Subject: While You Were Not Elite H/T: Atrios.

(A complete, paragraph by paragraph rebuttal to Time’s Mark Halperin.

Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections.

That’s some chutzpah.  Who is this shadowy elite that sits above the President?  Should Mark Halperin speak so casually about the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria?  Seriously, I’ve never seen a journalist so casually suggest that the President serves an elite of his betters like this.  The President is usually part of the Elite.  Was Obama’s choice of Columbia and Harvard over Yale some sort of mistake?

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.

Oh, now I see who the elites are. Halperin is one of them!  Good to know.  Call me old fashioned but I always believed that a journalist should show a certain amount of deference to his subjects.  When you start thinking that the elected President of the United States is your inferior, it’s a potential problem.

This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

Everybody thinks this.  Everybody.   Source: Trust me.

On Friday, after the release of the latest bleak unemployment data — the last major jobs figures before the midterms — Obama said, "Putting the American people back to work, expanding opportunity, rebuilding the economic security of the middle class is the moral and national challenge of our time." But elites feel the President has failed to meet that challenge and are convinced he will be unable to do so in the remainder of his term.

This would make a lot of sense, if the very people and interests that Halperin cites hadn’t been fighting Obama’s attempts to rebuild middle class economic security every step of the way.

Moreover, there is a growing perception that Obama's decisions are causing harm — that businesses are being hurt by the Administration's legislation and that economic recovery is stalling because of the uncertainty surrounding energy policy, health care, deficits, housing, immigration and spending.

When your economic argument doesn’t make any sense, just blame uncertainty.  See, the business community just has no idea what that zany Obama might do.  What if tomorrow he declares that doctors should be paid in walrus tusks?  Or that instead of you owing money to the bank for your mortgage that the bank owes money to you?  What if he changes the colors on the flag from red, white, and blue to blue, blue, and blue thus making it indiscernible from a blue, blue, and blue tablecloth?

Of course some of the uncertainty is around bills that have already been signed into law that the elites got plenty of say on like health care and financial regulation.  Other things like immigration reform and energy reform are for now off the table but even if they come back the elites will have plenty of chances to participate in the conversation.  Also, elites don’t care about spending or the deficit.  They care about spending they don’t get and deficits incurred not for their benefit.  Big difference.

And that sentiment is spreading. Many members of the general public appear deeply skeptical of Obama's capacity to turn things around, especially, but not exclusively, those inclined to dislike him — Tea Partyers and John McCain voters, but also tens of millions of middle-class Americans, including quite a few who turned out for Obama in 2008.

Halperin, who is willing to speak for his fellow elites, is also willing to speak for tens of millions of middle-class Americans, another group that he probably thinks would count him as a member.

The misery afflicting the country has no political affiliation. Listen to the voices from this striking TV ad for Rob Portman, the Republican former Congressman and Bush budget director who is running for Senate from Ohio. One woman at a Dayton career fair says starkly, "There are no jobs." A man announces plaintively and with obvious frustration, "I've been looking for a job now for 13 months." Events like this job fair are becoming the grim iconic gatherings of our time, the breadlines for the Obama years.

It’s non-partisan misery, I saw it in a campaign commercial!

Most of Obama's private (and sometimes public) rebuttals to the voices slamming him on all sides are justified or spot on. He did inherit a lot of problems from the Bush Administration. He did act quickly in the initial weeks of his Administration to stave off a worldwide depression. His efforts at job creation have been obstructed by Republicans (even the proposals based on policies supported by the GOP in the past). His opponents haven't put forth specifics of their own, nor offered genuine compromise, while the media have allowed the right's activists and gabbers to run wild with criticism without furnishing legitimate alternative solutions.

Always put the “to be sure” paragraph near the end so that people won’t notice that it contradicts your first few hundred words.

But Obama has exacerbated his political problems not just by failing to enact policies that would have actually turned the economy around, but also by authorizing a series of tactical moves intended to demonize Republicans and distract from the problems at hand.

I, Mark Halperin, refuse to name these policies (which exist, I swear) or prove that they would have won legislative support had Obama proposed them (whatever they’d be).

He has wasted time lambasting his foes when he should have been putting forth his agenda in a clear, optimistic fashion, defending the benefits of his key decisions during the past two years (health care and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example) and explaining what he would do with a re-elected Democratic majority to spur growth.

Mr. President, the people in the Heartland want laughs.  They want happiness.  They’re working in the soybean fields all day and they don’t need Mr. Downer In Chief lambasting his foes and engaging his opponents.  They want an upbeat message.  Here, I’ll give you one for free: “TARP – Bank On It!”  Was that so hard?

Throughout the year, we have been treated to Obama-led attacks on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Joe Barton (for his odd apology to BP), John Boehner (for seeking the speakership — or was it something about an ant?) and Fox News (for everything). Suitable Democratic targets in some cases, perhaps, but not worth the time of a busy Commander in Chief.

Because if he just ignores them, so will everyone else.

In the past few days, we have witnessed the spectacle of the President himself and his top advisers wading into allegations that Republicans are attempting to buy the election using foreign money laundered through the Chamber of Commerce, combining with Karl Rove and his wealthy backers to fund a flood of negative television commercials. Not only is this issue convoluted and far-fetched, but it also distracts from the issues voters care about, frustrating political insiders and alienating struggling citizens (not that many are following such an offbeat story line). Feinting and gibing can't obscure those job numbers.

I used investigative journalism to prove that these stories about the activities of political non-profits relying on anonymous donations from deep-pocketed people on the right is “far-fetched” and not happening.  I can’t tell you why, but remember, I am an elite, as I told you in paragraph two.

I would also like to point out that the phrase “feinting and gibing” in no way resembles the phrase “shuckin’ and jivin’” the public use of which would totally harm my elite status.

The President and Democrats have passed many significant measures (the stimulus spending, the auto-company rescue, the health care law and the financial regulation effort) that someday may be seen as brave and bold, the foundation for a better economy. 

It’s another “to be sure” paragraph!  It is very nice of me to give you two of them.

Obama and his closest aides certainly think that will happen. But the President was correct when he said Friday, "the only piece of economic news that folks still looking for work want to hear is, 'You're hired,'" and that's still not occurring for too many Americans.

As a member of the elite, I, Mark Halperin, figure that people will be happy with any old job, even an arduous one picking soybeans in the Heartland.

The politically good news for Obama is that no matter what the outcome of the midterm elections, everything changes in January. Republicans will have a greater obligation, politically and morally, to help govern, rather than thwart and badger.

Because up until now, our Republican representatives in government have had no political or moral obligations whatsoever.  But 2010 is the year or morals.

The President will get a chance, in his State of the Union address and in his budget proposal, to show he is turning the page on the political horrors of 2010 for his party and the nation. But before then, Republicans are almost certainly going to demonstrate that you can beat something with nothing, especially when Americans seem to think that the Obama Administration hasn't much to offer either, except more of the same that isn't working.

Not sure why Obama bothers.  They are going to beat him with nothing.  With nothing!