A woman named Velma Hart spoke at a town hall directly to President Barack Obama and gave the entire country the ultimate teachable moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnMMo8lVG5M
What makes Ms. Hart so powerful is that she is probably the first and only person who cannot be destroyed for criticizing Barack Obama.
Think back to Joe the Plumber. He was a guy named Joe Wurzelbacher just living his life. He asked a question that resulted in one of the only slips in an otherwise well run Obama campaign. Within hours, he was being investigated.
I met Joe the Plumber last week. I spoke with him at length. He really is that ordinary guy who enjoys a good beer and a Cincinnati Bengals game. That is not an act. He is as authentic as it gets.
Yet he is also a conservative and a proud Christian. For these and no other reasons…let me say this real slowly so everyone can understand why he needed to be taken down…for these and only these reasons…the left had to vilify him.
Anybody who has ever been a threat to Barack Obama has been ripped to shreds. John McCain is no longer a threat. The media criticism of him has disappeared. Sarah Palin has the Obama White House terrified. She is a religious Christian and a conservative woman. The left has to destroy her.
Christine O’Donnell is the next woman that the left is going to rip to shreds. She is a conservative woman and an evangelical. That is all it takes.
The left will claim it will be because of issues swirling around her, but much of that is stuff the left simply falsified. So the left makes up rumors, enough people believe it, and then those rumors are cited as evidence. To paraphrase that biblical song, may the circle of logic be unbroken, by and by lord, by and by.
(Christine O’Donnell is also gorgeous. Hot women are despised. It is called jealousy.)
(Mark Levin pointed out that Christine O’Donnell never joined the Klan or drove a car off of a bridge. The obsession with her background is because she is an evangelical conservative.)
Yet Velma Hart will not be demonized. She will be treated as the most sincere woman on Earth.
Personally, I find her very sincere, and am not in any way criticizing the positive narrative of her. I am just pointing out why nobody on the left will dare to deviate form this narrative.
She is a black woman who voted for President Obama.
In other words, her criticism of him is automatically seen as constructive and not destructive.
When I explain why I think President Obama is not getting the job done, I can be dismissed as a partisan hack.
Velma Hart will not suffer that indignity.
Nor should she.
None of us should.
Ms. Hart made it very clear that she was honored to be in his presence, and that she still supports him. This is important because it only reinforces her credibility.
She is bright, successful, accomplished. With all respect to Linda Carter, Wonder Woman might be black.
Ms. Hart is a financial CFO for a military organization.
If one wants to really strain hard to find anything to take issue with (and I don’t), one could say that she is really not middle class. She has kids in private school, so she is most likely upper middle class. Nevertheless, that is semantics. She is not “the wealthy.”
What she basically asked President Obama was the same question 25 years ago that Walter Mondale asked Gary (no relation to Velma) Hart and Clara Peller made famous in Wendy’s commercials?
Where’s the beef?
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out why Barack Obama is failing. He demonizes his political opponents, and is incredibly pompous in dismissing dissenting opinions. He refuses to change course and focus on the economy.
There are people out there who reflexively criticize him. I am not in that camp, and refuse to be that person. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
(Go back and read every column I have ever written. It will verify my statements and increase my blog traffic.)
Velma Hart wants to see results. She does not see them. This led her to make the ultimate statement.
“I’m tired of defending you.”
So how did Mr. Obama get to this point?
He refused to focus on what got him elected. He won the White House for all intents and purposes the day in September that Lehman Brothers burned. After that, it was over.
He was hired to focus on the economy.
He focused on healthcare first. This was a blunder. It does not make him a bad person. It just makes him tone deaf.
I have repeatedly said that Barack Obama only cares about three issues: Healthcare, education, and the environment/energy.
Everything else is a distraction to him.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is a distraction from building a green economy.
Afghanistan is a distraction from education.
Fixing the economy is not as important as healthcare.
Mr. Obama has stated that by improving healthcare, this will fix the economy.
I don’t see it. I don’t see the jobs coming back.
Yet Mr. Obama’s main problem is his perceived lack of passion for anything not involving his three issues.
He genuinely cares about remaking the healthcare system and building a green society.
He does not care about anything else. He truly believes that if we all shut up and agree with him, we will all be better off.
He wants us to be patient, but he set the bar so incredibly high while bashing his predecessor with reckless abandon.
In the very same event with Velma Hart, President Obama said, “I am concerned about the next generation while others are concerned about the next election.”
