By Dave Andrusko

Before I get to TN&V for Tuesday, I fervently hope those of you with elections in your area have voted already or will before the polls close. I had lost my driver's license, and for a while this morning, it didn't look as if election officials would accept the identification I did have. Luckily, they did (as they should have).

I live in a part of Northern Virginia where pro-lifers had won the delegate slot for the state Legislature for years and years. However, after a series of comical errors--or would-be comical errors, if the stakes hadn't been so high--a pro-abortion Democrat won last time around.

He now has the power of incumbency going for him and a challenger who has not been highly visible. But if after all that, the pro-lifer carries this area today, it could signal a very, very good day for pro-lifers in the Commonwealth.

Pro-abortion President Barack Obama

If I were an elected official, my guess is I would be much more worried if I was being made fun of than I would if I was being hammered. Pro-abortion President Barack Obama, increasingly, is getting both.

Most everyone knows about the mild Saturday Night Live skit which gently poked fun at the yawning gap between Obama's over-the-top rhetorical promises and his meager list of accomplishments. But only a handful of readers outside the readership of the Washington Post will know about a hilarious column that ran in the Post today.

It is written by Hank Stuever under the tongue-in-cheek headline of "Taking Us, unswervingly, to their leaders: HBO's 'By the People' and ABC's 'V'." It begins with this: "There are some twisted little microbes living in the algorithms of the television programming grid, which might explain the delicious scheduling of 'V' and 'By the People: The Election of Barack Obama' back-to-back on different networks Tuesday night."

You have, on the one hand, "HBO's uplifting but stultifyingly naive, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama's campaign and election." On the other hand, you have "V" where "the otherworldly 'visitors' want to bring us universal health care. They possess a knack for speechwriting and managing the message."

In case anyone misses the point Stuever adds, "In "By the People," well . . . same thing! It's all about happy people flying in from strange places, smiling at complicitly available TV cameras."

Not exactly six of one, half-dozen of the other, but close. By all means read the article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110203470_pf.html. In parts you will laugh until you cry.

Speaking of Kool-Aid, yesterday the New York Times ran a story headlined, "In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama.": The best observation came early from a retired nurse: "I'm afraid I wasn't realistic." Or, put another way, she swallowed the Obama mythology hook, line, and sinker.

A couple of paragraphs down writer Jeff Zeleny offers 75 words of misdirection.

"One year after winning the election, Mr. Obama has seen his pledge to transcend partisanship in Washington give way to the hardened realities of office. A campaign for the history books, filled with a sky-high sense of possibility for Mr. Obama not just among legions of loyal Democrats but also among converts from outside the party, has descended to an unfamiliar plateau for a president whose political rise was as rapid as it was charmed."\

Obama's fall from grace is just beginning, but it's not (as is implied) because his doggedly determined efforts to "transcend partisanship in Washington" have been rebuffed. Obama is as partisan as Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer. Nowhere is this "my way or the highway" better illustrated than in the unceasing campaign of Obama and the pro-abortion Congressional Democratic leadership to subsidize and expand the abortion plague while insisting they are doing nothing of the kind.

Pro-Life Sarah Palin

The Post this morning also ran a review of two new books about Sarah Palin, which are appearing just weeks before Mrs. Palin's own memoir hits the shelves. Each speculates why (according to reviewer Nick Gillespie) "No recent political figure has ignited the fury of the chattering classes like former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin." It is useful, if painful, to be again reminded how viciously she was attacked, how nothing--NOTHING--was too low, too untrue, or too cruel for the "chattering class."

Was Palin's performance flawless? Of course not. The difference is that the Kool-Aid-drinking Establishment Media went out of its way to ignore Obama's every flaw and recycle in an endless loop every Palin slip, real and imaginary. To this day, can anyone with no dog in the hunt honestly say that Obama's wafer-thin resume was superior to Palin's, the governor of Alaska?

According to Gillespie, the authors of these books, especially, "The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star," by Matthew Continetti, grasp how cultural disdain was at the heart of what he calls the "oversize" response to Palin. She was and is Middle America incarnate.

Palin didn't go to the "right" schools, had the "wrong" accent, and, worst of all, was unabashedly pro-life. The impact on the way she was treated because Palin had the temerity to carry a Down syndrome baby to term was crystal-clear at the time. But because the elite hated her for so many different reasons, there is a chance biographers might miss how much this colored the coverage.

The irony is that Palin was unmercifully caricatured because (to quote from Continetti) she did not speak the "jargon" or with the "verbal felicity" that tickles the ears of the "American meritocratic elite." But minus his security blanket--his Teleprompter--Obama is painfully, woefully inarticulate, a walking repository of cliches and intellectually underdeveloped drivel. For those who think this is too harsh, I'd ask them to offer me examples of Obama's off-the-cuff responses that demonstrate real depth and insight.

If you get a chance, read Gillespie's review at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110203470.html. And by all means, vote!