WikiLeaks Hits Obama Wear It Hurts

WikiLeaks Hits Obama Wear It Hurts

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/07/29/wikileaks-hits-obama-wear-it-hurts/

Posted by Dick Morris on Jul 29th, 2010 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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The leaked Afghan war documents will prove politically devastating to President Obama, hitting him in his most vulnerable place — his liberal base.

Having already lost all Republicans and almost all independents, Obama is shedding Democrats these days. According to the FoxNews poll, his job approval among them has dropped from 84 percent at the end of June to 76 percent in mid-July. A combination of the Afghan War, the oil spill, Guantanamo and his failure to act on immigration reform have all eroded his credibility with his liberal constituents.

Now comes evidence that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won — certainly not with the effort and constraints now in place. It is obvious that Obama and Hillary Clinton are being duped by the Pakistani government and that the Afghan leadership is awash in corruption. With Pakistan offering the Taliban sanctuary next door and the government in Kabul staying in office in order to steal American aid, the Afghan War is looking more and more like Vietnam.

And now we have the equivalent of the leak of the Pentagon Papers discrediting the war effort from the inside.

All this comes at a time when Obama is suffering from erosion in his liberal support due to his seeming pandering over the racial issue, bending first to accommodate conservative critics and then to cave in to black activists. The image of weakness that emerges, combined with the incompetence of his reaction to the BP oil spill, does him no good in his ratings.

The Democratic defection is critical. Those who leave Obama’s ranks will not likely defect to the Republicans. But they will stay home on Election Day in November. In any off-year election, the two-way contest between the parties masks the real competition — a three-way race among Democrats, Republicans and those who stay home.

Why should Democrats come out to vote for Obama? To end the war — the initial selling point he used to get nominated? The war is dragging on without end. His pledge to withdraw the extra troops rings increasingly hollow as it becomes clear that the price for keeping that pledge would be surrender.

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