Is Obama Losing?

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I see that quite a few national polls have swung in Mitt Romney's favor since he trounced Barack Obama in a political debate last week.

I see that some swing state polls have begin to swing in Romney's direction too.

Of course I know that just two weeks ago, the media and the political establishment had all but written the election off as a win for Obama, so I have a difficult time seeing how one bad performance in a debate could swing the polls that much.

But I do know one thing.

The arrogant, out-of-touch elitist who showed up at the debate - I'm talking about the one with the "D" after his name, not the "R" - needed a wake-up call and maybe the swing in polls is just that.

I am a Democrat who has only voted for Democrats going back to 1988 (1986 if you count local elections.)

I am NOT voting for Barack Obama this year.

First of all, I don't consider him a Democrat.

Anybody who wants to gut Social Security and Medicare, hand out billions of dollars to the Too Big To Fail Banks while creating a mortgage relief program that screws middle and working class homeowners, renominates Ben Bernanke at the Fed, nominates Timmeh Geithner at Treasury (Goldman's man on the job!), promotes the privatization of the public education system through his Race to the Top program, jails Bradley Manning for years without any charges  wages war against whistleblowers with a tenacity the Bushies couldn't even muster, declares he has the right to assassinate any American any time anywhere if he declares them a "terrorist," puts together a "kill list" of "terrorists" he wants assassinated, and drops drone bombs on innocent men, women and children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere is not a Democrat to my mind.

That kind of guy is a Republican and I won't be voting for him, no matter who is running against him.

Secondly, Obama is one of the most arrogant pricks on the planet (if you don't think so, take a look again at the debate and read the accounts of how he had refused preparation for it and told his aides afterwards that he thought he had won.)  He truly is a narcissist who is convinced of his own righteousness and awesomeness and just can't understand why everybody else doesn't agree with him.

As a teacher who has watched Obama vilify my profession, I know that many teachers have tried to tell this man about the damage Race to the Top is doing to education and students.  Obama is pushing unproven, unpiloted measures like teacher evaluations tied to test scores onto the whole nation and is unwilling to listen to anybody, even an expert like Diane Ravitch, who tries to tell him he is wrong to do this.

Sometimes Obama just seems completely out-of-touch about the consequences his policies are having.  For example, he said during the State of the Union this past year that teachers need to stop teaching to the tests, that children deserve an education that is not limited by this kind of rote learning, and yet, Obama's own RttT policy ensures that this kind of teaching will happen because it promotes standardized tests in every grade, K-12, in every subject, and ties teacher evaluations to the scores.

Is Obama unaware that this is the consequence of his policy when he says that teachers should stop teaching to the test?  Is he actually aware of this and dissembling when he says this?

Dunno the answer to these questions, but I do know that there are two possibilities:

Either Obama has no idea the damage that is being done by his education policies and pursues them anyway or he does know and he lies about them.

Either possibility disturbs me and is pretty much emblematic of his whole presidency and indeed himself as an individual.

That was on display at the debate where he looked bored, pissed off to be there, and frankly mad that the rest of the country didn't already see the brilliance of his policies and call the debate off before it started.

So it's hard to know if the poll swing in recent days means much or if it's just the media making a horse race out of what seemed to be a rout in the making, but I do know one thing.

If the poll swing and the drubbing Obama is taking from the media, Dems and Democratic supporters alike serves to wake this arrogant, elitist, out-of-touch man from his "awesomeness fantasies" about himself and his policies, that's a good thing.

That still won't make me vote for him.

I don't vote for pro-privatization, anti-labor war criminals who murder innocent men, women and children on a "kill list."

But maybe a wake-up call will mean Obama will stop listening to only himself and start listening to some of the people who supported him in '08 who he know seems to disdain.

And if that happens, maybe, just maybe, a second Obama term won't be as damaging as the first one was.