There are few Beltway Heathers as pernicious as Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei of Politico. Ever since Obama was elected, these guys have been giggling at their high school cafeteria table with the other cool kids like Dowd, desperate for something to revive those good old days of the '90s, when they could whisper and point about Monica.
Now the cafeteria table kids are beside themselves, finally getting a chance to go after a President they don't like, bursting at the seams to party like it's 1993-2000. Today, Allen and VandHei write what amounts to a Declaration of War against Obama, or as Ed Kilgore calls it, a "forthright announcement that the MSM are going to make explicit common cause with the GOP"::
Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.
And, according to the two Heathers, Democrats are deserting the President. Their evidence? Columns by that formerly staunch Obama loyalist, but really Queen of the Heathers, Maureen Dowd:
The dam of solid Democratic solidarity has collapsed, starting with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s weekend scolding of the White House over Benghazi, then gushing with the news the Justice Department had sucked up an absurdly broad swath of Associated Press phone records.
Yes, Dowd, who has always belittled Obama (as she does all Democrats) has picked up the Benghazi cudgel. And when you've lost Dowd . . . well, nothing!
This column is of course redolent of the infamous Sally Quinn column in 1998 quoting David Broder: "'He came in here and he trashed the place,' says Washington Post columnist David Broder, 'and it's not his place.'"
Yes, it's such a relief to be free from writing about how austerity policies are causing suffering based on a phony "study" or that the sequester is starving and denying chemo to people.
Look, kids -- we've gotten out of high school and most of us were not sitting at that table anyway. And most people really do care about policy. We will not let you get away with this crap again.