Liberal Frustration

CNN is having some fun today presenting a study that concludes liberals are smarter than conservatives:

"Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with," he said. Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach -- looking out for the people around you first -- fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism, Kanazawa said. "It's unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers." he said.

The study found that young adults who said they were "very conservative" had an average adolescent IQ of 95, whereas those who said they were "very liberal" averaged 106.

Not sure that science is settled yet, but note the obvious (but unspoken) parallel to Obama and the Republican Congress, tea partiers, Rush Limbaugh, et al.

Meanwhile Tom Maguire, in dissecting the gushing liberal praises of Obama's health care summit performance, points to this New York Times profile from 2008 in trying to figure out Barack's bizarre auto insurance analogy (bizarre for us dumb conservatives, but perhaps so smart that it sails over our heads), which contains this in regards to a failed community meeting regards asbestos at a housing project:

“Barack basically talked about how tough it was to generate real results through organizing and that it was embarrassing to him to have the residents out of control,” he recounted.

“He wondered if he had done a good enough job preparing them for the meeting,” Mr. Owens said. “He sounded angry at himself. He was questioning the whole methodology.”

Mr. Obama had risen to executive director of the Developing Communities group, but the demanding hours, small victories and low pay took a toll on him, and he decided to leave.

“ ‘We are not making large-scale change, and I want to be involved in doing that,’ ” Mr. Kellman said Mr. Obama had told him.

While digesting this please keep in mind the liberal post-game analysis from Jonathan Chait about the Healthcare Smackdown, that Obama was comparable to LeBron James playing a junior varsity squad or thereabouts. Perhaps this asbestos debacle anecdote can be useful in determining how he might react to a less than successful meeting with more recent adversaries. He will show us the way forward next week, so we'll have to wait and see.

But it's clear Obama has now risen to the top of the frustration pole on his mission for change. When he was a community organizer and things went bad he had the option to move to a higher level to git er done, but now that he's the president his elevator has come to the top floor. He can't go any higher within constitutional boundaries should the Congressional rabble fail to come through. What would LeBron do?