This tactic of attacking the motives of those who disagree goes against his false post-partisan rhetoric.
He talks about teachable moments, but that is his way of saying that he should lecture us and we should shut up and obediently nod our heads in agreement and learn from the esteemed academic professor.
Velma Hart is not buying it. She made it clear that she did not think he answered her question.
Velma Hart wants Barack Obama to succeed.
The way for Barack Obama to succeed is to listen to Velma Hart.
He should completely rearrange his priorities. He should only focus on two issues: National Security and the economy.
Everything else should be put on the back burner.
Every day that he gives speeches about a green society is a day that he is not speaking about the economy.
His time is finite. He needs to accept that the voters never shared some of is more liberal priorities.
The fate of the American Dream that every generation before mine has experienced is on the verge of slipping away.
Even if one accepts that the president is quietly behind the scenes working on the economy (as his entire team quits and runs for the hills), that is not good enough.
Perceptions matter. My perception is he does not care. He does not get passionate about the economy in the same way that he does when discussing his three pet issues.
Velma Hart delivered in a much more eloquent manner the same message I have been hammering for months to the President.
Stop blaming the prior administration. Listen to the people. Stop talking so much. Just deliver the d@mn results.
It has been almost two years. Enough with the excuses.
I still believe Barack Obama could be a successful leader if this Velma Hart teachable moment leads to him listening to his citizens instead of condescendingly lecturing us.
Whatever one thought of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, they governed on the issues they ran on. People knew exactly what they were getting. Those issues were in sync with the voters.
Both of those men emotionally connected with people. Barack Obama is the second coming of Michael Dukakis, a cold, clinical technocrat devoid of empathy and emotion.
Mr. Obama intoned to Ms. Hart that “we are moving in the right direction.”
No. We are not. This is the disconnect.
Barack Obama is out of touch with ordinary Americans. His future success will be determined by whether he gives Velma Hart and the rest of us more worn out platitudes or concrete results.
eric
“… he (“Joe the Plumber”) is also a conservative and a proud Christian. For these and no other reasons…let me say this real slowly so everyone can understand why he needed to be taken down…for these and only these reasons…the left had to vilify him.”
LOL! Yeah, you wish, my friend! No. The Left bashed him because he seemed disingenuous and ignorant, and sure enough… that’s exactly what he was.
“Christine O’Donnell is the next woman that the left is going to rip to shreds. She is a conservative woman and an evangelical. That is all it takes.”
Again, LOL! And again, no, that not “all it takes.” O’Donnell is a screwball with a long history of screwballitude. It’s the screwballishness – that’s what it took.
“He (Obama) focused on healthcare first.”
No, he didn’t. That’s simply not true. And given that all this was just over the past year and a half, one would think you’d remember it correctly. He worked on the Recovery Act first, and then the healthcare issue, which is also a huge driver of our economic woes.
“Mr. Obama has stated that by improving healthcare, this will fix the economy.”
No. He didn’t. He said it would help, but not that it, in and of itself, would “fix the economy.”
Velma’s point, which was well taken by most, and not misrepresented as some kind of conservative plea, was that Obama was not able to do enough. We needed FDR and instead got another Bill Clinton. We don’t need another middling, moderate, centrist, New Democrat – we need a man who can lead us back to prosperity by sheperding that herd of cats that is the Democratic party to accomplish the big things we need for our country’s future. Obama didn’t accomplish that, and for that, he, Velma, and we all shall pay as the GOP rises again and stifles any possibility for a better America.
JMJ
“and stifles any possibility for a better America.”
Its already been done.
Up and forward are the absolute only direction that could be left.
Its so funny, the last few weeks, watching guys like Jersey come up with the most irrelevant unsubstantial crap they can to make something out of what has been this countrys most collosal failure since FDR.
Keep em coming bro, we all need cheering up these days
“Again, LOL! And again, no, that not “all it takes.” O’Donnell is a screwball with a long history of screwballitude. It’s the screwballishness – that’s what it took.”
Absolutely not.
If anything is screwballed its the liberal media that for days on end has been beating the ever loving crap out of the story of her going from a 2 day Wiccan at 16 to an anti masturbation pundit in no time flat.
While at no time at all have they even bothered to offer one freaking segment of the “Bearded Marxist” Coons, whos spending record makes Obama look frugal.
Joe the Plumber ?
Gee, I guess if he were a union lemming Jersey wouldnt be so hard on him.
But, of course, as we all know, its only union plumbers who are smart.
moron