Can Someone Decipher What Mini-American Robert Reich Is Talking About?

This may rank as one of the most incoherent screeds of all time.

Is Obama responsible for the meltdown of the Dow? The consistently wrongheaded Wall Street Journal's editorial page says so, as does Republican Fox News, CNN's reliably demagogic Lou Dobbs, and now CNBC (where, full disclosure, I frequently appear as a token liberal). CNBC's Jim Cramer, who bloviates nightly about stock picks, says Obama is pushing a "radical agenda" that's destroying investors' wealth. My friend Larry Kudlow, who rants nightly about nearly everything, says Obama is destroying capitalism. CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's ballistic nonsense about Obama's mortgage plan made him a pop-populist icon for a week or so.

Republican Fox News? As opposed to what, Democrat MSNBC?

The little guy forgets to note Jim Cramer was an Obama voter.

The argument that Obama is somehow responsible for the collapse of Wall Street is absurd. First, every major policy that led to this collapse occurred under George W.'s watch (or, more accurately, his failure to watch). The housing and financial bubbles were created under Bush and exploded under Bush. The stock market began to collapse under Bush.

I guess having Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as majority leaders counts for nothing.

Still, let's overlook the little guy's revisionist history and let's have a look at this paranoia.

This bizarre charge wouldn't be worth mentioning were it not a market test for a more intense attack from Wall Street and Republican media outlets next year as the nation moves into the gravitational range of the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans have made no secret of their wish to blame Obama for the bad economy, and to stir up as much populist rage against his so-called socialist tendencies as politically possible. History shows how effective demagogic ravings can be when a public is stressed economically. Make no mistake: Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy, ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at liberals, intellectuals, gays, blacks, Jews, the mainstream media, coastal elites, crypto socialists, and any other potential target of paranoid opportunity.

Well, that pretty much covers everyone, doesn't it? Except maybe for delusional midgets.

Obama Advisers Already Lowering Expectations for President-in-Training

Looks like the handlers for the affirmative action Messiah realize the guy is probably in over his head. In fact, has anyone even seen him the past week or so? Why not step up and show some leadership, Barry?

President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer -- all by the Fourth of July.

They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.

A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.

"This might be a long haul," said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. "2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won't be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years."

In other words, don't you dare go and blame anything on Obama the next four years. Of course you'll be called racist just for having the temerity to criticize him, but this just gives them a convenient excuse to blame all his anticipated failures on Bush.

The expectations wouldn't be so high, but after a two-year media lovefest, what else should people expect?

Update: A great take from Jonah Goldberg.

In an attempt to dial down expectations for his administration, President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.

No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.

It’s a step down from divine redeemer, but you have to start somewhere.

Via Instapundit.

Mini-American to Endorse Obama

Looks like Barry O has snagged the key diminutive socialist endorsement. The media will make a big deal of it since he's another Clinton cabinet member to jump ship, following Bill Richardson.

Robert Reich, a former labor secretary, today will become the latest ex-Clintonite to formally endorse Barack Obama instead.

New York magazine reports online today that Reich, who has praised Obama over the course of the campaign and who has criticized some of the tactics of Hillary and Bill Clinton, made a final decision after seeing Clinton's TV ad hitting Obama for saying that economically strapped small-town voters are "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion."

Reich, who was born in Scranton, Pa., said he was "appalled" by the ad, in which Pennsylvanians say that they were insulted and upset by the remarks, which Obama made during a private fund-raiser in San Francisco.

"I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics," he told the magazine. Reich is to make the endorsement official this afternoon on his blog, where his most recent post, on Sunday, defended Obama's remarks, saying that he told the truth.

I didn't even know the little guy had a blog.