Give Us More Credit

Yesterday I asked the question “how dumb are Americans“. A Washington Post op-ed piece had earlier claimed that Americans had lost their attention spans and were anti-intellectuals. Then today, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has written a counter argument. In some senses, I would agree with him. But, my original point was whether we’d let ourselves be dooped by the negative campaign tactics of Hillary. If you check the elections results of Wisconsin and Hawaii (that’s 10 consecutive Obama wins), it would seem that, for the time being, we aren’t as dumb as Hillary would have us believe.

Today the Nation’s article, “Clinton Takes the Low Road“, in explaining how Hillary has little left except to take cheap stabs at Obama, accurately highlights Hillary’s problem:

why can’t Clinton win on her own merits? Why can’t her campaign win caucuses, or highly educated voters, or compete competitively in red states? How have they failed to win a single contest since Super Tuesday?

Ruth Marcus also describes why voters aren’t stupid,

Voters aren’t foolish or naive; if anything, sometimes they are more cynical than is warranted about politics and politicians. Still, they are responding to Obama because of a yearning to believe in something. Telling them they’ve been chumps is not a winning message.

Yes, one of the most bothersome aspects of Hillary’s Obama insults is that, in reality, she is demeaning the hundreds of thousands of Democrats and independents who are voting or even considering voting for him.

Because we’re not always stupid doesn’t mean that we are in fact intelligent. We are still subject to blindly believing the hype — either positive or negative — for our candidates. How will Obama fare over time with Hillary’s continuous negativity? There are those who are starting to tell us that we shouldn’t let ourselves be duped by Obama’s empty hope. Will Obama supporters lose faith?

Finally there is the question: is believing in “yes we can” as mindless as believing Hillary’s trash talk or false claims of experience? Miguel de Unamuno, who felt that faith wasn’t the blind belief that God existed but rather the passionate desire for God to exist, said

One of those leaders of what they call the social revolution has said that religion is the opiate of the people. Opium … opium … opium, yes. Let us give them opium so that they can sleep and dream.

So give the American people more credit for not being led like the blind herd that Hillary wants us to be. The rest is all opium, one well needed one.