Why waste money and effort? Too bad they'll never listen to me - or the Romney and Obama election campaigns would have stopped that waste and donated that enormous money to charities and to the IRS, respectively. As per the sympathies, that is: "conservatives" are known to be more conscientious than "liberals", giving more to charities despite being poorer. Which is not surprising, because the difference is ideological, not material. In the Soviet Union, always my point of reference, giving alms, personal charity, was considered a sign of contemptible weakness to the beggar's reprobate behavior. The state was supposed to be thought of as taking care of everybody - against all facts to the contrary, particularly concerning the elderly and the disabled. Their pensions, if any, were often at the starvation level, and even that meager money was frequently stolen from them by their alcoholic relatives. Under the capitalist system, the progressive viewpoint is the same: the state is supposed to take care of our needs. Of course, we need to pay ever more taxes - as much as the state says it needs for taking care of us. The state's perceived generosity is very attractive to both the progressives, because it relieves them of the pesky responsibility of a civilized person to make the uncomfortable donation decisions, - and to the prospective recipients, because they get that as a legitimate entitlement and have nobody to thank for that (but the state, sometimes also known as Dear Leader).
While being demonstrably more charitable, the conservatives are presented as vicious predators, ready to push the granny off the cliff. The progressives (aka "liberals"), like Al Gore who donated one seventh of the average for donating households, are to be thought of as striving to take off their last shirt, or perhaps the $6,800 designer jacket, helping "the poor". Regardless of what one may voluntarily donate, it is never a "fair share", as the Leader... uhm, the President, defines it. Because it is the state that determines what that share is, it can only be paid through taxes.
I digress, but not much. The administration has succeeded in ensuring that half of the population uses and is used to governmental handouts, which are firmly associated with the Democrats. Add to these the progressive intelligentsia and money-hating "millionaires and billionaires" like Soros and Buffett, and the electoral majority is clearly in Obama's hands - no need in campaigning. In fact, no need in elections: the People has spoken already - just look at the polls. Never mind that over two thirds of the population are thinking that the country is going in a wrong direction - they still prefer the one who is taking it there. Something else matters, not the facts of life. It does not matter to the black voters that a leader of the Party, Sen. Harry Reid, likes Obama because he is “light-skinned” and capable of speaking “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”. After all, Reid is no different in that from another idol of the progressives, "Che" the La Cabaña Butcher Guevara, with his insightful observations: “The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations”; and “The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing…” (The Motorcycle Diaries).
The revolutionary icon, by the way, was also an antisemite, as comes from another quote from the same book, about "a certain Cohen, who we were told was Jewish but a good sort; there was no doubt he was Jewish, the problem was finding out if he was a good sort.” Then again, so are the plurality if not majority of Democrats, who not only list all the congressional antisemites, but are hardly half sympathetic to Israel vs. "Palestinians" (53% in 2012, but 48% in 2010) - in striking contrast to the overwhelming support of Israel among the Republicans. A progressive colleague, with his usual irrelevant cussing attributions, pointed out that this support is due to the eschatological motivations of "the lunatic fringe fundamentalists". I replied that if a Jew pays attention to these alleged hopes for the ultimate conversion of the Jews, he must believe in that as well as in all the surrounding events happening - the second coming, and the first one for that matter. Otherwise, why would he worry about that motivation that has no effect on the present, except positive? Suppose the "fringe" believe we the Jews will eventually convert, but meanwhile they help us against our sworn enemies – why would you be concerned about their dreams? Considering that they sincerely believe, it would be very inconsistent of them
– and a reason of concern to us the Jews
– not to worry about our redemption: it is a sine qua non for a believing Christian to hope for universal redemption. Democrats, on the other hand, believe in something else – their ideology of robbing the haves and spreading, however eventually thinly, among the designated have-nots – at their wise discretion. The ways-and-means are well described in Animal Farm.
To get a taste of the components of that ideology pertaining to the Jews, check out Jimmy Carter’s slanderous masterpiece, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, along with another contemporary version of the Protocols
– the Walt and Mearsheimer treatise. This is who the Jewish majority in this country vote with – Carter, Sharpton, Farrahan, and their fellow Judeophobes. The latter, of course, include Obama himself, the first US president who has supported the return of Israel to the pre-1967 lines, better known as "Auschwitz borders". It is often said, and repeated by that colleague of mine, that Obama's minions' inability to name the Israeli capital is the US policy since Reagan. Well, I don't worship Reagan, like the progressives worship Obama. When I make my pick, I don’t need to make good out of bad, as they do with Obama who they think is infallible, if not immaculately conceived. I've been well inoculated against idol-worship, much as I respect Reagan for his unique role in the destruction of communism. I see clearly the good and the bad, the latter including Reagan’s treatment of the Jerusalem issue, advised by James "f... the Jews" Baker. The fact that Obama follows in those steps, instead of the steps of the Democratic competitors of Reagan, Hart and Mondale, who both promised to move the embassy, and of Moynihan who introduced the US Embassy Jerusalem relocation bill, only confirms Obama's antisemitism and my colleague's inconsistency. Reagan, however, instructed to veto any possible UN resolutions that, prompted by Arabs, would characterize east Jerusalem as “occupied territory”. The Reagan Plan called for "Palestinian" autonomy, but not an independent "Palestinian" state, and Jerusalem as an undivided city – obviously no "Palestinian" capital. Obama did the Jerusalem piece too – only to renege the next day. Obama's sympathies, inspired by his uncommon upbringing, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, and Rev. Wright, are clear.
His motivations, which are not, unfortunately, of the fringe of the Democrats anymore but of their mainstream, - are clear too. He has been quite open on that, starting from the beginning of his career of an "organizer":
That’s why people become involved in organizing—because they think they’ll get something out of it... With enough actions, I could start to build power. Issues, action, power, self-interest. I liked these concepts. They bespoke a certain hardheadedness, a worldly lack of sentiment; politics, not religion.
He took to heart the advice of his organizer mentor: "the last thing we need is to join up with a bunch of white money and Catholic churches and Jewish organizers to solve our problems. They’re not interested in us." Obama made them all "interested". He did need a friendly advice, though: "When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change." He has continued pronouncing that, and that has taken him straight to the White House.
Power, which he has built so successfully, is the ultimate goal of the progressives - not “the problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland", that "become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought”. The progressives always care about humanity - not about humans. About The People - not about people. But people are just that - people, suckers for populist slogans, freebies and discounts, flattery and the "cool", their memory short - in this case often literally, as the Obama-faithful majority of the youth have none. That's why the response to the question above is so easy.
