CT Blue

As pretty much all the world knows, a woman named Velma Hart gave voice to what a lot of people feel when she spoke to Obama at a forum:

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I’ve been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir, I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet.

Over at Hullabaloo Digby’s take is that she was giving voice to a feeling engendered by constant right wing attacks on Obama, a feeling characterized as Clinton Fatigue back in the 90s.

And that brings me to the exhaustion part of her statement yesterday. Those of you who went through the 90s will recognize this phenomenon. It’s when the right’s ferocious attacks are so vicious and relentless that they eventually wear down average, common sense people with normal lives to lead — and even scare them a little.

In Clinton’s case it was defending him from the non-stop personal attacks that was so wearying. It took a brave soul with a taste for political combat to keep fighting in the face of that onslaught. It was called Clinton Fatigue, the sense that even people who were sympathetic to the president’s political plight and understood that his enemies were rabid and insane, just wanted it to end.

Of course, I can’t speak for the woman at the forum, but if what Digby says is true, that we are exhausted from having to defend Obama, it’s partly because the Democrats in power don’t defend him or themselves. They walked tall for about a month after the inauguration, and then retreated to the old defensive crouch, afraid to stand up for themselves or for what they believe, always anxious to court approval from the Republicans. This has been the case from the passive Obama on down, and to this day they are more comfortable attacking their own supporters than going after Republicans. The Republican base has their cheerleaders in the ranks of the politicians, but we have to go it alone. The Democrats largely ran away from Clinton during his (self inflicted) troubles, and they’re now running away from Obama and themselves in these (Bush inflicted) troubles.