Serious Question: How Does Obama Still Have Any Supporters?

by: Patrick Kane
No, but really … how the hell does President Obama still have any supporters? I’m not using this as a rhetorical device as an excuse to tie in my commentary, or at least not entirely. I am honestly curious as to how any of the people who voted for a charming and promisingly liberal Candidate Obama in 2008, have anything but contempt and scorn for his 2013 doppelganger.
When I first came up with the idea to write an article asking this question, Edward Snowden had not yet released his nauseating report on the NSA’s theft of America’s private online information. Even before such an evilly unprecedented revelation, with the Fast and Furious, AP, IRS, and Benghazi scandals alone, I still couldn’t wrap my head around how he had any supporters. Now with knowledge of the NSA’s PRISM spy program, my question has shifted to, how is the entire country not baying for his impeachment?

It is impossible to simultaneously support both the 2008 and 2013 Obama, given the irreconcilable differences in what the President claimed to believe then, versus what he does now. While it is understandable that as people grow and age, they change their opinions on certain things, Obama hasn’t simply adjusted a few esoteric points in his philosophy. Obama has made a macabre metamorphosis into something that a Candidate Obama would have mocked and scorned, and his followers would have protested against. Given Obama’s harrowing use and support of the NSA’s Orwellian surveillance program, and his damnation of such programs and actions in his 2008 candidacy, we can determine that 2008 Obama wouldn’t support 2013 Obama. Given this, it seems to be nothing short of a sycophantic miracle that any of Obama’s 2008 supporters should still be his supporters.
The comparison of Nixon’s 1972 Watergate to modern American political scandals has been frivolously overused since. So much so, that the term has ostensibly lost all meaning. I like many commentators think that comparing the IRS, AP, Benghazi, or NSA scandals to Watergate isn’t an appropriate comparison to make. However, unlike many commentators, I think that comparing Obama’s recent scandals to Watergate isn’t appropriate because the Watergate scandal does not compare in wretchedness to the recent crimes of the Obama administration. Surely if the wiretapping and theft of private information of a few people in a Washington D.C. hotel room is abhorrent, than the theft of millions of citizens private information on a regular basis is exponentially worse.

The Obama administration has raised the bar for political scandals. I can only hope that future pundits will look back and compare future political scandals not to Watergate, but to Obama’s NSA or IRS scandal with the same vitriol and stigmatization that has carried with Nixon’s infamous scandal.
I encourage any readers with friends or family that supported Obama while running for office five years ago, if and how they still support the President today. If anyone gets a good answer, please let me know. Perhaps it is myopia on my end, but I honestly can’t fathom how anyone with any semblance of principals still can.