remaining Obama voters. They made a huge mistake. Here’s a video of Obama voters reflecting on their vote:
No need to vote for Grimes, obviously, but have some sympathy.
