While going through my weekly ration of hate comments, including a veiled death threat, from my ultra-left readers, I wondered what they expect if their actions—or inaction—result in the defeat of President Barack Obama.
How will they feel on election night and the arrival of four years of Mitt Romney and maybe four years after that?
Perhaps in a few years or months, they’ll think of their attitude toward Obama when Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act denies them health care because of a pre-existing condition or leaves their kid without insurance. Maybe they’ll regret as they watch the Republicans begin to dismantle civil rights laws, a move presaged by the party’s surprisingly successful efforts to disqualify African-American and Latino voters. Hopefully, they’ll feel remorse as Romney and a Republican controlled Congress finally get a chance to eliminate the safety net for the poor.
Many, but not all, comments on my column reflect an anti-Obama animus that at times reaches hysterical proportions, expressing anger worthy of Fox News. Not since the Vietnam War and “Hey, Hey LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?” have I seen anything like this. In fact, I thought of those days when I read an Open Salon blogger who wrote: “Obama-bin-laden is the most hideous of the worlds terrorists. He is not the ‘leader’ of the free world, he’s a murderous, criminally insane, war monger.” Or as another blogger, fantasizing an Obama monologue, wrote: “It took guts for me to take out Osama Bin Laden. You have no idea the hell I went through sitting in an overstuffed leather chair 7,000 miles away as the operation went down. And by God if I’m going to get credit for that then I’m taking credit for taking out those useless civilians too!” One wonders whether these bloggers are equally critical of Mitt Romney, who has for years threatened to go to war with Iran.
