Richard Cohen – as close as you are going to get to a Liberal with some intellectual integrity – states what many of us have noted, that Barack Obama is rapidly turning into Jimmy Carter as 2011 eerily is starting to remind people (old enough to remember) of 1979. When the liberal phonies of The Hamptons (a series of tony beach communities – Southampton, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, West Hampton, etc. – all the way out on Suffolk County where people such as Steven Spielberg, Alec Baldwin, et al have summer homes), no longer wax enthusiastic about Obama, then he is in trouble. This is not to imply that they will not vote for him next year – the majority of them will vote Democratic, however the enthusiasm is gone and many of them will be like I was in 2008 voting for McCain, not very happy and going through the motions.
by Richard Cohen
Barack Obama has lost the Hamptons.
That sentence is a fat target for ridicule, I know, since the Hamptons are often reviled as the playground of the ridiculously rich and the promiscuously silly — hardly the working-class Democratic base. As is usually the case, there’s some truth to the stereotype, but enough exceptions to that rule to make the White House pay attention. The Hamptons is where the Democratic energy, money and intellectual firepower of Manhattan goes for R&R. It’s just not another beach.
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Let me call the roll. I am talking about are writers and editors, lawyers and shrinks, Wall Street tycoons and freelance photographers, hedge funders and academics, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Democratic activists. They were all politically sophisticated, and just a year ago some of them were still vociferous Obama supporters. No more.
Frankly, I was surprised. The Hamptons are a redoubt of New York liberalism. It is to campaign money what the Outer Banks are to fishermen. I expected more than a few people to defend the president. No one did. Everyone — and I do mean everyone — expressed disappointment in him as a leader. In that area, they thought he was a bust. Some articulated detailed critiques — the nature of his stimulus program, for instance. They argued that more money should have gone into long-term infrastructure programs. Most, though, skipped the details and just registered dismay: Where had their “change” agent gone?
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I grant you that the Hamptons are not America, and I grant you further that some of these people will scurry back to the Democratic fold when they have to choose between Obama and, say, Rick Perry. (Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney is a different matter.) In the meantime, though, these opinion leaders, these political activists, these people with influence and, yes, money, have bailed on Obama — not just some of them, not just a few of them, but all of them. The early returns are in: Obama has lost the Hamptons.
Read the rest: It’s no longer Obama-land in the Hamptons
