Conservatives have been the loudest critics of Obama’s taxpayer-funded Midwest bus tour, but apparently some liberals aren’t pleased with it either. Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters said today that the group is growing “frustrated” with the way Obama’s handling the unemployment situation, and wondered why the president wasn’t visiting any black communities during his bus tour.
“The unemployment is unconscionable,” said Waters at a community college in Detroit. “We don’t know what the strategy is. We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community. We don’t know that.”
Waters explained the CBC hasn’t attacked Obama yet because they’re worried they’ll lose support from the black community:
“We don’t put pressure on the president,” Waters told the audience at Wayne County Community College. “Let me tell you why. We don’t put pressure on the president because ya’ll love the president. You love the president. You’re very proud to have a black man — first time in the history of the United States of America. If we go after the president too hard, you’re going after us.” …
“When you tell us it’s alright and you unleash us and you tell us you’re ready for us to have this conversation, we’re ready to have the conversation,” she said. Some members of the crowd immediately voiced their approval.
Watch the video if you have a chance – many audience members clearly agreed with Waters, yelling out that the CBC should “unleash” itself on Obama. It’s pretty amazing how the president has managed to alienate the ultra-liberal CBC, a group that represents his most loyal support base.
In fact, Obama’s hasn’t won over any voting bloc over with his jobs performance so far. His base hates it. He’s losing independents in droves. And conservative groups like American Crossroads are already planning to use his bus trip in attack ads next fall, according to Ben Smith:
“It’s obscene that Barack Obama’s billion-dollar campaign is chiseling hard-working American taxpayers for a million-dollar campaign bus. Everybody knows that Obama’s bus tour is about his reelection, so he needs to pay the taxpayers back,” says the group’s chairman, Mike Duncan. “We’re going to make a star out of Obama’s million-dollar campaign bus because it symbolizes his presidency: politics instead of results, a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, and a long ride that leads nowhere.”
The unpopular bus tour raises the stakes for his jobs speech in September. Obama’s base isn’t going to let him ignore its demands for much longer.
