Obama as Tinkerbell

Chris Stirewalt nails it on Obama's desperate need to re-conjure the magic of '08:

The grown-up lawmakers in the Democratic caucus must have cringed when some of their colleagues started chanting "Fired up! Ready to go!" when President Obama came to Capitol Hill for another pep talk this weekend. [. . .]

All the chanting in all the ashrams wouldn't have changed their votes.

But the pep rally atmosphere and the president's upturned jaw, pregnant pauses and finger-stabbing hand gestures weren't meant for the likes of Boren or Boucher. [. . .]

Their liberal positions suggest that Kilroy and Perreillo wanted very much to vote for Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill, but seeing Democrats from nearby districts fleeing the plan must have made them nervous. A little of the old Obama stump speech and the revival-meeting chanting were enough to chill them out and keep them in the "yes" column. [. . .]

But the president and his increasingly nervous party chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, are making what you might call the Peter Pan plea.

Fans of J.M. Barrie's play will recall that when Tinkerbell is fading, Peter asks the audience to clap if they believe in fairies -- that their belief will make Tinkerbell live.

The message to nervous Democrats is that if they believe Obama's election was a transformational moment for American politics and not just a perfect political storm, then their belief will make it true. [emphasis added]

When you've finished cringing, consider the truth of the highlighted sentence above. They must believe in the Obama-magic because without it the bottom falls out. There's nothing else there.

The hard, cold, grown-up truth:

But polls and tea party rallies show that voters aren't in a mood for fairy tales. And that means there will be hell to pay in 2010 for many clapping, chanting members of Congress.

h/t: Pundit

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